I tried it.
Maybe it's all the words used (wow, voodoo, magic etc...) and the eulogistic analogies but I am bit underwhelmed.
Sounds good for sure. But nothing crazy IMHO (don't kill me). Or nothing I can't really reach ITB quality wise IMHO.
Also I tried to really push the input (with the autogain on) to get something from the tubes (the digital tubes). I didn't felt anything special again.
Sometimes on tube gear, pushing the input is marvelous when done carefully, I do this everyday :
- On the Culture Vulture Phoenix : Done well it can imparts some "natural" tube limiting. Which is very cool.
- On the Fairchild 670, on some source you may like what it does (but the circuit is far more complex so maybe it's different).
- On the Pendulum CS-8 it can be wonderful or really bad depending on the source (I personally prefer not pushing too much into it or making it "limit" or clip).
etc...
The effect induced is a good or a bad thing (taste dependent) but I truly hear the tubes or the parts of the circuit over-working and doing something to the sound.
Here I didn't.
But maybe it's part of this unit ?
I have to admit that I have saw those RCA gear but never took the time to use them in session.
Also, El Rey crashing my Pro Tools. The session became impossible to re-open when closed. I had to hold shift to deactivate all plugin. And when reactivating El Rey it crashed.
But it happened the same kind of thing with Crimson when I tried it.
And it couldn't be a clash with other plugins on the session since I only used El Rey.
Too bad because the CPU usage on this one looked way better and the knobs are responding very smoothly.
It looked like a superb piece of work.
P.S. : Please don't say I am a troll or I don't have ears or I don't have a life because I have a different opinions from everybody here. I read the whole thread and I didn't really liked how the users with different opinions were treated. Who care if the guy just created an account to give his opinion. It doesn't prove it's a competitor or a troll, it can be someone that read gearslutz for quite a while but never write anything and finally decided to do regarding the whole praise on with thread contradicting his guts feeling after testing the plugin. Maybe you had bad experience but it doesn't prove anything. You never know, so please let's stay respectful or at least objective.
