Clearmountain Domain

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Yeah, kinda what I figured. Nice idea and execution, but way out of my budget anyways.
A well-behaved signature.

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It took a bit of effort to replicate the delay and verb sounds, but now that I have the fx all routed in Cubase it's pretty easy to mimic the presets. I honestly don't have much use for the presets other than curiosity and a learning tool, but I do enjoy experimenting with fx routing in this way.

To replicate the Clearmountain plugin I created 5 fx sends. Delay, Pitch Shift, Short Verb, Med Verb, and Long Verbs. The verbs are all convolution in the plug and I was able to easily copy them with an impulse spike (hope I don't get any bad karma for that, but I won't share them and will buy the plug when I win the lottery). For delay I found that Tritik tkdelay worked great. It's got saturation and a filter with resonance that can be in the feedback loop, dual left right feedbacks and a crossover. It's got a freq shifter but it's better to set up a separate freq shifter on a different send from the delay and just send the delay to it, not the source.

The key to getting the tritik delay to sound right was putting the TAL-DAC plug behind it to mimic a sample rate converter and lower the SR and bit depth. They are clearly modeling the digital/analog conversion in the Clearmountain plugin - gives it a nice gritty feel.

Put a time delay in front of the freq shifter as a sort of pre-delay. Put a desser and an eq on the delay and reverb sends. Send the source to the delay and whatever reverbs you're using, then send the delay to the freq shifter and the reverbs, then send the freq shifter to the reverbs. With this setup I've been able to pretty closely replicate all the presets, but most of them aren't very complicated.

Here's the real Avalon BV preset:
https://soundcloud.com/stochasticsound/ ... -avalon-bv

And here's my copy of it:
https://soundcloud.com/stochasticsound/ ... -avalon-bv

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Reefius wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 4:34 pm Why would it need a lot of presets? At this price I don't think it's aimed at bedroom producers who use presets for everything.
:lol: :hihi:


This is certainly aimed at bedroom producers. In a world where you have people with no clue about computers at all shelling out big bucks for Apple because "it's much better", there's certainly room for a plugin like this with a price like this. Just don't jump to conclusions based on the price. Unless, of course, you're one of those this is aimed at. :hihi:
"Preamps have literally one job: when you turn up the gain, it gets louder." Jamcat, talking about presmp-emulation plugins.

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ditto

kinda what i thought... aimed at folks with more dollars than sense lol quite the money grab imo and well done evo... pretty spot on :)
"There is no strength in numbers... have no such misconception... but when you need me be assured I won't be far away."

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JerGoertz wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:49 pm I wonder, does this fundamentally do anything you couldn't replicate with your own homebrew plugin chain(s)? I mean, they were going on in the promotional stuff about how "difficult it was to replicate this using separate plugins", but why?
It doesn't fundamentally do anything you cannot do yourself if you have the skill set. Apart from the unique impulse responses he recorded himself for the convolution reverb part. You would have to use other IRs there. Not many presets either, thought there would be a lot more. Also it is Mac only until late November.

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:ud:
Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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JerGoertz wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:49 pm I wonder, does this fundamentally do anything you couldn't replicate with your own homebrew plugin chain(s)? I mean, they were going on in the promotional stuff about how "difficult it was to replicate this using separate plugins", but why?
Watch the interview with Mr Clearmountain and Warren Huart. He states there is nothing in there you couldn't do with individual effects. If you have a couple hours to set the thing up.

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rollasoc wrote: Mon Oct 14, 2019 9:19 am
JerGoertz wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:49 pm I wonder, does this fundamentally do anything you couldn't replicate with your own homebrew plugin chain(s)? I mean, they were going on in the promotional stuff about how "difficult it was to replicate this using separate plugins", but why?
Watch the interview with Mr Clearmountain and Warren Huart. He states there is nothing in there you couldn't do with individual effects. If you have a couple hours to set the thing up.
Sounds about right. Except the "couple hours" thing... If you're using hardward, maybe, but my plugins usually load in a few seconds max. :hihi:
A well-behaved signature.

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I think he said that he is not great with DAW effects, and so it can take him a couple of hours to get it all going in the DAW, where in hardware he can get there very easily.

I think it would be the opposite for me (as a non-hardware person), I wire something similar to what he is doing for every mix in a couple of minutes, and if I had to try to do it with hardware it would probably take me hours to figure out what preset out of an Eventide box, patched to what, and why is there so much freaking noise?

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Some of these companies' pricing is laughable. For 10 bucks more than this, you could buy a Reaper license and the entire Valhalla DSP product line. :roll:
I once thought I had mono for an entire year. It turned out I was just really bored...

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evo2slo wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 10:33 pm It took a bit of effort to replicate the delay and verb sounds, but now that I have the fx all routed in Cubase it's pretty easy to mimic the presets. I honestly don't have much use for the presets other than curiosity and a learning tool, but I do enjoy experimenting with fx routing in this way.

To replicate the Clearmountain plugin I created 5 fx sends. Delay, Pitch Shift, Short Verb, Med Verb, and Long Verbs. The verbs are all convolution in the plug and I was able to easily copy them with an impulse spike (hope I don't get any bad karma for that, but I won't share them and will buy the plug when I win the lottery). For delay I found that Tritik tkdelay worked great. It's got saturation and a filter with resonance that can be in the feedback loop, dual left right feedbacks and a crossover. It's got a freq shifter but it's better to set up a separate freq shifter on a different send from the delay and just send the delay to it, not the source.

The key to getting the tritik delay to sound right was putting the TAL-DAC plug behind it to mimic a sample rate converter and lower the SR and bit depth. They are clearly modeling the digital/analog conversion in the Clearmountain plugin - gives it a nice gritty feel.

Put a time delay in front of the freq shifter as a sort of pre-delay. Put a desser and an eq on the delay and reverb sends. Send the source to the delay and whatever reverbs you're using, then send the delay to the freq shifter and the reverbs, then send the freq shifter to the reverbs. With this setup I've been able to pretty closely replicate all the presets, but most of them aren't very complicated.

Here's the real Avalon BV preset:
https://soundcloud.com/stochasticsound/ ... -avalon-bv

And here's my copy of it:
https://soundcloud.com/stochasticsound/ ... -avalon-bv
Evo2slo: Fantastic job recreating the process and for sharing your findings!
I am on windows so no CD for me yet. I followed your description and got more
or less the same sound.

Also huge appreciation to mixing legend Bob Clearmountain for not only making his
knowhow and sound accessible to everyone via tha Apogee plugin,
but for also openeing up his space-creation "secret sauce" for anyone to see and study!

I look forward to getting his plugin when ported in windows and also any
additional plugins for other aspects of his mixing process should he decide to release more.

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rollasoc wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 2:47 pm
W23 wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2019 2:01 pm Right. I think some of the selling point for Domain though, is the reverb quality, and the De-esser that gets worked in to the effect (something I’ve never even thought to use in a time/pitch effects chain). I am really hoping to see an “introductory price” on it, but I think they are really aiming for the “professional” recordist who can write these things off as an expense.
I was hoping it was going to be a Waves plugin, so it would be $29 in a few months..
Haha!! You got a point. Actually, I’m kind of surprised this wasn’t a Waves thing. My guess is Clearmountain is exclusively an Apogee dude. Most likely because of his wife.

It doesn’t matter though. He looks like a guy with a lot to share and this is him sharing it. You can learn a lot by reverse engineering presets of successful engineers. Specifically if it’s a chain of effects. Clearly all these type of things can be substituted with something else, but by directing what they have done is like learning from the people themselves.

For most of us that’s the closest we’ll ever get.

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Just to note that Domain has now been available for Windows and Mac since mid-November (and it runs fine on my 2011 Windows 7 laptop at about 20% CPU hit).

Visually it is simple and clear to use, although perhaps a bit dated in terms of some GUI visual features.
It sounds good, and a PACE (software) demo version is available to use for about 3 weeks limit.

However and crucially, given that this is clearly trading on Bob Clearmountain and his 'presets', I found it to be a letdown that there are only (currently) about 20 presets. This feels half-hearted, albeit those presets do include/mimic his settings for a handful of his famous song mixes, such as "Let's Dance" (guitar FX).


TBH, Domain is massively overpriced: a realistic price would be around £150.
Its effects are nothing amazing and can be replicated (as per the KVR member in this thread above) using similar plugins in combination.

I get the feeling that there has not been any critical reviews of this plugin because everyone (rightly) respects Bob Clearmountain very much.
Anyway, a demo is available for anyone who is unsure.

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dark water wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2019 8:43 am Just to note that Domain has now been available for Windows and Mac since mid-November (and it runs fine on my 2011 Windows 7 laptop at about 20% CPU hit).

Visually it is simple and clear to use, although perhaps a bit dated in terms of some GUI visual features.
It sounds good, and a PACE (software) demo version is available to use for about 3 weeks limit.

However and crucially, given that this is clearly trading on Bob Clearmountain and his 'presets', I found it to be a letdown that there are only (currently) about 20 presets. This feels half-hearted, albeit those presets do include/mimic his settings for a handful of his famous song mixes, such as "Let's Dance" (guitar FX).


TBH, Domain is massively overpriced: a realistic price would be around £150.
Its effects are nothing amazing and can be replicated (as per the KVR member in this thread above) using similar plugins in combination.

I get the feeling that there has not been any critical reviews of this plugin because everyone (rightly) respects Bob Clearmountain very much.
Anyway, a demo is available for anyone who is unsure.
I had the opposite experience. I used the setup Evi2slo described (good job Evo2slo!)
and although it is very functional it was killing my machine whereas the CMD is vastly more cpu friendly. The CMD plugin is significantly more flexible and its sound is also definitely better than my home-brew setup.

The limited number of presets is not a big problem imo if you use them as starting
points and as learning tool.

It is on the expensive side for sure, but the value is huge - for me at least.

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dark water wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2019 8:43 am Just to note that Domain has now been available for Windows and Mac since mid-November (and it runs fine on my 2011 Windows 7 laptop at about 20% CPU hit).

Visually it is simple and clear to use, although perhaps a bit dated in terms of some GUI visual features.
It sounds good, and a PACE (software) demo version is available to use for about 3 weeks limit.

However and crucially, given that this is clearly trading on Bob Clearmountain and his 'presets', I found it to be a letdown that there are only (currently) about 20 presets. This feels half-hearted, albeit those presets do include/mimic his settings for a handful of his famous song mixes, such as "Let's Dance" (guitar FX).


TBH, Domain is massively overpriced: a realistic price would be around £150.
Its effects are nothing amazing and can be replicated (as per the KVR member in this thread above) using similar plugins in combination.

I get the feeling that there has not been any critical reviews of this plugin because everyone (rightly) respects Bob Clearmountain very much.
Anyway, a demo is available for anyone who is unsure.
Hopefully more presets will come. Sometimes products are rushed out with a small number of presets, but then more are released with a followup update.

But then again, Bob is an old-school kind of guy. Maybe 20 presets is alot in his mind. There were some early synthesiser that can store about that much presets all up!! It's quite possible that he just uses them as starting points himself and then modifies it to fit whatever context he's using it in.

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