I got the PCI card off ebay when it was either upgrade to their new PCI model or move on. Back then they were shockingly better than everything else. I picked these up a good ten years ago when they were the TDM (only) bundle for Protools for $400. I guarantee you you set down any of these well know mixers and had them just use the plugins in Reaper they would come out with a good mix. Feels good.Īll you guys with your fancy 1176 and Fairchild and ,etc.Im so jealous.I can only imagine all those top hit songs you must have mixed with your fancy plugins.Tell me more about how these great emulation plugins have made you so successful and respected in the audio engineering world. In my opinion, all of those are perfectly usable and it is clear that they can (and do) contribute as critical tools to great mixes, but Tim's libraries came out on top for me with every comparison, with no exceptions.Įveryone has different ears, different expectations and different goals of course, but I for one, am happy to say that my search for my favourite sounding compressors (of the 76 and 100a/LA2A variety) was officially completed some time ago. Now that I have, I can say without any question that these represent the very best sounding and most wonderfully behaving compressors I have ever personally used, which includes many hours of auditioning and comparing Waves, Slate, IK, Acustica's own Acqua and Klanghelm offerings. I mentioned Tim Petherick's Nebula based U76 and Sum 100a compressors on page one of this thread, but I had not yet had the time to honestly and objectively (or subjectively) evaluate them. I have not had the pleasure of trying the UAD plugins, but they seem to get high praise, generally speaking. It sounds not compressed at all but it is actually pretty heavy compressed. I just posted a track in the collaboration forum that uses this on the vocals. Result: ultra smooth vocal compression and my default compression setup for vocals from now on.
Well, being the 'all freeware guy' that I am, I tried setting up something similar with VOS ThrillseekerLA (mentioned before in this topic) and after that DeLaMancha's Sixtyfive, which is a DBX165 emulation of sorts. It was said that this scenario sounds super sweet on vocals. Researching for a good vocal chain, and compressors for that, I came across a suggestion to use a LA2A with very soft settings, basically in 'soft limiter' mode, and using a DBX160 after that with fairly fast settings for smashing any peaks that where not caught by the LA2A. No need to have 'that specific' compressor or emulation, just something that is 'in the realm of'. But I also believe that there are a lot of good compressors and you just need to find a way to use them (Dave Pensado calls it 'the soft spot' ). I do believe that some compressors are better than other ones.