Well, obviously. But that's true for all plugins emulating hardware. It's not really the topic of the thread nor did it seem to have been your argument.

Then why bother with T-Racks? Why not just use any standard included free DAW plugin compressor? Since at 70% you're not really caring that much about the sound being that close, right? The whole point of getting UAD-2 plugins that emulate classic hardware is that it gets very close to the original, not "70%".

So if it's that far off then why bother even comparing and not just go for something else?

Yes, at "70%" the "accuracy".

The point I was making was that if the UAD-2 version is very close to the hardware then if you're complaining about the UAD-2 version's price then the hardware is just waaaaay more expensive.

Say you bought a brand new UAD-2 PCIe Octo at full price only to run the 33609 at about $1,200 full price. Plugin is $250 and a stereo instance takes up less than 25% of a chip. So four per chip, 32 per Octo.

(1200+250)/32=$45/stereo instance. Compared to $6,000.

Or you can run a million of the ones that's 70% close (nobody would) for much less money.

I mean, the money argument is just bad if comparing to hardware, and it's bad unless other plugins actually does the job just as well (i.e. far higher than 70%).

Good for you.

I can't answer this for sure.

But I can say that every past Black Friday, UAD has bundle sales.

Buy 2 get a 3rd free.
Buy 3 get a 4th free.

Doing the Buy 3 get a 4th free means your average per plug is $100. As i say I always attempt to include the most expensive UAD plugs that I'll use vs. a $149 plug in the bundle.

And then you get a voucher for $25 off another plug once you purchase a bundle...or any plug for that matter.

So yes, if you plan to buy 3, that Sonnox inflator would be $100.

Isn't marketing and capitalism wonderful?

this is magical thinking - if it does the trick for you, fine...

fact is though that no one in the world can hear whether you used a tgi, helios, trident, neve, mci, api, ssl or whatnot to track or mix and i doubt any hype about gear pushes the engineer to deliver 'better' tracks, not even 'different' tracks since emulations such as those from uad have come so damn close to the original.

hence my claim that no one 'needs' vintage über-gear to achieve stellar results!

oh, and we're not discussing musical instruments here so your analogy to guarneri or stadivari etc. falls flat...

"needs" still wasn't the point of the thread.

Also, there are still people who - thank god - are making an effort to make their art sound as good as possible. To them it matters.

If it was all only about meeting the lowest common denominator it'd be an even sadder world we'd be living in.

It's quite puzzling that an engineer as experienced as you cannot grasp the connotation value in certain classic gear tones and how those dress the story up differently to not using them, and how that can have a value.

And it is a little daft how you make it a thing rhat "you don't need those" as if that somehow elevates you.

But you know, whatever.

I've learned to not care if plugin "emulations" are accurate or not.

It's useable or it isn't.

This is an age old argument and it just doesn't hold water.
No professional does just enough to satisfy the average listener.
If no one can hear the difference, then not a single professional would ever use anything more than a computer and a $250 sound card.
But professionals strive for that extra 10%. And we have pride in our work. And we are making music for ourselves, we aren't punching out identical widgets in a factory. And we need to feel inspired and in the end proud of our output.

Your argument reduces everything to a $50 Shure 57 mic for all duties and a $250 Focusrite converter.

How much recording and how much backline work, and live sound. Obviously most gear is affordable and functional in live sound.
People put beat up Audix clip on mics all round my drums in a live setting, which are never seen in a recording studio.

it's you who keep repeating the same song...

i'm not talking cheapo gear, i'm talking pro gear for pro use - afore mentioned desks are certainly not considered poor and the fact that they were made by the dozens or hundrtets doesn't make them less suitable than an almost extinct dinousaur of which only a handful still exist...

upon listening to a full mix, no one can tell whether the drums were tracked on a tgi or an ssl 4k - not even you...

and you are contradicting yourself: first you said there's nothing extra to be gained (not superior, different), now you gain an extra 10% and are being inspired by a desk...

and you seem to assume that only using the most pristine gear enables you to achieve the best results: could well be in your experience but doesn't correlate to other people's experience...

It's not about the third party listener, it's about the person creating the recording.


Nope, I have not for one minute contradicted myself. I agree, no audience member, however well trained, can hear the difference between equally good quality gear in a music mix scenario. But for the musician or sound engineer it is about doing the best you can for the project. That means going the extra mile for the last 10%.
Sampling drums for Toontrack we look for amazing sounding rooms with fabulous recording consoles. In the room doing the recording, you can absolutely hear the difference between a vintage Cadac, Helios, EMI and an SSL Duality. You just can.
Whether that matters to the Toontrack customer is another thing, but we are doing everything we can to make the drum sound as best we can. Not just settling for 'that's good enough'.

Nope...using the best, most appropriate gear you can access for the job.
For example, Abbey Road Studios removed their Redd consoles and replaced them with the EMI TG around 1968/69. At the time Geoff Emerick decried the change, saying he thought the Redd sounded far superior.
Did it ever matter to the Beatles fans? - no. Did it even matter to the EMI executives? - no.

It mattered to the people in the room making the record.

how can you pretend you're not contradicting yourself?!

nevermind, we only agree that one can hear a difference upon comparing things side by side - but the notion that the more exotic gear gives you more valuable results or that every engineer prefers using exactly this gear is wrong: this is nothing but preference, habit, attitude.

it may help the engineer or you to feel more comfortable but neither the gear itself nor the positive feelings automatically lead to more satisfying results, as much as some people like to believe that.

maybe you wanna ask the engineers you're working with whether the exclusivity of the gear, the quality of results and their satisfaction with results correlate and if so, how often and the way you experienced it...

___


anyway, i learned one needs a tgi desk and should stay clear of 57's under any circumstance - live long and prosper!

It's all about the sound - I hate to break it to you.
You seem to have an 'exclusivity' chip on your shoulder.

One of the best snare drums for recording is the $500 Ludwig Supraphonic.
I have played some $1500 snare drums that sounded terrible to me.
And so yes, it makes a big difference both to my performance and to the sound when I play something I don't like the sound of - whatever it's monetary value.

I gave you the specific quote from Geoff Emerick. So I take it you know better than him. He directly explained how he experienced it.

see, that's another misconception: the fact that the results as in the beatles's case were commercially hugely successful, maybe genre-defining and the exclusivety of the gear doesn't tell anything about the quality of the results beyond taste.

geoff emerick's thoughts on the desks are well known - and reflect his personal preference.

You are stuck in a rut, describing manufacturing widgets in a factory.

I have said all along, it is about the tools you want to use, not whether any member of the public cares what tools you use.
If this is my career and I have been doing it professionally for 40 years, I'm allowed to prefer certain tools and choose to use them - whether you agree, or my listener agrees.
If a tool gets me to where I want to be very quickly, but a more readily available and cheaper to buy tool gets me somewhere similar eventually, why is it wrong to choose the tool that gets me the exact result and more easily/quickly?

Nope, he said it was a different sound and the new desk made it impossible to recreate the drum and guitar sounds they are used to.

there's nothing wrong with chosing the right tool for the job!!!

but imo you're constantly doing two things:

showing an attitude (i'd never record in a studio using a digital desk, i got exceptional results using a tgi, seeking extra 10% etc.) and moving the target, trying to win an argument under any condition (and contradicting yourself not only in terms of your own statements but imo you're also making pretty bold claims and mis-interpret other people's statements).

__


not gonna discuss the latter any longer: you win!
i stand pretty firm regarding the former:

it's NOT about the gear, it's about the ear!

if you NEED to get the oldest or latest recreation of some übergear to get excited and to live up to your expectation, i feel sorry for you - plenty of musicians and engineers (including some of the best) are capable of getting superb results with relatively 'modest' gear (still pretty exclusive for many posters around here but far from being boutique, just standard pro gear).

You are projecting...


It can be both.



You are projecting.
You seem to have had a seizure because I had the temerity to say I'd recorded through an EMI console and it sounded better than a modern digital console.
At the time the EMI console studio rate was about $500 a day. Hardly elitist!!!
Anyone could have recorded through it and heard how great it sounded.
It's some kind of bizarre reverse snobbery if you can't recount working on a nice piece of gear at Gearslutz without being attacked.

Err.... record drums was all I said. I didn't say 'exceptional results' or 'I would never record'....

What is the goal of a company like Toontrack (just for example)?
To deliver drum sample products featuring great sounding drums.
They have what 50 or 60 EZdrummer packs, and 10 or 12 Superior packs.
Find me the one that is recorded on a digital console using no outboard but plug-ins. Find me one that doesn't heavily feature a classic console of some kind, and some vintage microphones and outboard.
When Dave Grohl set up his home studio did he buy a bunch of Audix mics and a PT24 Console?
You're claiming he's a big headed idiot too?
That's all I was saying.

I found what you said to have been logical, consistent and, well, factually accurate - for lack of better wording. I think you're stuck now though because if you were being logical, consistent and factually accurate and someone still thinks you're contradicting yourself + being wrong and a bit of an ass then you're probably at an impasse.

You're not the problem here.

Someone doesn't know their music history.
From the 50's at least people have always cared about 'the gear'. From Rudy Van Gelder's custom made personal studio, to Motown and Abbey Rd cherry picking the best of the best and often customising it in house.
Glyn Johns mostly working on Helios consoles with U67 and U87 microphones, Bruce Sweiden recording most of the Michael Jackson albums on his beloved Harrison console.

when working in the uk earlier on, as long as the tgi desks were still at abbey road, i didn't get to use them and i dunno where the desks or remaining parts ended up (privately owned these days?) so i cannot comment on them.

i'm not questioning your experience in terms of the quality of the gear you've used or the results you've got: i'm having a hard time with your attitude towards gear (and technique) which imo is vastly overblown...

iirc, you're a pro-drummer, not a pro-engineer?

funny you are accusing me of not digging pro-gear: i definitely cannot get blamed of owning or using chepo gear (or simplistic setups either), on the contrary; i just don't give as much about it as you seem to do...

...but what's even more funny is that - despite our (ongoing) vendetta - judging from what i've read in some other post of yours it's quite possible we have met on a few occasions and even worked together on one production!

let's get that sorted out in a drum-related thread some day...

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ok, back to uad (and sorry everyone for the little detour):

does anyone know how multiple uad/soundcraft realtime racks show up on a single display/monitor?

is it as one large engine or in different windows, one window for each engine? rtfm and all that but i'd like to hear from someone with hands-on experience and how things helped or hampered the workflow - i'd appreciate any comments on this.

You having a hard time, is your problem, not mine.
You also shouldn't focus on what you personally think people are - pro this, pro that.
Either they make a good point, or they do not.

Have I said that?
You posted ' it isn't the gear it's the ear ' - which is a rather silly phrase, but anyway I just responded to that with some thoughts of my own.

still waiting for you making a good point or to correctly analyze points not aligning with your system of believe...


this would indeed make for an intersting thread (with the exception of the insulting comment - wait: helps me to identify some clappers so thx).

"big name engineers and their big ticket gear: did the gear make a (noticeable) difference? examples where they achieved extrordinary results - and where they miserably failed!"

The difference between what? The claim was that nobody can listen to a track and identify which console it was recorded on. Similarly, the related claim is that nobody can hear a track and identify which plug-ins were used. Of course you can say that neither claim is true if one person in the entire world can distinguish which board, preamps or plug-ins were used. In general these things are indistinguishable to most humans, even professionals, in context. Specifically, different models of gear or even different basic kinds, like hardware or software, don't make the difference between good tracks and bad tracks.

The more important claim is that you can't fault a recording by the gear used nowadays since gear that sounds great is not that expensive anymore. If a recording made on a high quality interface with plug-ins doesn't sound great it is most likely the material, the musicians and the engineer at fault and not the difference between hardware and software, this preamp or that preamp or this manufacturer or that manufacturer of hardware or software.

So again, the difference between what?

I have the UAD and Native version.

You know because it's primarily a saturation plugin capable of subtle and not so subtle saturation I honestly think you'll be OK with the native version - I don't really hear a difference on this plugin between DSP and Native.

Might save you some money and will definitely save you UAD DSP.

I think people are mixing up different points as if they were all one thing, which they aren't. Chrisso has been pretty clear I think. For example:

That's different from saying:

It's one thing to say that a listener can't state which console was used on a recording and mix, and it's quite different from saying that a person can't tell that there's a difference between two tools being used.

Imagine that I go in and track and mix a band on a vintage Neve console, and then manage to get about the same levels etc on a vintage SSL. The questions would be:

1) Can a listener tell that they are different?
2) Can a listener tell which tools were used?


And this is yet another point different from the above. But as both Chrisso and I pointed out when we work we try to do the best we can with the resources available.

Imagine that you hire Chrisso on drums and me as an engineer, and you pay good money for the session, and Chrisso walks in with a sub-par cheap kit of drums into my studio equipped with some cheap console, cheap interface, and cheap outboard. BUT, we have the option of using pretty much the best, priciest gear available in the next room over for no additional cost.

What would you prefer?
And why would you prefer that?

Yeah, if your song is great, your arrangement is great, your musicians are great: Then our cheap gear won't stand in the way of you creating good art. But really, shouldn't we try to do the best we can with what we have available?

And here's the larger context:

That's not the "more important claim" within the context of this thread though.

Within the context of this thread what's important is that not everything sounds the same, some stuff sounds "better" and that's why people use it - when resources permit it.