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PreSonus CTC-1 Pro Console Shaper for $39.99


Larry Shelby

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Excellent, kick *****.

Forget Pro Channel and other such gimmicks, toys, these and the following releases are the real thing, Mix Engine FX, not like normal FX, have a read.

Available only for Studio One Pro 3.2 onward.

Once you get your head around it I hazard a guess it will be like it is here, permanently in use here ?

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2 hours ago, Scott H said:

Looks interesting! Do I need "Crosstalk" on every track? Does this plugin have a special mojo over and above a good channel strip like Softube's British Class A?

You can load it on a bus and have it affect the channels feeding into that bus.
You can have it on your Main Out bus and have it affect the buses feeding that, OR it can "passthrough" and affect the tracks.

You can toggle cross talk on and off, or you can set the amount with a knob.

It works like a summing mixer more so than a channel strip. It actually changes the audio engine.

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26 minutes ago, ptheisen said:

I am happy for you!

Bummer for me. I've been watching closely for it to go on sale. When I saw this, I was at first pretty excited, now I'm rather disappointed. Oh well.

 

If it doesn't have to be this set of consoles and you are open to other options, maybe one of the console emulations from this package is good enough? And it's also cheaper. ?

https://shop.presonus.com/Retro-Mix-Legends

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9 hours ago, heath row said:

Excellent, kick *****.

Forget Pro Channel and other such gimmicks, toys, these and the following releases are the real thing, Mix Engine FX, not like normal FX, have a read.

Available only for Studio One Pro 3.2 onward.

Once you get your head around it I hazard a guess it will be like it is here, permanently in use here ?

Personally IMHO all of these type of plugins/processors are gimmicks but as they say YMMV.

In the studio we had to deal with a variety of leakage types... 

  • Console module crosstalk - electronic bleed from other modules or just console electronics.
  • Tape track bleed through - adjacent tracks bleeding through (more of an issue on 24 track tape and its physically smaller track area).
  • Tape print through - one layer of tape imprinting on another. 
    You would always have some pre or post print through - which was louder depended on how the tape was stored.
    One of the most famous examples is the vocal pre-delay on Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love.
  • Headphone bleed - cue mix getting picked up by vocal or acoustic microphones.

While most of the time you could ignore this stuff sometimes it was an issue and it could be a real pain in rear ('Where the hell is that guitar coming from? All the guitar tracks are muted!").

Except for 'Whole Lotta Love' where they liked the effect of the vocal pre-delay due to tape print through I don't recall ever hearing a producer say 'Thank god for that (name your instrument) bleeding through!'.
I do recall a couple of occasions of spending time to manually erase all non-used tracks or sections between parts to eliminate bleed through as much as possible; an easy thing to do on a DAW, but sometimes challenging to do on a tapedeck.

I am waiting for someone to create the plugin that let's you enjoy the magic of recreating all 4 types for bleed through in your DAW so that you (and the end listener) can realistically enjoy the full experience of yesteryear's recording studios.

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22 hours ago, Soundwise said:

 

If it doesn't have to be this set of consoles and you are open to other options, maybe one of the console emulations from this package is good enough? And it's also cheaper. ?

https://shop.presonus.com/Retro-Mix-Legends

Thanks for the suggestion. I was aware of those, but felt the two "consoles" I most wanted were the Classic British (Neve) and Custom in CTC-1. So I'm going to hold out for another sale on that.

Softube Tape, which is the only 3rd party plugin supporting the Studio One Mix FX, was(is?) on sale by itself and in a bundle for a good price, and that was also tempting. I tried the demo on that. It's CPU use was higher than the included Console Shaper, and I think I prefer console emulation to tape emulation, so I didn't buy that either.

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I am torn on this. Having mist of the Plugin Alliance channel strips, as well as Softube Tape, and not to mention the stock mix fx,   I don't really need more console emulations. Yet, this is tempting (despite the fact that I think Presonus should have made this a freebie). 

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On 1/12/2024 at 4:16 PM, TheSteven said:

Personally IMHO all of these type of plugins/processors are gimmicks but as they say YMMV.

In the studio we had to deal with a variety of leakage types... 

  • Console module crosstalk - electronic bleed from other modules or just console electronics.
  • Tape track bleed through - adjacent tracks bleeding through (more of an issue on 24 track tape and its physically smaller track area).
  • Tape print through - one layer of tape imprinting on another. 
    You would always have some pre or post print through - which was louder depended on how the tape was stored.
    One of the most famous examples is the vocal pre-delay on Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love.
  • Headphone bleed - cue mix getting picked up by vocal or acoustic microphones.

While most of the time you could ignore this stuff sometimes it was an issue and it could be a real pain in rear ('Where the hell is that guitar coming from? All the guitar tracks are muted!").

Except for 'Whole Lotta Love' where they liked the effect of the vocal pre-delay due to tape print through I don't recall ever hearing a producer say 'Thank god for that (name your instrument) bleeding through!'.
I do recall a couple of occasions of spending time to manually erase all non-used tracks or sections between parts to eliminate bleed through as much as possible; an easy thing to do on a DAW, but sometimes challenging to do on a tapedeck.

I am waiting for someone to create the plugin that let's you enjoy the magic of recreating all 4 types for bleed through in your DAW so that you (and the end listener) can realistically enjoy the full experience of yesteryear's recording studios.

I own CTC-1 and I have to respectfully disagree with TheSteven in this particular instance. The Mix Engine FX are something special and add a 3D-ness that I have only ever experienced with the Nugen Stereoizer plugin.  (I know they are doing different things, but these are 2 of the few plugins I've ever had where I got that "holy crap" reaction after putting them on a mix and toggling back and forth.)

Unfortunately... this one comes at the cost of HUGE CPU cycles which is why I rarely use it.  I'll only ever put it on at the end of a mix if I can spare the overhead.  But I would love to have a PC where I could mix into this.

To TheSteven's other points, I turn off the Noise and Crosstalk by default and do not understand for the life of me why we would want that to re-introduce those things into mixing.  However, I do admit to using the Crosstalk a few times and can't deny the "gluing" effect.  But I have also soloed tracks a few times after I forgot I had the Crosstalk on and spent stupid amounts of time tracking the "leaking audio" to that "feature".

I never got the "Retro Legends" because I didn't want to spend more $$ to annihilate my CPU. I have been curious about the Softube Tape for a long long time though...

As The Steven said, YMMV.  :)

Edited by mibby
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