since most of our perception of what's good and bad in sound comes from experience and comparisons against another piece of gear, it is a long standing tragedy that the usual computer studio user believes he has good tools to work with.
although gear is not what makes a great technician, Great. you can stretch and fight for a year with a mix and yet even if you are a pro - you will never achieve more than average result's if you don't have the right tools.
if you, like me, wondered for years, why is it that your mixes sound overly bright but still don't have that soft shining glow, or why cant the bass be b-a-d-a-s-s, and how to remove the mid-mud but still retain some body.
and if you ever wondered why you follow the path of the Great technicians adding 1.5k there and cutting 400Hz there and all you get is an evil lean and mean sound instead of a golden sound, well now i know the answer.
the truth is that 99% of digital eq are really bad for your sound. all the boost's and cut's you do and and tweak your mix into perfection simply makes thing worse and harder.
I had them all. from rags to riches, Colorful, Surgical, Pure phase, tainted Phase (most of them) emulation, innovation, you work with them because that what you have but...
something is missing.
Eventually you either get use to enormous tweaking and surgical wars, and you fool yourself that having three EQ plugins on a single channel can be a good thing, or you start testing analog EQ and you find that a simple Mackie will do far better than most digital EQ.
in the end you figure out that all that Digital eq wars is like trying to make a toast in a microwave oven - it will never be crispy or warm, it just resembles that. and in a very very bad way.
But you really don't know how bad is, bad.
only after i bought the Nebula and downloaded the EQ presets from the Nebula-Programs website, i understood how bad is, bad. only when you work with the Nebula you understand why all the pro's go about - "well all the kik need's a little boost at 60 Hz, a little dip in 400Hz and add a little top a 4-5K"
I did that so many time in digital but it never felt right or crispy. and then you do that with the Nebula and you go: OMG - so that what they were talking about all this years...
That's Where the magic is - Harmonic Distortion
without it (i.e. digital eq ) your just writing on water. that why so many albums were mixed with the 1073 or 550 simple eq and sounded great. try that with the UAD Neevana or URS A-series and you only achieve Mediocre results at best.
only now i as open those digital EQ's i worked with so many years i can clearly hear how Bad those tools they and how bad is what they do to your sound - the Phase shift, the mid-mud, the treble shreds, etc. etc.
Only after the Nebula you understand that the "character" they add is at best nothing more than a tourist souvenir rather than being there yourself. it may sound convincing in solo. and you can even believe that that's the "Spirit of Neve, API, etc... etc.." and in the end your right, it's only a spirit - not a body there.
So you can say that the Nebula is a problematic plugin - sure the GUI is weird (although you get use to it really quick), sure the CPU start screaming and shouting with only a few instances, Sure t takes time to adjust to the concept of one Nebula instance for each band of the EQ - but in the end when it come's to EQ (and tapes and pre's and panner - yes even Panning get's a new dimension here) The Nebla is pure Magic.
I too wasn't that impressed with the free Nebula - only when i got the real one with the commercial library and the amazing API 550, 1073 & above all the truly wonderful "Doc. Fear" samples from the
Nebula-Program site that i understood what an amazing tool is the nebula.
so you may think i work for them (i don't although i will buy there shares immediately) or that I'm a New-b or a hobbyist in the sound world (I'm not - i do that for living and i produced/engineered more than 50 albums ) or I'm hallucinating things, and i really don't care.
because in the end, I like every other Nebula owner out there knows the real secret - we have the best tool in the digital world to do music with, and you, simply don't.
come join the future.
good day