your favorite liquid mix emulations?

[dj_who]

now that it has been out for a while, i was wondering which emulations are you using most and for what purpose? vox, guitars, ect.


just to head off any smart asses. i'm sure a couple of people will say "none".

and yes, i know these don't sound exactly or sometimes even close to the true hardware units. i'm more concerned about which emulations do people find most pleasing to listen to.


so now that we got that out of the way....

my personal faves are:

millenia stt tube comp. i find it very smooth for bass
tube tech cl1b comp. for vox

[dacart]

Originally Posted by dj_who

and yes, i know these don't sound exactly or sometimes even close to the true hardware units. i'm more concerned about which emulations do people find most pleasing to listen to.

Hey!
Don't be so defensive! I love my Liquid Mix!

I like the Tube Tech LCA2B emulaation for lead electric quite a lot as well as the other Tube Tech emulation for crunch.
I personally think it's one of the better investments I've made in the past year.

Dan Carter

[Pronecobra]

I would actually really like to know how close people think the Liquid Mix emulations are to the real thing. I am considering buying a Liquid Mix and its variety of flavors is very appealing - something like Duende or the Neveaxna from UAD offer a more limited palate of sounds, and they cost double the price! But does Liquid Mix keep up with its more expensive bretheren? If I pay double the price of a Liquid Mix on a Duende, will the software I acquire be twice as good? If not, well hell, I'll buy the Liquid Mix . . . doesn't even have emulations of the same SSL gear that the Duende software is based on?

What to do? How good are the Liquid Mix emulations? First, how close are they to the original? And second, neverminding of they sound like the original, how do they sound? Do they sound analog? I wish I knew more about the convolution method employed by Focusrite to render these emulations.

P.Cobra
P.Cobra

[dj_who]

wow, thanks for bringing this up from the dead.

i love my LM. but i don't have any of the hardware to compare it to. the comps seem to color the sound alot. sometimes its great, sometimes i want a more transparent comp. the comps all seem to kind of sound the same IMHO. the eq's are nice but sometimes the highs can get a little harsh imho. but i'm still happy with them.

but the extra DSP power is what i really love. i used to get bogged down and not have anymore prossesing power. now i have as much as i need. (along with my 2 UAD cards)

i think you'll be happy with liquidmix... BUT if i had the money for duende....i would of gotten that instead.

[dj_who]

oh and to answer the original question.

my favorite comp is still the millenia stt tube emulation. i'm sure it doesn't sound like the real thing but it is smooth and most "transparent" compared to the other emulations. imho.

[JayT]

My favourite Emulations of my LM are:
- Manley Stereo Variable MU (Comp)
- Tube Tech LCA2B (Comp)
- Distressor (Comp)
- Telextronics LA-2A (Comp)

- Manley Massive Passive (EQ)
- Avalon 2055 (EQ)

I don't care too if they are close to the original.
You can definitly hear the different flavours of the emu's.

Some of the Emu's lack in smoothness. E.g. the Fairchild EQ or the
LN 1176. They have character and are useable, but do some negative things to the signal, IMO.

It's not high-end and the originals harware units are for sure better, but a great tool. I love mine.

On my homepage i have a comparison of the different valve comp emus on a drumloop: JayT - own songs, mp3, sf2, samples, loops, pics

[Siem]

Originally Posted by Pronecobra

I would actually really like to know how close people think the Liquid Mix emulations are to the real thing. I am considering buying a Liquid Mix and its variety of flavors is very appealing - something like Duende or the Neveaxna from UAD offer a more limited palate of sounds, and they cost double the price! But does Liquid Mix keep up with its more expensive bretheren? If I pay double the price of a Liquid Mix on a Duende, will the software I acquire be twice as good? If not, well hell, I'll buy the Liquid Mix . . . doesn't even have emulations of the same SSL gear that the Duende software is based on?

What to do? How good are the Liquid Mix emulations? First, how close are they to the original? And second, neverminding of they sound like the original, how do they sound? Do they sound analog? I wish I knew more about the convolution method employed by Focusrite to render these emulations.

P.Cobra
P.Cobra

I've compared the liquid mix version of the API 550a/b to the Waves API series when I demoed it, both are very similar, the Waves had slightly more low end with the same settings. It sounded like Waves also made an impulse based emulation of this unit and added some of the maxbass algorhythm. Both units sounded the same on tracks with no low-end like hihats. People couln't hear the difference (on great monitors and DA). But I don't have a real API lunchbox, so I can't compare it to the real thing.

I tried some other things on the liquid mix, I made a nice preset for the Liquid Mix API 550b, then I looked at the curve and carefully tweaked the Liquid Mix Massive Passive emulation untill it had (almost) exactly the same curve - they both sounded identical. I found that a little bit suspecious, it could have been my tired hearing, but you can check it for yourself.

Last week I bought a real Massive Passive, I quickly compared it to the Liquid Mix as soon as I had it connected. It didn't sound the same with the same settings on both, not close. After mixing a couple of days with the Massive Passive and reading the manual I think it has to do with the unconventional way this EQ works, however it might be possible to get some similar results when using single bands, the highpass (which are pretty cool) or lowpass filters. I might make some samples soon.

[gregohb]

I bought a Liquidmix, but had some trouble with it on my G5 dual 1.8 (in fact I never got it to work on my G5), and their tech support was hit and miss - sometimes weeks for a response. It also has big time latency. I ended up selling it. However, this was before version 2 of the software came out.

I did get it to work on my imac (after a number of lockups and hassle), and it was sorta nice, but I can't really imagine serious music pros using it - because many of the controls have only a couple of settings. For example, on hardware you turn a knob from 0 to 10, and there are an infinite number of places to stop. But on the LM, there might be only three settings : 2, 6, and 8 - with nothing in between.

Also, you have make a chart for yourself for what their "code names" mean. There are 60+ devices but they are all referred to by code names. So if you want API, or Manley or Distressor, you need to know how they are called on the LM.

Of course it also takes up a dedicated Firewire port which were becoming scarce. So I never got the point of doing a serious shootout with it. I ebayed it, and took a little loss on it.

[3rdpath]

anyone here running their LM on a mac pro quad 2.66?

there's a gang of us ( digital performer users) that are having major cpu spike issues when inserting an LM plug. reset the hardware driver and all's well.

just wondering if it's happening to anyone else...

thx!

ps.

here's an excel sheet of the real processor names courtesy of a fellow digital performer user: http://homepage.mac.com/shoosh/.Publ...efinitions.xls