Ivory EQ by Acustica Audio! (Aqua plugin)

[Liero]

And about Slate plugins.. you sure you aren't falling victim to the over hyping of the "genius" Fabrice Gabrielle? His code isn't magic...

I know this is slightly off-topic, but I can't help pointing out that a lot of posts by bmanic from some time ago about Slate plugins could well be described as "overhyping". You are of course allowed to change your opinion about Slate plugins, but I think it's slightly funny that you are reminding people not to fall victim to hype that you yourself have partly been responsible for.

[bmanic]

And about Slate plugins.. you sure you aren't falling victim to the over hyping of the "genius" Fabrice Gabrielle? His code isn't magic...

I know this is slightly off-topic, but I can't help pointing out that a lot of posts by bmanic from some time ago about Slate plugins could well be described as "overhyping". You are of course allowed to change your opinion about Slate plugins, but I think it's slightly funny that you are reminding people not to fall victim to hype that you yourself have partly been responsible for.

I absolutely LOVE the Slate plugins. Especially the Compressor bundle and VCC (I also have FG-X which I'm less fond of and the tape machine where I prefer Satin instead).

What I was talking about was the over hyping of Fabrice Gabrielle's code. It's sometimes made up to be "magic" and somehow automatically better than other people's code. This I think is completely false.

So yeah, it may be funny to you and seem like a contradiction when you are not reading what I'm writing but rather interpreting it for yourself.. but whatever.

EDIT: Also, you've been on these forums long enough to perhaps remember that I was one of the few highly critical voices of the original Air EQ as I thought it was full of "air".. and FG-X was one of those plugins that got some critique as well. You are probably remembering my comments about VCC and the compressor bundle. Naturally I like compressors so it'll have to be a really bad plugin or hardware for me not to like it even a little bit.. and VCC was absolutely magic when it first arrived years ago (it did subtle the right way and came at a time when it was impossible to run more than a few instances of Nebula). Version two is even better in my opinion. Anyhow.. lets not confuse the two things, ok? I stand behind what I said. Fabrice's code isn't "magic" or anything super special in my opinion. Steven's ears though.. now that's another discussion entirely!

[bmanic]

To my ears Nebula aqua compression isn't there yet. I love the Titanium multiband compressor however. It hardly compress when I use it but it opens the mix in a very nice way. I don't care if it don't sounds like the hardware. I also love the Green EQ. It's sounds very smooth to me and has some nice subtle colouration. Those are my favourite aqua's at the moment. I'm sure there will be great sounding aqua compressors in the future.

I still think the metering is to blame a lot of times. You can get quite a lot of compression going without the meter even blinking.. or when it shows 1dB of compression you may actually be doing 3 to 5dB on short, sharp peaks.

Having said that, I do agree with you. The compressors still need more work but they are infinitely better now than they were just a few years ago.

[minx]

I have been usiing Titanium for a couple of weeks now and there is some thing very amis with the compression
it seems that it is all or nothing. The hardware can be so smooth but Titanium gets grabby to easy. The tone is
great but so are many of the nebula libarys I have. I will probably have to get a refund on Titanium as it too
sensitive for a mastering compressor.

[jantex]

Is your hearing ability intact ?

Haven't read so much BS for a long time...

Obviously your M-audio speakers in your bedroom don't show you this behvaiour

[bmanic]

I have been usiing Titanium for a couple of weeks now and there is some thing very amis with the compression
it seems that it is all or nothing. The hardware can be so smooth but Titanium gets grabby to easy. The tone is
great but so are many of the nebula libarys I have. I will probably have to get a refund on Titanium as it too
sensitive for a mastering compressor.

The more I read these kinds of comments the more I'm certain that you guys are looking at the meters and not using your ears. For instance, before the 1dB GR light comes on you get up to 0.6dB of compression on a static signal! You can easily test this with a sine wave. Note: 0.6dB of compression is already easily heard.

Before the 2dB gain reduction light blinks you can get up to 1.5dB of gain reduction which is already PLENTY for mastering. So you may think you are doing barely 1dB of compression when you are in fact doing 1.5dB. This inconsistency with the meter continues and becomes even more dramatic at higher compression levels. Now this is with a static sine wave. Things get a lot more complicated with short impulse like peaks, like drums. You can have up to 3 or 4dB of compression going on without the GR meter blinking at all!! Or blinking very quickly. Why? Because you can set the release so ridiculously fast. If you have it at around 9 o'clock the release is so fast that the metering just can't keep up with it.

NOTE: In the analogue world it is not at all uncommon for mastering engineers to NEVER have a compressor needle or meter moving.. or just barely. For instance the Manley Vari-Mu is very often used in this way in mastering. When the needle is moving just a tiny bit you can already hear it clearly compressing and it's enough. Same thing with many other commonly used mastering compressors.

I haven't used any tubetech unit for a while but I do remember the LCA 2B being really grabby very quickly at fast attack settings. I would usually set it so that the first lamp blinked only occasionally. Having said that, the metering on those Tubetech units is absolutely superb! Very responsive and informative. The complete opposite to Titanium (and I was very critical about this on the forums.. it got better in the end but it's still very far from the metering response of the real units). Unfortunately metering in general is one of the very weak parts of Nebula/Aqua plugins. They just don't work at all like the real units.

My suggestion is to listen real carefully and holding down SHIFT while tweaking the knobs. Even a few pixels of knob movement can cause a huge difference in compression amount. It's a usability problem more than anything.. at least this is my suspicion.

EDIT: In short, this is how to use TITANIUM: Set the compressor to attack and release values that you feel does the job as expected. Now don't look at the GR meter, just use your ears (chances are that the GR meter isn't even moving at this point). Now when you get something you like you can set the release knob so that it is a lot slower (move it to about 3 o'clock) for a glimpse of just how much GR is going on. Now you know how much it's grabbing.. adjust accordingly then set release time back to what you had before.

Cheers!
bManic

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

agreed, our meters show less than the actual compression, they are optimistic
Compressor itself is very fast, while meters are not. We'll try to improve

[bmanic]

Here's a drumloop demonstrating this perfectly:

Dry loop

Compressed loop

The GR meter never even blinked on this one.. and I'm doing up to 2dB of gain shaping on the signal (moderately fast attack, very fast release). You can also clearly hear the compression here.. listen to how much punchier the transients are. Also listen to how it tightened the low frequencies. Yeah, this is not "tone" of tubetech, this is pure compression.

Once more.. quite a bit of compression, metering never moved.

EDIT: Another example, this time with the 3 band version.

LGE original clip

Titanium 3B version, meters never moving (though slight flickering in the upper band meter.. between zero and 2dB).

I'm doing quite heavy controlling of each band here.. probably in the 2 to 3dB range of compression, yet never does the meters move enough to give me proper information about just how much I'm compressing. Luckily you can clearly hear what it's doing!

[Liero]

And about Slate plugins.. you sure you aren't falling victim to the over hyping of the "genius" Fabrice Gabrielle? His code isn't magic...

I know this is slightly off-topic, but I can't help pointing out that a lot of posts by bmanic from some time ago about Slate plugins could well be described as "overhyping". You are of course allowed to change your opinion about Slate plugins, but I think it's slightly funny that you are reminding people not to fall victim to hype that you yourself have partly been responsible for.

I absolutely LOVE the Slate plugins. Especially the Compressor bundle and VCC (I also have FG-X which I'm less fond of and the tape machine where I prefer Satin instead).

What I was talking about was the over hyping of Fabrice Gabrielle's code. It's sometimes made up to be "magic" and somehow automatically better than other people's code. This I think is completely false.

So yeah, it may be funny to you and seem like a contradiction when you are not reading what I'm writing but rather interpreting it for yourself.. but whatever.

EDIT: Also, you've been on these forums long enough to perhaps remember that I was one of the few highly critical voices of the original Air EQ as I thought it was full of "air".. and FG-X was one of those plugins that got some critique as well. You are probably remembering my comments about VCC and the compressor bundle. Naturally I like compressors so it'll have to be a really bad plugin or hardware for me not to like it even a little bit.. and VCC was absolutely magic when it first arrived years ago (it did subtle the right way and came at a time when it was impossible to run more than a few instances of Nebula). Version two is even better in my opinion. Anyhow.. lets not confuse the two things, ok? I stand behind what I said. Fabrice's code isn't "magic" or anything super special in my opinion. Steven's ears though.. now that's another discussion entirely!

Fair enough.

BTW, reading what someone else writes is by definition an interpretation. None of us is a mind-reader.

[bmanic]

Of course.

[minx]

I have been usiing Titanium for a couple of weeks now and there is some thing very amis with the compression
it seems that it is all or nothing. The hardware can be so smooth but Titanium gets grabby to easy. The tone is
great but so are many of the nebula libarys I have. I will probably have to get a refund on Titanium as it too
sensitive for a mastering compressor.

My suggestion is to listen real carefully and holding down SHIFT while tweaking the knobs. Even a few pixels of knob movement can cause a huge difference in compression amount. It's a usability problem more than anything.. at least this is my suspicion.

EDIT: In short, this is how to use TITANIUM: Set the compressor to attack and release values that you feel does the job as expected. Now don't look at the GR meter, just use your ears (chances are that the GR meter isn't even moving at this point). Now when you get something you like you can set the release knob so that it is a lot slower (move it to about 3 o'clock) for a glimpse of just how much GR is going on. Now you know how much it's grabbing.. adjust accordingly then set release time back to what you had before.

Cheers!
bManic

I'm defo using my ears and not the meter readings and giving it a tickle as to say, been an engineer for
over 25yrs and I have come across plenty of units where the meters mean diddle squat.

My issue is with how the attack and release behave, the sweet spot is tiny and I am
starting to wonder if there is something up with the release curve. When I am less bussy I will look into
it further.

Thanks for the tips on using Titanium lets hope Acustica improve it further

[bmanic]

The margins of change for the knobs are indeed tiny. I always have SHIFT key depressed when I tweak the knobs. Especially Threshold and Ratio. Also remember that the attack knob goes much faster than the original hardware (virtually zero attack time). This was requested by some of us beta testers (yours truly included). I don't exactly remember where the "real" attack is but I'd wager it's at around 9 o'clock.. perhaps a bit more towards 12 o'clock.

It's a really useful compressor for keeping things tight. It's a less useful compressor for obvious compression in my opinion.. but then again that's exactly how I remember the LCA 2B too (the multiband version is basically 3 of those bolted together).

[enduser282]

For anyone that might not know, vu meters respond to rms levels, analog gear doesn't react to peaks while digital can do both. But since AA are analog emulations don't expect to ever do or show peak reduction in analog style emulated meters.

Having said that idk if they're far off and bad coded in AA sw, haven't tried their comps.

Better use your ears, i remember when i started using poco cl1b, when the needle just starts moving i 'm already doing a lot of compression. It also depends the gear, boz digital labs ADR emulation compresses at 1:1 ratio which they say HW does alike. Needle moves too but my point is there might be some quircky details in HW builds that good emus have copied as well.


About Ivory, does it have a demo? I didn't find any, i think AA is only talk and expects us to blindly trust them for a 160$ eq, rather hiding the drawbacks of their platform. Because no demo means no game from me. I have tried amber though, good eq but the bass lacks clarity not for my music very good sounding nonetheless so i'm interested in demoing the rest of their eqs but they don't provide that. Everytime i bypassed a filter band made an annoying phase distortion noise for about half a sec , big loading time and memory usage. The gui does not look like in their site (showing them extensively), those rack screws look terrible with a silly black circle around them while the overall size is not proportional to standard rack size or even half rack. Looking at rack screws make plugins more HW?

Nebula maybe was better than many algo eqs when they started (although with slower user systems as well), nowadays not at all. So the whole thing AA tries to sell how they made their sw and preaching about kernels is irrelevant, i don't care as a customer, i care about results, usability and price. In general avoiding downloadble demos shows they're not that confident themselves.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

there will be a cycle of trial demos asap...

[bmanic]

For anyone that might not know, vu meters respond to rms levels, analog gear doesn't react to peaks while digital can do both.

This is such a gross generalization and it has to stop. It's an urban myth. The REAL truth is that every single manufacturer TWEAKS the meters to respond the way they want to. There are analogue compressors out there that have blazingly fast meters.. so fast that you hear a clickety clack kind of sound when the needle bounces around.

Then there are leds as metering on some units that are tweaked to be very fast. Tubetech LCA/SMC series being one of these. The meters are really ridiculously fast.

I'm not sure where this myth about everything being some specific rms level metering started but it needs to stop at some point. Meters are there to help you visualize what you hear. If a compressor can do really fast gain changes it makes absolutely no sense to have a slow GR meter.

.. just saying.

EDIT: also note that Gain Reduction metering has nothing at all to do with input/output level metering (which is indeed usually set to typical averaging levels). The point is: Metering needs to make sense. For signal level measurement it makes sense to have some kind of averaging going on, not so much for GR metering if the compressor can do fast attack and release times.

Cheers!
bManic