@@kingkyoga9263 I just tried the lil tube and it was an instant catch. Don't know what exactly is going on under the hood but it's wide and fat and...very nice! I have the Abbey Road Saturator and find it very different.
So as Paul Third has checked, with 2 complete free plugins this BB plugin nulls so it just another saturation on the pile... I also paid for this scam. 2x oversampling works but after that the aliasing stays the same. So you are paid by Waves i presume?
I actually tried to have a discussion with Paul about his findings because I didn't have the same experience at all. I feel that his testing could have been a little flawed and perhaps misleading given the choices he made to demonstrate the test (active noise which hides lower-level differences instead of rendered spectrograms to clearly show a true null). Maybe it does and he just didn't show it - I really wish he would have! Also, you can see that the different aliasing settings DO in fact reduce aliasing more above 2X, but it's subtle (look at the very tip of the reflection back). He claims it does absolutely nothing, but this is clearly incorrect (which should make you suspecious). The reduced effectiveness of the oversampling above 2X might be due to a good reconstruction filter design. Also, Oversampling isn't the only approach to reducing aliasing artifacts. There is a lot of published scientific literature on this and its also more CPU efficient (but has it's own issues). He didn't want to discuss this at all with me, so I left it alone. Be careful when you hear people claim things like "it's exactly the same." Despite all the great things Paul tried to convince everyone that they were scammed, he never showed a perfect null. If you want to see what a perfect null looks like, I have a video here that you can watch and learn from: ua-cam.com/video/84Cpek7driI/v-deo.html You can see there is significant evidence here to support my claim. I don't say things like this unless I have all the proof to back it up. DSP is complicated. I make mistakes all the time trying to reverse engineer plugins and many others do too. Always be suspicious of what people say online about plugins and audio and DO YOUR OWN EXPERIMENTS to see if you get similar results as what others claim. That last video I shared has audio files (chirps) and free software recommendations for you to perform all these same analysis. Hope that gives you a bit more perspective. Despite the great theory, Waves doesn't have me on their payroll. The fact that this is not a "sponsored" video should be evidence enough. Trying to scam people for maybe a few bucks isn't worth risking my UA-cam channel and having all these great mixing and mastering resources being pulled down. I'm here to help people make some killer sounding music, not scam them into buying unnecessary plugins or snake oil. Cheers!
Yes, it is very nice, that they have it right now, but have a look at the DDMF Metaplugin64. With this one you can oversample the signal before it goes into any plugin. So you can oversample although the plugin does not support it natively.
I don't need this, especially since I'm a Kush Audio subscriber and they just released an awesome saturator that has some similar qualities. However, I will undoubtedly break down and buy it. I'm a plugin addict and you're enabling me, lol.
Thank you for not using the SM7B like everyone else on the internet. 😃 SM7B is great, but people just jump the bandwagon without thinking too often. 🙂👍🖖
Beta 57 for life 🙂 it's one of the best at rejecting indirect audio at its price point. No need for headphones and can mix live with monitors without fear of any significant mic bleed🤘
Reaper can do oversampling on any plugin .. I guess that's one more reason to stick with reaper But yeah cool plugin to be honest Thank you for the informative video
@@MahmoudNader the delta soloing is great, there should be a rule that every plugin should have delta solo and auto gain compensation as standard features. Probably would put a few devs out of business ;)
@@MahmoudNader I just realized this plugin doesn’t even have an output compensation. I don’t know whether to weep or laugh. Good job Waves! We’ll see how many UA-camrs pitching this plugin actually address that issue.
It is a 40 min video introduce a plugin "seems" not too complicated😒. But it contain so many information and 40 min ear training to mix indie punk rock!😆. Very good stuff here!!
How many saturations plugins do I really need. Acustica Audio and Kush Audio just released new saturation plugins too. And didn’t Waves just win an award for the previous saturation plugin they have.
@@RaytownProductions That's kind of what I was thinking, but I was just curious if Waves does anything new. It kind of feels like a simplified version of Black Box MS and Vertigo VSM-3, as they all have 'even' and 'odd' harmonics knobs.
I think little radiator is a bit noisier/muddy than this - maybe a different "flavor" if you will. I find BB tubes to be more musical than the Blackbox from PA.
Nice Video! But the LinearAnalysis Tab is not giving reliable results when applied on non-linear processors like analog modeling or HW. This should explain the "Concerning Behavior" you found. A better way would be to go with the HarmonicAnalysis tab and then turn on fundamental+sweep (top right). In this case it will perform a sine wave sweep trough out the entire spectrum. hope this helps
Hey wanted to follow up. Saw very similar behavior with the sweep. What I did find is that, like you mentioned, this gives more consistent results than what I showed. Interestingly, this 200 hz dip will change a LOT depending on how hard you drive the signal into the plugin (e.g. adjustments in the sensitivity knob). So much so that the low end is actually lifted without any 200 hz dip. If you want a flat low-end response (or a slight boost!), that is more often achieved with a louder input signal (or increased sensitivity). So it's very important to explore this plugin and pay a LOT of attention to the sensitivity knob.
@@RaytownProductions Well signal analysis is never an easy task. What counts in the end is more the overall sound. Maybe you check out the Saturation plugin CASSIOPEIA by klanghabitat. That would be interesting to see what you´ll find there because i´m the developer. There i´ll perhaps answer less speculative. Just check out the GearSpace Thread under NEW PRODUCT ALERT "Tube Saturation Plugin - Cassiopeia - by klanghabitat" there is a lot of discussion about saturation in general.
I am almost positive the plugin doctor analysis looked like that because the saturation was breaking the test. I could be wrong but I have seen it happen before. SSL Fusion Vintage Drive breaks it too when use the density knob. 🤘🏻
@@RaytownProductions I'm on the beta team for Waves and have been working with the plugin for months. I certainly never noticed anything wacky like that happening but that doesn't mean anything lol. It could be an easy thing to miss especially at high levels of saturation. Did you try it in Bertom? Honestly, I should have done that a long time ago but never thought of it. If I have time tonight I may give it a look and see what it looks like in Bertom.
Saw very similar behavior with the sweep on the harmonics analysis tab which should provide a better frequency response for non-linear plugins. This did give more consistent results than what I showed in the video. Interestingly, this 200 hz dip will change a LOT depending on how hard you drive the signal into the plugin (e.g. adjustments in the sensitivity knob). So much so that the low end is actually lifted without any 200 hz dip. If you want a flat low-end response (or a slight boost!), that is more often achieved with a louder input signal (or increased sensitivity). So it's very important to pay a LOT of attention to the sensitivity knob. Also, it is doing some sort of gain compensation under the hood, but maybe it could have been a bit better. Regardless, fun and great sounding plugin!
@@RaytownProductions Interesting! Thanks for taking the time to run the test. This is really good information to have. About the gain compensation. YES, I know... sigh.... I (we) tried very very hard to keep reporting the gain compensation issues but this was the best it seemed to get. Hey, they gave it a shot which is a lot more than some other companies do. We did get oversampling added tho!!! 😂 From what I understand the issue with the gain comp has a lot to do with perceived loudness (apparently it's a difficult thing to have the plugin be able to detect and compensate for) and the incoming signal. They had to try to find a way that the gain comp would work with a large number of volumes going into the plugin. I did mention a calibration screw of some kind but it didn't make it into the plugin. It was much much worse at first. They didn't have any gain comp at all during the first Beta. It was strange because we were working on this over the summer and then all of a sudden, we just moved on. I had thought they canned the plugin till I saw them give away lil tube. Agreed! It does sound great. Hopefully people give a fair shot because I haven't heard another tube saturation plugin like it.
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer Thats cool that Waves worked alongside the beta testers and that it made an improvement to the release client! After reflecting on this the last few days, I can completely understand how impossibly challenging it would be to make a gain compensation knob that works across everything. It's just not possible. *Sigh* If only we heard audio linearly 😆😆
In Mastering, I think BB Tubes damage your song sound, The Master is more nicer before BB Tubes. By the way, Your Explanation is Great, You describes all the things
There are so many good saturating plugins even free ones like GSatPlus or Softube Saturator. How is this one better than the others? Just another plugin to waste money and forget about it?
I guess you need to try it and see how it compares! This is one that I tried and was impressed with the sound. Usually many are ok, but really fall apart when pushed hard. This one stayed pretty musical to my ears.
You are exactly right - most saturation plugins do offer oversampling and some sort of sidechain functionality. That bass relief knob acts in a little bit different way though. I think it's most obvious when used on a bass guitar. If a sidechain HPF just rolls off the low end, you miss that growl in the harmonic structure for bass guitar that many people really like from a nice tube amp. This seems to preserve it to some degree when saturating it. I think that is what gives this a different flavor than the other saturators that I use in my normal workflow.
Great review, thanks! 🙏🙏 I have some doubts. In what order should it be placed in a vocal chain for a mix? is it better to put it in the first/last place of the chain? Does it replace the analog console emulation that we usually put at the beginning of every track? In the final bus master does it come before or after the glue compressor?
Everything really depends on the song unfortunately. In my experience, I find it most helpful towards the end of the chain for both instruments and mastering. Trust your ears! Hope that helps :)
I bought this and thought it didn’t sound very good on my mixes. So I watched your vid & tried the suggestions in your vid. It totally sucked out the guitar tone of my mix & made the mix very boomy, even with dialing back the bass relief & having both knobs at zero. The Lil Tube is ok, adds some light saturation at low levels which may work for your mix. But for me, this plug-in didn’t help in any way no matter what the settings. The Logic Pro Phat FX plug-in using a light smooth saturation sounds way better for my mix.
I'm a little confused by your comment - I've never bought a subscription from waves. All my licenses are permanent and on an iLok (which I actually really like).
I hope you're happy not using a good 50% of all the plugins out there. People act like it's rare to not have auto-gain. It's not. That 50% might be too low, actually.
This hype is INSANE... decapitator can sound identical like this plugin and MORE!
Excellent review of this…. I just purchased yesterday and you certainly helped me with all of the features. 👍
Cheers! Glad to help :)
Maybe watch Paul Thirds video before buying this. 🤔
Thank you for making me spend more money to fuel my plug-in lust.
😂😂😂
💀💀💀
Lol I know, right
Finally ppl who understand me😭😭🙏🏿
awesome video man!!! really in depth walkthrough
Are there any other saturation plugins that you think might sound better? Drop em' below!👇👇👇
Head Crusher V 2, I would loveee to see it reviewed on your amazing channel
Would you buy this if you had The Abby Road Saturator already?
@@kingkyoga9263 I just tried the lil tube and it was an instant catch. Don't know what exactly is going on under the hood but it's wide and fat and...very nice! I have the Abbey Road Saturator and find it very different.
Tone Projects Kelvin!!!
So as Paul Third has checked, with 2 complete free plugins this BB plugin nulls so it just another saturation on the pile... I also paid for this scam. 2x oversampling works but after that the aliasing stays the same.
So you are paid by Waves i presume?
I actually tried to have a discussion with Paul about his findings because I didn't have the same experience at all. I feel that his testing could have been a little flawed and perhaps misleading given the choices he made to demonstrate the test (active noise which hides lower-level differences instead of rendered spectrograms to clearly show a true null). Maybe it does and he just didn't show it - I really wish he would have! Also, you can see that the different aliasing settings DO in fact reduce aliasing more above 2X, but it's subtle (look at the very tip of the reflection back). He claims it does absolutely nothing, but this is clearly incorrect (which should make you suspecious). The reduced effectiveness of the oversampling above 2X might be due to a good reconstruction filter design. Also, Oversampling isn't the only approach to reducing aliasing artifacts. There is a lot of published scientific literature on this and its also more CPU efficient (but has it's own issues). He didn't want to discuss this at all with me, so I left it alone.
Be careful when you hear people claim things like "it's exactly the same." Despite all the great things Paul tried to convince everyone that they were scammed, he never showed a perfect null. If you want to see what a perfect null looks like, I have a video here that you can watch and learn from: ua-cam.com/video/84Cpek7driI/v-deo.html You can see there is significant evidence here to support my claim. I don't say things like this unless I have all the proof to back it up.
DSP is complicated. I make mistakes all the time trying to reverse engineer plugins and many others do too. Always be suspicious of what people say online about plugins and audio and DO YOUR OWN EXPERIMENTS to see if you get similar results as what others claim. That last video I shared has audio files (chirps) and free software recommendations for you to perform all these same analysis.
Hope that gives you a bit more perspective. Despite the great theory, Waves doesn't have me on their payroll. The fact that this is not a "sponsored" video should be evidence enough. Trying to scam people for maybe a few bucks isn't worth risking my UA-cam channel and having all these great mixing and mastering resources being pulled down. I'm here to help people make some killer sounding music, not scam them into buying unnecessary plugins or snake oil.
Cheers!
Finally oversampling. I haven’t bought a waves plugin in years because of no oversampling. Now I’ll actually take a look at this one
Yes, it is very nice, that they have it right now, but have a look at the DDMF Metaplugin64. With this one you can oversample the signal before it goes into any plugin. So you can oversample although the plugin does not support it natively.
Facts
if it would work...
i was wondering why there is no cpu usage difference 2x to 16x
I’m still watching. But I hope they added over sampling for these new saturation plugs. EDIT: 5:03 question answered and I am a HAPPY camper.
Made me so happy as well haha!
Actually impressive plugin from waves of all places great review it's a must buy tbh
I don't need this, especially since I'm a Kush Audio subscriber and they just released an awesome saturator that has some similar qualities. However, I will undoubtedly break down and buy it. I'm a plugin addict and you're enabling me, lol.
Lol! Resist the urge!!!!!!!
Thank you for not using the SM7B like everyone else on the internet. 😃
SM7B is great, but people just jump the bandwagon without thinking too often. 🙂👍🖖
Beta 57 for life 🙂 it's one of the best at rejecting indirect audio at its price point. No need for headphones and can mix live with monitors without fear of any significant mic bleed🤘
The reverb for the vocal is very good. What kind of reverb you use?
Great video. Thank you!
Reaper can do oversampling on any plugin .. I guess that's one more reason to stick with reaper
But yeah cool plugin to be honest
Thank you for the informative video
That's awesome Reaper can do it! I wasn't aware of that.
@@RaytownProductions Yes haha, Reaper can also Delta Solo any plugin which is fantastic
@@MahmoudNader the delta soloing is great, there should be a rule that every plugin should have delta solo and auto gain compensation as standard features. Probably would put a few devs out of business ;)
@@phadrus I think reaper will be adding an auto gain compensation feature as well .. reaper rules lmao
@@MahmoudNader I just realized this plugin doesn’t even have an output compensation. I don’t know whether to weep or laugh. Good job Waves! We’ll see how many UA-camrs pitching this plugin actually address that issue.
It is a 40 min video introduce a plugin "seems" not too complicated😒.
But it contain so many information and 40 min ear training to mix indie punk rock!😆.
Very good stuff here!!
I thought you were going to say the resizable feature when you started with the aliasing feature haha
How many saturations plugins do I really need. Acustica Audio and Kush Audio just released new saturation plugins too. And didn’t Waves just win an award for the previous saturation plugin they have.
Any reason for this if I already have Saturn, SoundToys, Black Box MS, Vertigo VSM-3, Spectre?
Id like to know this too. Blackbox HG2 MS is the GOAT, if this beats that im buying it.
I feel like you have to be set with all those lol!
@@RaytownProductions That's kind of what I was thinking, but I was just curious if Waves does anything new. It kind of feels like a simplified version of Black Box MS and Vertigo VSM-3, as they all have 'even' and 'odd' harmonics knobs.
Is this like Little radiator or Radiator or plugin alliance Blackbox hg2 ?
I think little radiator is a bit noisier/muddy than this - maybe a different "flavor" if you will. I find BB tubes to be more musical than the Blackbox from PA.
Nice Video!
But the LinearAnalysis Tab is not giving reliable results when applied on non-linear processors like analog modeling or HW. This should explain the "Concerning Behavior" you found.
A better way would be to go with the HarmonicAnalysis tab and then turn on fundamental+sweep (top right). In this case it will perform a sine wave sweep trough out the entire spectrum.
hope this helps
This is a very good point. Appreciate the comment! The sweep would be a more accurate way of doing this. Cheers!
Hey wanted to follow up. Saw very similar behavior with the sweep. What I did find is that, like you mentioned, this gives more consistent results than what I showed. Interestingly, this 200 hz dip will change a LOT depending on how hard you drive the signal into the plugin (e.g. adjustments in the sensitivity knob). So much so that the low end is actually lifted without any 200 hz dip. If you want a flat low-end response (or a slight boost!), that is more often achieved with a louder input signal (or increased sensitivity).
So it's very important to explore this plugin and pay a LOT of attention to the sensitivity knob.
@@RaytownProductions Well signal analysis is never an easy task. What counts in the end is more the overall sound.
Maybe you check out the Saturation plugin CASSIOPEIA by klanghabitat. That would be interesting to see what you´ll find there because i´m the developer. There i´ll perhaps answer less speculative.
Just check out the GearSpace Thread under NEW PRODUCT ALERT "Tube Saturation Plugin - Cassiopeia - by klanghabitat" there is a lot of discussion about saturation in general.
I am almost positive the plugin doctor analysis looked like that because the saturation was breaking the test. I could be wrong but I have seen it happen before. SSL Fusion Vintage Drive breaks it too when use the density knob. 🤘🏻
Another user mentioned this. I'll investigate and provide an update shortly 🙂
@@RaytownProductions I'm on the beta team for Waves and have been working with the plugin for months. I certainly never noticed anything wacky like that happening but that doesn't mean anything lol. It could be an easy thing to miss especially at high levels of saturation. Did you try it in Bertom? Honestly, I should have done that a long time ago but never thought of it. If I have time tonight I may give it a look and see what it looks like in Bertom.
Saw very similar behavior with the sweep on the harmonics analysis tab which should provide a better frequency response for non-linear plugins. This did give more consistent results than what I showed in the video. Interestingly, this 200 hz dip will change a LOT depending on how hard you drive the signal into the plugin (e.g. adjustments in the sensitivity knob). So much so that the low end is actually lifted without any 200 hz dip. If you want a flat low-end response (or a slight boost!), that is more often achieved with a louder input signal (or increased sensitivity).
So it's very important to pay a LOT of attention to the sensitivity knob.
Also, it is doing some sort of gain compensation under the hood, but maybe it could have been a bit better. Regardless, fun and great sounding plugin!
@@RaytownProductions Interesting! Thanks for taking the time to run the test. This is really good information to have.
About the gain compensation. YES, I know... sigh.... I (we) tried very very hard to keep reporting the gain compensation issues but this was the best it seemed to get. Hey, they gave it a shot which is a lot more than some other companies do. We did get oversampling added tho!!! 😂 From what I understand the issue with the gain comp has a lot to do with perceived loudness (apparently it's a difficult thing to have the plugin be able to detect and compensate for) and the incoming signal. They had to try to find a way that the gain comp would work with a large number of volumes going into the plugin. I did mention a calibration screw of some kind but it didn't make it into the plugin. It was much much worse at first. They didn't have any gain comp at all during the first Beta. It was strange because we were working on this over the summer and then all of a sudden, we just moved on. I had thought they canned the plugin till I saw them give away lil tube.
Agreed! It does sound great. Hopefully people give a fair shot because I haven't heard another tube saturation plugin like it.
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer Thats cool that Waves worked alongside the beta testers and that it made an improvement to the release client! After reflecting on this the last few days, I can completely understand how impossibly challenging it would be to make a gain compensation knob that works across everything. It's just not possible. *Sigh* If only we heard audio linearly 😆😆
Can this be used live?
In Mastering, I think BB Tubes damage your song sound, The Master is more nicer before BB Tubes. By the way, Your Explanation is Great, You describes all the things
Is this modeled after Thermionic?
No
where do I insert in the vocal chain?
Would be nice at times you could match peak levels and not always by perceived loudness. You are hitting the plugin way to hard on the master.
Agreed!
@@RaytownProductions Thanks for listening and keep up the great work brother, no ill intensions, hope my feedback can help us all progress.
There are so many good saturating plugins even free ones like GSatPlus or Softube Saturator. How is this one better than the others? Just another plugin to waste money and forget about it?
I guess you need to try it and see how it compares! This is one that I tried and was impressed with the sound. Usually many are ok, but really fall apart when pushed hard. This one stayed pretty musical to my ears.
Having an internal side-chain for the bass and oversampling is already pretty common for saturation plugins isn’t it?
You are exactly right - most saturation plugins do offer oversampling and some sort of sidechain functionality. That bass relief knob acts in a little bit different way though. I think it's most obvious when used on a bass guitar. If a sidechain HPF just rolls off the low end, you miss that growl in the harmonic structure for bass guitar that many people really like from a nice tube amp. This seems to preserve it to some degree when saturating it. I think that is what gives this a different flavor than the other saturators that I use in my normal workflow.
That's why I'll stick with Head Crusher 2
is this better than lil tube and softube knob? looks really strong.
It's the big brother of Lil tube 😂
IMHO, with my initial tests, BB Tubes is not necessary better. It has more control, but not necessary better.
BB is in its own league. It does what I’ve been wanting for years but could not find. It sounds like a really good pre amp.
Great review, thanks! 🙏🙏 I have some doubts. In what order should it be placed in a vocal chain for a mix? is it better to put it in the first/last place of the chain? Does it replace the analog console emulation that we usually put at the beginning of every track? In the final bus master does it come before or after the glue compressor?
Everything really depends on the song unfortunately. In my experience, I find it most helpful towards the end of the chain for both instruments and mastering. Trust your ears! Hope that helps :)
@@RaytownProductions 🙏🙏 Thanks! I'll try it! 👍👍
I bought this and thought it didn’t sound very good on my mixes. So I watched your vid & tried the suggestions in your vid. It totally sucked out the guitar tone of my mix & made the mix very boomy, even with dialing back the bass relief & having both knobs at zero. The Lil Tube is ok, adds some light saturation at low levels which may work for your mix. But for me, this plug-in didn’t help in any way no matter what the settings. The Logic Pro Phat FX plug-in using a light smooth saturation sounds way better for my mix.
This plugin is garbage thats why.
❤❤
Sick of this subscription stuff. Won't by anything anymore from waves.
I'm a little confused by your comment - I've never bought a subscription from waves. All my licenses are permanent and on an iLok (which I actually really like).
ya, its a kind of hidden in the update plan. great marketing maschine, luckly so many alternatives
could we ban the phrase "game changer" forever please. Best.
If they added an auto gain option (it's 2022) I would actually have used it. But nah.
I wish that was part of this plug-in as well!
I hope you're happy not using a good 50% of all the plugins out there. People act like it's rare to not have auto-gain. It's not. That 50% might be too low, actually.
What a shill for Waves. Tell me, what disappeared first, your integrity or your hair?
you keep saying it doesn't change the sound when everything is at zero but you have the transformer on, lol.