Thanks for the unbiased review. I have almost every hornet plugin. Great stuff. I bought this on sale for a few bucks. Sleek will improve over time with updates .. Get it when it's on sale
Their stuff is so affordable, I don't feel great about knocking it, but it was disappointing. Gotta call it like it is! Glad you enjoyed the review, cheers.
Thanks for putting Sleek to the test. I hoped it would perform better. I would happily accept some latency for better sound. Could you test TDR Arbiter next? Its also intended for de-resonating signals and it has a generous trial version
OMG, thanks for reminding me that TDR put out Arbiter! I meant to visit all their new plugins, but I've been busy with a big backlog of reviews. Downloading TDR Arbiter now, and I'll work on a review! Thanks so much for the suggestions-cheers!
Thanks! Sadly already bought this, but at least I only paid a couple bucks on sale. Hopefully they'll take your criticisms to heart and introduce a higher-latency mode that avoids these severe issues.
You're most welcome! Yeah, to be fair: his plugins are SO cheap, it's not that big of a deal if it doesn't work out. That's a good idea with the higher-latency mode! I'll pass that along; I'm still talking with him about the sound. Thanks so much for watching, cheers!
@@levondarratt787 Hmm. I can't remember what I paid. At any rate, it will always be a fraction of the cost of soothe. But thanks for pointing that out! Cheers.
Nope, it's not just you, haha. I feel like a plugin like this should at least sound gentle at default settings, but this is really aggressive. I find myself looking elsewhere for spectral correction. Cheers!
Hi, just wondering why you're leaving out DSEQ from your lists of Soothe alternatives? Pretty sure you reviewed it positively at some point (goes back and searches, yup there it is) and I compared the two and thought DSEQ more than held its own. In fact, I bought it since it was cheaper, seemed to be more flexible and they both sounded as good as each other.
Great call! I didn't mention it this time because I was sticking to options that are under $100, in the same ballpark as Sleek and Deres. But you're right: as far as I'm concerned, DSEQ is as good as soothe 2, and even exceeds it in some ways. Very underrated! Cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios just checked latest pricing and DSEQ costs €79 (which I believe is about $85). Apart from the GUI and usability (which is a bit clunky imho) I’d say DSEQ is a bargain because when I auditioned it a couple of years back I didn’t really hear much of a difference between DSEQ and soothe. I’d quite like to compare them again now just to confirm what I thought originally but Soothe trial doesn’t renew. If you still have your DSEQ licence I’d be curious to know if your opinion has changed using them both now.
@@bigstewdio Good call! Since I'm in Canada, DSEQ is about $116.31 CAD, so that psychologically put it over the top for me. but you're right! I'll include it next time. I haven't been using DSEQ as much these days, mostly due to soothe 2 being common in my industry and good for my channel, but I think it's time to revisit DSEQ-cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios I’ll be v interested in what you think. As you say, soothe is the standard but I genuinely felt there wasn’t any reason not to get DSEQ and I’ve been happy with it. But I do often wonder if I should give in and join the crowd.
@@bigstewdio I think you've got it covered with DSEQ. I find soothe is great for gentle processing, but if you have some really fierce resonances, you'll hear artifacts more quickly in soothe 2.
I said this to him on his own demo video of the plugin, that it seems to hollow out the sound for lack of a better term - removing a lot of the presence. Soothe is terrible too when pushed hard though, but this seems too aggressive by default maybe, or just poor quality? I don't know. However I DO know that I like RESO by Mastering the Mix and I find it the easiest to use of all of them.
I totally agree with your appraisal of both Sleek and soothe. Sleek sounds bad right away, but soothe can sound very artifact-y quickly, when pushed hard. I find myself taking a lot of time to "dial in" soothe, whereas Deres just works, right away. I'm still not crazy about that insanely-loud preview function, but...it still rules! Cheers.
@@palebluedotstudios Yeah I wrote a whole thing about DeRes at gearspace when I discovered it and also a trick to make it multiband. It's incredible and really only removes resonances. That's the one for that task. I don't like a lot of the WA Prod stuff but DeRes is in a different class.
@@palebluedotstudios BTW sorry for the delay I am fighting a severe kidney infection and I'm over 50 so with 105F fevers it has taken a lot out of me. I've been very unwell.
@@palebluedotstudios Ok it seems the trigger word is the forum I am referring to. This is unbelievable. I have written 3 answers and all auto deleted, and all I am doing is telling you how to make an audio plugin multiband. They should still be in your comment history but have been deleted from the public. Let me know and if you can't see them, I will email you later tonight after I have my nightly fever reducing stuff.
It's a shame that Hornet's stuff can be hit and miss, quality wise. Like you, I love Hornet VU Meter Mk IV, and a few other Hornet plugins, but between this and the CPU hit that several people are reporting using Sleek, it doesn't seem ready for prime time. I'm interested to shoot out Deres vs the older Hornet plugin DynEq that sorta kinda do a similar thing
I agree: I find Hornet's stuff to be a often quite buggy, but with some real gems. Glad to hear someone else uses VUMeter mk4! I can't live without it now. :) Oh man, my viewers have such great suggestions today! I forgot about DynEQ! I'm going to check that out for sure. Another secret soothe/Gullfoss competitor Hornet has is MasterTool, which I've been meaning to review for awhile now.
@@palebluedotstudios Yeah when Hornet's plugins hit they hit .. I've collected a good proportion of them and have a few go tos - ElliptIQ, MultiFreqs, Thirty One MkII and probably others I can't think of right now Speaking of gain staging, I watched a couple of recent videos by a small channel where he revealed that analog emulation plugins are often calibrated to vastly different to the -18 we've been told is the common wisdom for all of them. I checked mine via their inbuilt VU meter and/or user manual if it specfied it and they indeed varied from -20 to all the way to +4. It was an eye opener for sure!
@@pelennorDSP That's an interesting point, and I can't say I'm surprised! Finding consistency in even VU meter plugins can be difficult. At the end of the day, they're made by humans, and there's nothing forcing them to calibrate to -0dBVU. But still, I like to keep my tracks around there; it's just a great guideline, gives me plenty of headroom, and ensures I hit my interface's A-D converter at the right level (usually around -18dB in most interfaces)! And MultiFreqs is a good one! Very useful. ;)
The thing that gets me about manual VU meter plugins .. why is mvmeter2 the only one that has a "maximum" readout that persists til you clear it? Which is the most useful thing if you're using it to subsequently gain trim
@@pelennorDSP Hmmm. I haven't used mvmeter2 in quite some time, I'll check it out. You're saying that you like the persistent "maximum" readout, correct?
@@palebluedotstudios I don't know, haven't tried Sleek yet but i was curious. That's why i was looking at yt reviews. I can imagine if you limit the frequency range to where you need it, processing is more focused.
@@disruption_uk It's on the list! Next up, I'm doing a quick review of Neutron 4 Elements, then I have a long-form video coming out where I break down my favourite classic TV theme song. And then I think I'll move on.to things like HarmoniQ! It does cover enharmonics, which is something I discuss a lot.
@@palebluedotstudios nice 👌 will keep an eye out for those! Yeah been watching all your shoot out videos which have been really good. TDR Arbiter is another one which would be good to see your opinion on. Hopefully that’s on your list as well? Deres is my go too, but it’s only limitation is it goes down to 1k which is annoying so have to break out Reso or Nova for those jobs.
@@disruption_uk Deres is incredible. I'll tell you: I've been using Deres and oeksound bloom more than soothe2 these days! Haha. Oh, I'm so glad you've been watching the other shootout videos. TDR Arbiter is DEFINITELY a priority; I've tried it out and my first impression was that it was quite subtle, compared to others. But I'm totally overdue for a "vs soothe" shootout. Thanks for the suggestion, that moves up the list! Cheers.
Yes, I really love the plugins he gets right, but some feel a little...unfinished. But I do love the company, and my god, the prices are great, so it's hard to object. Cheers!
So basically the dev told you its not broken its just user error, because YOU don't know how the plugin works? Thats not cool.. Im personally not familiar with this company but thats a red flag even a colorblind person could see. Maybe he can just rebrand it as a "Spectral Flanger" or something. lol.
Haha. Yeah, I think if he keeps having to explain it to users, instead of them getting great results right away, Sleek will wither on the vine. I'll be curious to see if he introduces a higher-latency mode to fix things. Cheers!
Well nope that's not what I did :) I simply tried to explain the logic behind the plugin, I haven't had the chance to hear that flanging sound and if you look at the gain reduction reported by sleek it's peaking at -12dBs (which I think its a lot I rarely reduce more than 9dBs) Also as you can see by the video Sleek is releasing much faster than Soothe, in the email I also suggested to go over 2 seconds release time and increase the number of available filters. Of course when you design something you have to make tradeoffs and we always decide to keep latency to zero or under 10 milliseconds if possible. Or maybe there is something weird going on with Cuabse since if you look at my own video you cannot hear that phasing: ua-cam.com/video/psGDlETVscE/v-deo.html
@@HoRNetWeb Well, It’s really cool of you to come discuss it with us! So I’ll take back the “not cool” comment. 😎. So anyway, are you saying you can’t hear it in the video? Because I can hear it. It’s definitely more pronounced in the delta but PBD did a very thorough evaluation of the plugin and there definitely seems to be some issues. Now, it’s also totally possible it’s a Cubase thing like you said. But I believe some others reported having issues. I’m half tempted to just buy it so can test myself! 😂.
@@davidasher22 nono wait I can clearly hear it in the video :) I was saying that If you listen to my video demo it's not there because I'm using release time > 2000 ms if you use short release time you get phasing. Also removing 12dbs does not help :)
they are right - this dude os not a pro mixing engineer - he cant hear spectral phasing artifacts - becasue that is not a thing..."spectral phasing artifacts" google it - that shows me he has no clue or ears . Let actual mixing engineers review these plugins
Thanks for the unbiased review. I have almost every hornet plugin. Great stuff. I bought this on sale for a few bucks. Sleek will improve over time with updates .. Get it when it's on sale
Their stuff is so affordable, I don't feel great about knocking it, but it was disappointing. Gotta call it like it is! Glad you enjoyed the review, cheers.
Thanks for putting Sleek to the test. I hoped it would perform better. I would happily accept some latency for better sound.
Could you test TDR Arbiter next? Its also intended for de-resonating signals and it has a generous trial version
OMG, thanks for reminding me that TDR put out Arbiter! I meant to visit all their new plugins, but I've been busy with a big backlog of reviews. Downloading TDR Arbiter now, and I'll work on a review! Thanks so much for the suggestions-cheers!
Thanks! Sadly already bought this, but at least I only paid a couple bucks on sale. Hopefully they'll take your criticisms to heart and introduce a higher-latency mode that avoids these severe issues.
You're most welcome! Yeah, to be fair: his plugins are SO cheap, it's not that big of a deal if it doesn't work out. That's a good idea with the higher-latency mode! I'll pass that along; I'm still talking with him about the sound. Thanks so much for watching, cheers!
its not a coupel of bucks..you paid 9.99 on sale.
@@levondarratt787 Hmm. I can't remember what I paid. At any rate, it will always be a fraction of the cost of soothe. But thanks for pointing that out! Cheers.
@@levondarratt787 I paid 3.90 Euro with one of Hornet's regular 80+% off coupons.
@@palebluedotstudios thank you for discussing your feedback to Saverio, I am sure that will be very helpful for it's improvement and for us users.
Thanks for the review! I thought I was at fault for not being able to get a decent result with Sleek.
Nope, it's not just you, haha. I feel like a plugin like this should at least sound gentle at default settings, but this is really aggressive. I find myself looking elsewhere for spectral correction. Cheers!
Really like your reviews
Cheers! Thanks so much! I'm trying to stick to at least one-a-week, so stay tuned!
Hi, just wondering why you're leaving out DSEQ from your lists of Soothe alternatives? Pretty sure you reviewed it positively at some point (goes back and searches, yup there it is) and I compared the two and thought DSEQ more than held its own. In fact, I bought it since it was cheaper, seemed to be more flexible and they both sounded as good as each other.
Great call! I didn't mention it this time because I was sticking to options that are under $100, in the same ballpark as Sleek and Deres. But you're right: as far as I'm concerned, DSEQ is as good as soothe 2, and even exceeds it in some ways. Very underrated! Cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios just checked latest pricing and DSEQ costs €79 (which I believe is about $85). Apart from the GUI and usability (which is a bit clunky imho) I’d say DSEQ is a bargain because when I auditioned it a couple of years back I didn’t really hear much of a difference between DSEQ and soothe. I’d quite like to compare them again now just to confirm what I thought originally but Soothe trial doesn’t renew.
If you still have your DSEQ licence I’d be curious to know if your opinion has changed using them both now.
@@bigstewdio Good call! Since I'm in Canada, DSEQ is about $116.31 CAD, so that psychologically put it over the top for me. but you're right! I'll include it next time. I haven't been using DSEQ as much these days, mostly due to soothe 2 being common in my industry and good for my channel, but I think it's time to revisit DSEQ-cheers!
@@palebluedotstudios I’ll be v interested in what you think. As you say, soothe is the standard but I genuinely felt there wasn’t any reason not to get DSEQ and I’ve been happy with it. But I do often wonder if I should give in and join the crowd.
@@bigstewdio I think you've got it covered with DSEQ. I find soothe is great for gentle processing, but if you have some really fierce resonances, you'll hear artifacts more quickly in soothe 2.
I said this to him on his own demo video of the plugin, that it seems to hollow out the sound for lack of a better term - removing a lot of the presence. Soothe is terrible too when pushed hard though, but this seems too aggressive by default maybe, or just poor quality? I don't know. However I DO know that I like RESO by Mastering the Mix and I find it the easiest to use of all of them.
I totally agree with your appraisal of both Sleek and soothe. Sleek sounds bad right away, but soothe can sound very artifact-y quickly, when pushed hard. I find myself taking a lot of time to "dial in" soothe, whereas Deres just works, right away. I'm still not crazy about that insanely-loud preview function, but...it still rules! Cheers.
@@palebluedotstudios Yeah I wrote a whole thing about DeRes at gearspace when I discovered it and also a trick to make it multiband. It's incredible and really only removes resonances. That's the one for that task. I don't like a lot of the WA Prod stuff but DeRes is in a different class.
@@teddym2808 A trick to make multiband? Tell me more....can you point me to the thread? Or email me at info@palebluedot.ca
@@palebluedotstudios BTW sorry for the delay I am fighting a severe kidney infection and I'm over 50 so with 105F fevers it has taken a lot out of me. I've been very unwell.
@@palebluedotstudios Ok it seems the trigger word is the forum I am referring to. This is unbelievable. I have written 3 answers and all auto deleted, and all I am doing is telling you how to make an audio plugin multiband. They should still be in your comment history but have been deleted from the public. Let me know and if you can't see them, I will email you later tonight after I have my nightly fever reducing stuff.
It's a shame that Hornet's stuff can be hit and miss, quality wise. Like you, I love Hornet VU Meter Mk IV, and a few other Hornet plugins, but between this and the CPU hit that several people are reporting using Sleek, it doesn't seem ready for prime time.
I'm interested to shoot out Deres vs the older Hornet plugin DynEq that sorta kinda do a similar thing
I agree: I find Hornet's stuff to be a often quite buggy, but with some real gems. Glad to hear someone else uses VUMeter mk4! I can't live without it now. :)
Oh man, my viewers have such great suggestions today! I forgot about DynEQ! I'm going to check that out for sure. Another secret soothe/Gullfoss competitor Hornet has is MasterTool, which I've been meaning to review for awhile now.
@@palebluedotstudios Yeah when Hornet's plugins hit they hit .. I've collected a good proportion of them and have a few go tos - ElliptIQ, MultiFreqs, Thirty One MkII and probably others I can't think of right now
Speaking of gain staging, I watched a couple of recent videos by a small channel where he revealed that analog emulation plugins are often calibrated to vastly different to the -18 we've been told is the common wisdom for all of them. I checked mine via their inbuilt VU meter and/or user manual if it specfied it and they indeed varied from -20 to all the way to +4. It was an eye opener for sure!
@@pelennorDSP That's an interesting point, and I can't say I'm surprised! Finding consistency in even VU meter plugins can be difficult. At the end of the day, they're made by humans, and there's nothing forcing them to calibrate to -0dBVU. But still, I like to keep my tracks around there; it's just a great guideline, gives me plenty of headroom, and ensures I hit my interface's A-D converter at the right level (usually around -18dB in most interfaces)!
And MultiFreqs is a good one! Very useful. ;)
The thing that gets me about manual VU meter plugins .. why is mvmeter2 the only one that has a "maximum" readout that persists til you clear it? Which is the most useful thing if you're using it to subsequently gain trim
@@pelennorDSP Hmmm. I haven't used mvmeter2 in quite some time, I'll check it out. You're saying that you like the persistent "maximum" readout, correct?
DSEQ3! DSEQ3! It's the 1 for me!
Agreed! Be sure to check my review if you haven’t: ua-cam.com/video/73yXr0Tn-sY/v-deo.htmlsi=PWKZxxIrXoDNKI6P
DSEQ3 God tier!
@@RYANLEWIS-pd7zs It really is! Check out my review here: ua-cam.com/video/73yXr0Tn-sY/v-deo.html
Increase the lower limit of Sleek's processing... Why did you leave it at 50Hz?
It's been awhile since I made the video, but do you think it would've made a difference? I'm hearing artifacts all over the spectrum.
@@palebluedotstudios I don't know, haven't tried Sleek yet but i was curious. That's why i was looking at yt reviews. I can imagine if you limit the frequency range to where you need it, processing is more focused.
What’s your thoughts on Hornet HarmoniQ?
I haven't tried it out yet. Definitely a cool idea!
@@palebluedotstudios Be interesting to see what you think? Next review maybe? 👀
@@disruption_uk It's on the list! Next up, I'm doing a quick review of Neutron 4 Elements, then I have a long-form video coming out where I break down my favourite classic TV theme song. And then I think I'll move on.to things like HarmoniQ! It does cover enharmonics, which is something I discuss a lot.
@@palebluedotstudios nice 👌 will keep an eye out for those! Yeah been watching all your shoot out videos which have been really good. TDR Arbiter is another one which would be good to see your opinion on. Hopefully that’s on your list as well?
Deres is my go too, but it’s only limitation is it goes down to 1k which is annoying so have to break out Reso or Nova for those jobs.
@@disruption_uk Deres is incredible. I'll tell you: I've been using Deres and oeksound bloom more than soothe2 these days! Haha.
Oh, I'm so glad you've been watching the other shootout videos. TDR Arbiter is DEFINITELY a priority; I've tried it out and my first impression was that it was quite subtle, compared to others. But I'm totally overdue for a "vs soothe" shootout. Thanks for the suggestion, that moves up the list! Cheers.
Hornet is great with some tools (i love master tool). But it is not great everywhere.
Yes, I really love the plugins he gets right, but some feel a little...unfinished. But I do love the company, and my god, the prices are great, so it's hard to object. Cheers!
So basically the dev told you its not broken its just user error, because YOU don't know how the plugin works? Thats not cool.. Im personally not familiar with this company but thats a red flag even a colorblind person could see. Maybe he can just rebrand it as a "Spectral Flanger" or something. lol.
Haha. Yeah, I think if he keeps having to explain it to users, instead of them getting great results right away, Sleek will wither on the vine. I'll be curious to see if he introduces a higher-latency mode to fix things. Cheers!
Well nope that's not what I did :) I simply tried to explain the logic behind the plugin, I haven't had the chance to hear that flanging sound and if you look at the gain reduction reported by sleek it's peaking at -12dBs (which I think its a lot I rarely reduce more than 9dBs) Also as you can see by the video Sleek is releasing much faster than Soothe, in the email I also suggested to go over 2 seconds release time and increase the number of available filters. Of course when you design something you have to make tradeoffs and we always decide to keep latency to zero or under 10 milliseconds if possible. Or maybe there is something weird going on with Cuabse since if you look at my own video you cannot hear that phasing: ua-cam.com/video/psGDlETVscE/v-deo.html
@@HoRNetWeb Well, It’s really cool of you to come discuss it with us! So I’ll take back the “not cool” comment. 😎. So anyway, are you saying you can’t hear it in the video? Because I can hear it. It’s definitely more pronounced in the delta but PBD did a very thorough evaluation of the plugin and there definitely seems to be some issues. Now, it’s also totally possible it’s a Cubase thing like you said. But I believe some others reported having issues. I’m half tempted to just buy it so can test myself! 😂.
@@davidasher22 nono wait I can clearly hear it in the video :) I was saying that If you listen to my video demo it's not there because I'm using release time > 2000 ms if you use short release time you get phasing. Also removing 12dbs does not help :)
they are right - this dude os not a pro mixing engineer - he cant hear spectral phasing artifacts - becasue that is not a thing..."spectral phasing artifacts" google it - that shows me he has no clue or ears . Let actual mixing engineers review these plugins