Just how good is analog emulation?

[tharemedy]

Just thinking out loud. I have never really mixed on analog gear aside from a couple live shows. I have used emu plugs that are great at smoothing out the digital metallic sound that I hate. So I do know digital/alalog difference. But I was wondering, with all these plugins that emulate analog gear how accurate is it. For example would low budget analog gear sound better then a plugin emulating analog gear?

[psycho_monkey]

depends on what you're tallking about.

FWIW I don't know any "metallic sounding digital". "clean" yes. "metallic sounding"? that's just bad programming/capture.

[pasarski]

There's a difference. Plugins can do great things but there are some difficulties in some emulations.

Compressor emulations are really good nowadays, but EQ and oscillators are more difficult to program. Some even say it's impossible to reproduce an analog oscillator in digital domain correctly.

Saturation also seems to be hard to emulate. I like the sound of some saturator plugins, but haven't come a cross a one that sounded like a real analog saturation.

[che_guitarra]

I've never had a problem with ITB, but then again I don't have access to walls of outboard... so you learn to get results or go hungry!

I agree with Pasarski - compression has come a long way since the early noughties - but EQ is yet to catch up. It's 9/10ths there, but generally the mojo is just a little off (not much though - I give it 2 or 3 years more R&D). But half the battle is going through all the options to find the best fitting tools for yourself.


IMO, cheap outboard can't hold a candle to more costly 'industry standard' outboard options - I'd sooner buy a Waves plugin bundle emulating something nice, than buy something that never sounded good to begin with.

[Surbitone]

For EQ, Nebula is the way for truly analogue sounding ITB EQ (Doc Fear, API 5500 & Neuman MPE10 sound amazing) . Great compressors are fairly abundant in plug form, with T-Racks, PSP, Waves and even Bootsy making some pretty blindin' plugs.

[mdoelger]

The technology behind Nebula will definatly be the future for ITB processing.

However, it still has a very long way to go in terms of usability.

My respect for the developers of Nebula for trying to do everything by themselves. But I think if they outsourced the programming and implementation, they'd get results much faster and could make literally millions within the next year.

[Mr.HOLMES]

NEBULA:... here again ...but NO AU VERSION WHY WHY WHY????

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by pasarski

EQ and oscillators are more difficult to program. Some even say it's impossible to reproduce an analog oscillator in digital domain correctly.

"Some even say" they saw bigfoot too.

Seriously, EQ and oscillators are the simplest programs to write digitally. Especially oscillators. If nothing else, one can store a wavetable of the desired waveform, and send that out on demand.

I also second psycho_monkey that digital is not metallic sounding. Digital recording gives a highly accurate reproduction of whatever comes into your mic or DI feed. It's almost 2010 for gosh sakes - I can't believe we're still having to explain this stuff.

--Ethan

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by tharemedy

Just thinking out loud. I have never really mixed on analog gear aside from a couple live shows. I have used emu plugs that are great at smoothing out the digital metallic sound that I hate. So I do know digital/alalog difference. But I was wondering, with all these plugins that emulate analog gear how accurate is it. For example would low budget analog gear sound better then a plugin emulating analog gear?

The Problem with gear is that you cant make generalities for it.
Sometimes I prefer Software sometimes Hardware some people only work with- Hardware but this is an ****ing expensive fun.

The better question would be how can you get your ITB sound better.
We had several good threads about this by user Skip very nice.

One advise from my site here if I hear that someone claims "digital metallic sound" in the year 2010 where plug ins and DAWS have resolution till you die .....
If you sound is sounding metallic may it is because you have extremes on the low and high end in your mixes?

Today plug ins are way over the point that we can get great results with them.
Nearly everything you hear in the Cinema is done on an Icon with PT and Plug Ins.
Especially in the last 6 months we had so great releases that it gets hard to buy hardware in times of an unsure financial future.

A few come to my mind:

PSP Oldtimer
Softube FET and CL1B
Softube Passive EQs
Nebula.....
Waves JJP
Waves SSL
UAD 250 EMT
Lexicon Native Reverb.

If you cant get it with those plugs I think you cant get it with hardware too.
My personal biggest mistake for a cold sound was to 100% too much High End in the mixes.

[pasarski]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Seriously, EQ and oscillators are the simplest programs to write digitally. Especially oscillators.

--Ethan

You're most likely right. What people mean by saying they are hard to program must have something/everything to do with harmonic distortion, noise and non-linearity in analog crircuits, wich are probably harder to program than the basic oscillator or eq?

I think it's good to discus these matters even though they have been covered earlier, because the techniques involved are evolving pretty fast and couple of years old threads are not up to date.

[tampa]

Just how good is analog emulation?

That really depends on who you ask in my experience. I'm sure there is some good some bad just like everything else.

I just picked up a Focurrite LC the other day for not alot of money, this will be my first experience with emulation. I will let you know how that works out. lol

[KRStudio]

I have not heard any EQ emulation that comes close to the upper freq sweetness that my Neumann PE or W495's have. I have not heard anything close to a Pultec or the 20k of Lang tube EQ. Several local guys swore how close their fave EQ was but when we did side buy side comparisons they quickly realized they were wrong. Digital EQ's are very effective, very efficient, and able to use your Pultec (or other) at mixdown more than once, but they are not the same, not close. Nebula is closer than others, but still a ways to go.

[Everlast]

The biggest truth I realized, as someone put it greatly in "Why digital mixes don't sound as analog..." mega-tread, is analog gain is what you pay for - it's limited, has character and costs you the money, while on the digital side that rule doesn't apply - unlimited gain with zero character and almost costless

Big issue is also how analog gear is designed - almost all settings work(think of UBK's Fatso - it can be a lot of compression, but it's never a bad compression), while in digital you have like 100000 settings and few work. Also, that analog gear character became the part of the music itself over time...digital still has a lot of miles to travel to overtake that

What could help in analog modeled plugs is to take that kind of approach instead of making it being able to do the laundry, massage your back and making you a cup of coffee while it mixes your tracks...DSP guys - please make it sound good on all settings, how hard can that be?

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by Everlast

DSP guys - please make it sound good on all settings, how hard can that be?

Great news analog gear sounds good in every setting.
So my grandpa can mix a record now because it sounds good no matter how you set the compressor, EQ or Reverb up... it always sounds good...

WOW I have to buy now:

3x1176 2xLA2A and 1x Lexi 480L not to forget an SSL or Neve Console because it will sound good just switching on all this gear and for sure the best converters money can buy for running 48 channels.....

No Problem I have 300 K in my bed room...don`t worry.

GOOD GOD HELP ME!!!

[Everlast]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

No Problem I have 300 K in my bed room...don`t worry.

GOOD GOD HELP ME!!!

I suppose this meant to sound sarcastic...not sure for which purpose

In good old days of audio engineering bedrooms were the places you go to sleep after the studio work...I guess things have changed

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by everlast

i suppose this meant to sound sarcastic...not sure for which purpose

in good old days of audio engineering bedrooms were the places you go to sleep after the studio work...i guess things have changed

lay down sally ..... resting in my life!!!

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by lunale

The technology behind Nebula will definatly be the future for ITB processing.

However, it still has a very long way to go in terms of usability.

My respect for the developers of Nebula for trying to do everything by themselves. But I think if they outsourced the programming and implementation, they'd get results much faster and could make literally millions within the next year.

I doubt too many companies in the plugin world make millions a year. Waves of course would, but they also probably have vastly more personnel overhead than most plugin companies as well, and sell mostly to the pro market. If you sell a plug for $100, it takes 20K of those just to gross the smallest amount possible to counts as millions, much less actually clear some millions. Selling 20K units of a plug a year is probably pretty dang hard.

Not to say that they couldn't do OK. But if you look at what it would cost to actually outsource development, and/or hire on 10 people to get a real company going, you realize that a a couple million dollars isn't really that much. And of course a disturbing number of people will just rip it off, and you have to keep that revenue stream growing over time.

If they were successful in building up a large ecosystem around them of their own products and third party products, and they do have the kind of technology that could work that way, they might be able to pull something substantial off. But I think that they'd probably have trouble selling that story to venture capitalists, which is the only way they could front the money probably required to really 'go pro' in a substantial way.

[mdoelger]

Ok, I tend to overstate things

But imagine, they'd put out one plugin, which just adds SSL vibe. If it looks pro and is easy to use, and REALLY does the console emulation thing. I bet quite a lot of folks around here would buy it.

Next do the same with Neve, Harrison, and put out the Nebula Console Emulation bundle for 300 bucks.

Do all this with tapes, and EQs. Each with its own plugin design.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by pasarski

You're most likely right. What people mean by saying they are hard to program must have something/everything to do with harmonic distortion, noise and non-linearity in analog crircuits, wich are probably harder to program than the basic oscillator or eq?

I can't see why, but I know a lot of people believe that! Again, one could always sample an oscillator from a MiniMoog or whatever, and play that back perfectly. But basic oscillator wave shapes are pretty simple to program.

--Ethan

[Fhl]

I still don't get this idiotic topic. Analog doesn't sound better than digital, it simply colors more or has its own signature. It sounds different. So yes, you might get a warmer sound using ONE analog outboard gear, however, there's no problem getting the same sound with several plugins.

Go ahead, bash what I'm saying, but almost every time this topic arises people are talking about "running your DAW signal through a tape recorder/analog gear for that sound".

Analog gear might be better than digital for getting ONE sound, but definitely not for all sounds. Stop being biased, taking everything you hear on this forum for good fish. It all depends on what you're looking for.

There are tons of tube and solid state saturators plugins out there, which gives you the same result. If you want the same result as a specific outboard gear unit and can't achieve the sound with plugins, then you might be better off getting it. Saving time and all.

Innovative technology is everywhere now days.
Alas, the audio/music industry is the only industry that actually goes backwards.

[robot gigante]

Originally Posted by tharemedy

Just thinking out loud. I have never really mixed on analog gear aside from a couple live shows. I have used emu plugs that are great at smoothing out the digital metallic sound that I hate. So I do know digital/alalog difference. But I was wondering, with all these plugins that emulate analog gear how accurate is it. For example would low budget analog gear sound better then a plugin emulating analog gear?

Well, as you can see from the responses it's a complex topic.

I think there is definitely a place in the hybrid world for low budget analog gear, so long as you get the right stuff.

That said, you probably don't want to ditch your all plugins for low budget analog gear and try it that way either!

I don't think that digital processing emulates certain aspects of analog very well at all. That doesn't make it useless, that doesn't mean it all sounds bad.

As far as I am concerned, I like to rely on plugins for certain tasks, expensive analog hardware for other tasks, and cheaper hardware for still other tasks. Not just analog hardware, but digital hardware too. I still haven't heard a plugin do anything exactly like 'symphonic' or 'pitch change C' on an SPX90, so having a couple around is still worth it for me.

I think people gotta quit getting so hung up on the analog vs. digital thing and just look for the best tool for the job. Sometimes the best tool for the job could be a POS analog compressor- some cheap boxes like the Shure Level-LOC are now legendary because of what's been done with them. Sometimes it could be a plugin. Sometimes it is going to be an expensive piece of equipment.

IOW, don't expect the emulations to be perfect- they aren't. But who cares? Do the best with what you've got.

[u b k]

So yes, you might get a warmer sound using ONE analog outboard gear

Pass.

however, there's no problem getting the same sound with several plugins.

Fail.

Y'all can be as relativistic and qualifying and nuanced as you wish, but for my money 100% of the time every time the best analog sounds light years better than the best digital.

The tone is better, it has better depth, it is more musical. It compresses better, it eq's better, it mixes better, it blends better, it behaves better.

I don't know what kind of sound you're going for that digital is better for, but if you've got it then more power to you. I'm over it, I have zero energy left for making do with what I perceive to be a sonically inferior platform. Playback, reproduction, sure. Processing, mixing, treating, no.

It's hard for people to hear, but that doesn't make it less true. It just isn't there, and while it continually gets 'less bad', it still utterly lacks the ability to generate or create 'good'. It has no additive qualities of euphony whatsoever. None.

You can stack up a lot of good will on the front end, and then you can minimize the damage with dsp inside a computer, but it won't ever come out the back end of a daw sounding 'better', only different.

Things routinely come out the back end of analog compressors, eq's, and mixing busses sounding better, sometimes much much better.

This is how it is.

Let the beatings commence.


Gregory Scott - ubk

[Dean Roddey]

I dunno. I think that if you haven't poked around and found some of the more interesting plugs, often done by fairly small and obscure companies, then you might get a less than fair impression. I think that even when companies like Waves do analog emulations, they can't help but want to make it sound more pristine than real hardware does. But there are companies out there that don't do that. And some of them are quite inexpensive.

Here's my latest tune:

http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Tmp...Life-Final.mp3

It's all ITB. Mostly with a couple of $45 plugs (VibeEQ and Rocket comp) from Stillwell, which are very much not afraid of being non-pristine sounding. And of course they are fully 64 bit based as is my SONAR setup and any plugs I use, so the resolution is all but analog basically because the whole mix bus is 64 bit floating point from start to end.

I do have outboard gear. And I planned to use it. But, it wasn't really sounding better than what I'd already achieved with the plugs, so ultimately I just stuck with the ITB mix. It sounds plenty warm and a lot of depth and character. I'm not the greatest mixer in the world by far, so you have to consider that if anything I was holding it back from its ultimate potential. But I don't think that the plugs I used were holding me back particularly.

[Surbitone]

Originally Posted by KRStudio

I have not heard any EQ emulation that comes close to the upper freq sweetness that my Neumann PE or W495's have. I have not heard anything close to a Pultec or the 20k of Lang tube EQ. Several local guys swore how close their fave EQ was but when we did side buy side comparisons they quickly realized they were wrong. Digital EQ's are very effective, very efficient, and able to use your Pultec (or other) at mixdown more than once, but they are not the same, not close. Nebula is closer than others, but still a ways to go.

I agree, but the nebula libraries from Alex B & Analogue in the box sound like analogue to me. The 5500 from Alex B holds it own against most hardware EQ's I can think of as does the DW Fearne Doc Fear EQ. You have to use the programs in the Nebula Reverb module for the full quality (although the processing power required increases exponentially), as the normal version doesn't quite cut it - as you mentioned. Infact, theres a shootout between the 5500 Nebula program and the Massive Passive, Massenburg and a few others. Sounded as good as all of them and didn't seem an inch out of it's depth. Still not the same as physically twiddling knobs that click into place in complete real time - thats the major piece that's missing for me in the whole experience. But most algorithmic plugs don't really sound analogue to me, but quite a few are close.

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

Here's my latest tune:

http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Tmp...Life-Final.mp3

It's all ITB. Mostly with a couple of $45 plugs (VibeEQ and Rocket comp) from Stillwell, which are very much not afraid of being non-pristine sounding. And of course they are fully 64 bit based as is my SONAR setup and any plugs I use, so the resolution is all but analog basically because the whole mix bus is 64 bit floating point from start to end.
.

Hey Dean,

That mix sounds great! Good work. I don't know (or care) if your use of plugins was holding the mix back because it's just a nice song and arrangement with good tones. Everything fits together fairly well. It sounds like well excecuted digital.

Brad

[Rednose]

In my studio i can directly compare the UAD 160 VCA and LA2a to the real hardware.
Neither are really that close IMO.
The hardware 160VU is smother and reacts totally differently than the emulation.
The plug in LA2a doesn't have the tube saturation that the hardware does.
I'm not sure if that's intentional or not?

Anyhow, for the price of one hardware DBX 160vu, you can get allot of virtual instances, so it evens out.
Just don't expect the emulation to act like the real deal.

The emulations are getting better, so its just a matter of time I guess.

To me virtual compressors are good on vox and drum buss.
Thats about it. They don't do much for kick or bass in my book.

I use hardware comps and eqs going in and add a touch of virtual when mixing.
Seems to do the trick for me.

[dbbubba]

Other than a few select pieces of emulation almost ALL plug-ins that are "re-creations" are purely based on marketing.
Emulations mostly fill the need for quality tools that 99% of people couldn't afford or don't want to invest the money into.

If there is anything "good" about most of them it is that it allows a bunch of guys who would ever have the money to buy or even the ability to FIND the actual analog pieces the emulations are supposed to emulate.

Almost to a piece the emulations of classic pieces of gear get created once the rights to that brand, name or concept become free.
Either that or a manufacturer of a popular piece of gear decides that they could make money off of a plug-in version of one of their own products.

There are many great analog devices that you don't see an emulation of because the concept or product name is owned by someone else.

[Mr.HOLMES]

Its like Bob Katz wrote it many times here on the board.
It really is just a matter of time and dropping DSP costs.

We already have now great tools which emulate very very close to HW.

Softube FET
PSP Oldtimer
CLA Compressor Bundle
The Waves SSL ( Had the chance to compare myself fantastic)
What about the great EMI packs done by the guys of softube.
Reverb is no longer a real problem too.

For me the CLA compressors and the Softube ones sound so dam good that UAD is with his platform in urgent need to create MKII Versions of the 1176 and LA2 and 3A...

If this is not coming in 2010 I swear I will jump of the DSP card game.
The Softube FET opened my ears...it reacts much more like hardware and I guess two more years we are there that we cant tell a difference anymore. Its sometimes hard to tell a difference today...but this is to me signal depending.

Happy new year I am going to party now....

[work2do]

Originally Posted by dbbubba

Other than a few select pieces of emulation almost ALL plug-ins that are "re-creations" are purely based on marketing.
Emulations mostly fill the need for quality tools that 99% of people couldn't afford or don't want to invest the money into.

If there is anything "good" about most of them it is that it allows a bunch of guys who would ever have the money to buy or even the ability to FIND the actual analog pieces the emulations are supposed to emulate.

That's not necessarily true. Myself and many others moved ITB from larger console, all outboard setups for workflow and other reasons- not because we couldn't afford analog hardware. Between tv, post, songs, etc. the instant recall is priceless and the tools are very good nowadays. Folks dont buy $65,000 Icon controllers because they cant afford analog hardware.

[RCM - Ronan]

Lots of analog emulations are "good". Its "great" where we start to have the problem.