Steal the Soul of Analog Audio Gear (w ControlHub from STL Tones)
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- Опубліковано 24 бер 2024
- Wouldn't it be cool to be able to be able to borrow the complete analog signal chains of your favorite producers and engineers? And wouldn't it be even cooler if you never had to give it back?
ControlHub from STL Tones is the closest thing we've found to give you this ability. Big thanks to them for supporting the channel!
Check out ControlHub and use the free trial at www.stltones.com/products/con...
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I use it all the time and it is the one plugin that allows me to compress a piano and sound natural. This plugin has replaced tons of other plugins I used to use
Looks so interesting. I gotta try this at some point
It's a brilliant tool and even after 20 years of mixing, it's finding more spots in my templates as time goes on!
@@danymalsound Nice! Thanks for the insight
Stumbled on this plugin a few days ago and it’s killer. I’ve been using the will putney for mastering and it’s great.
Yeah, he has some great presets in there.
-Justin
Hi Justin. I'm looking forward to seeing your traces on trace exchange. Haven't seen any as yet :-)
I've just uploaded 9 traces for mastering now. Have a look and let me know if you have a chance to try them out!
Very best,
Justin
It looks and sound interesting don´t know if it is something like access analog where i have pay a fee and conect to a server
It’s a fairly inexpensive monthly subscription. No connecting to a server necessary. These “traces” are like snapshots of a chain in a specific state that you can load up on your tracks.
Hope that makes sense!
-Justin
Could you help me with a little question? I always recorded my vocals at 48Khz and i acquired some instrumentals that are 44Khz all the stems are 44Khz. My DAW resamples by default to the mixing sample rate, should i let the DAW resample to 48Khz or should i turn-Off the resample?
If it was me, and I got a whole bunch of instrumental tracks that I was supposed to record vocals over, and all those instrumental tracks were at 44, I would create a session at 44 and record the vocals at 44 on top of them.
That said, if you really wanted to work at 48 for some reason, resampling the 44 stems to 48 and recording there really shouldn’t be a problem at all. If it is a problem, then your DAW is doing resampling wrong.
The one thing that will not work, is importing a track at one sampling rate into a new session of a different sampling rate without resampling. If this were to be done, the pitch and speed of the original sample would change.
I hope that makes sense!
-Justin
@@SonicScoop thanks a LOT you the best
the gain jumps when switching presets bother me a bit. A match gain setting when bypassing would also be helpful.
I agree that a volume matching function on board would be handy.
That said, once you activate it and experience the initial jump in level, I've found that the actual presets and traces are often surprisingly well matched to one another in level, and the differences in EQ between them are generally much more substantial than the differences in level between them.
No level matching, automatic or manual, can ever be perfect. But I think the level matching within any set of traces is usually a pretty good starting place.
I too would prefer that level matching in and out of bypass was a little bit easier though, and didn't have to be done manually though.
-Justin
Not entirely true about engineers who “set and forget” ...some tweak stuff while the song plays...lets call it automation. For example amount of compression on a vocal...or any other dynamic part of the song.
Automation is super important in good mixing! But for the kinds of mixers I'm talking about, that automation happens at the desk or in the DAW-not on their outboard gear.
This isn't the way that "every" top level mixer works, but a substantial number of very well known ones do work this way.
Hope that helps,
Justin
Why aren’t you a good enough engineer to realise you can’t make dynamic clones of a chain in 2 seconds…. Look at it in plugin doctor
I'm under no false impression there. ControlHub does not do dynamics at all in the trace! It does a good job on copying EQ and harmonic distortion, and then suggests compressor settings for the compression module.
The traces sound good and very much get the flavor of the original chain. Leaving aside compression, will it null perfectly? Maybe not, I haven't tried. (And the comparisons I've seen that did null tests were flawed because they left the saturation and compression modules engaged 🤦)
But if it did, it would likely be more processor intensive.
I'm evaluating it as a user. As a user, it's potentially useful and sounds good.
Give it a try, see if you like the workflow and results, and take it from there.
Can you use it to design exact 1:1 digital recreations of dynamics processors? No. Is it still potentially useful, does it sound good, and is it fun to use? Yes.
In hindsight I wish I did a livestream on this one where I am more likely to go into all the nerdy detail, and can take questions in real time.
Hope that's useful!
-Justin
@@SonicScoopthanks for your detailed reply. the plugin completely decimates incoming signal with overtones and has no relationship to the original sources. NAM is a much better alternative that actually uses AI to capture it.
As a plugin, this is fine- sure, I guess. Overpriced as hell and subscription based though. All that is required is a simple comparison with the analog unit that the trace was made with, and you will quickly see that the analog holds up way better. I would venture to say the same is true for digital processors that are sampled from this unit. It cant even sample a basic impulse response with any degree of accuracy. Can you get useable mixes with it? Sure, because the algorithmic tools that are included (which are very basic) are the ubiquitous tools we all use to craft mixes. The main selling point here is the TRACER feature itself, which is not modifiable, and who’s curve isnt even visible. It amounts to a preset scrolling system, who’s parameters are totally uneditable and not visible to the end user. This is pure snake oil and I’m kind of sad to see Justin pushing it. See the White Sea Studio video where he dives deeper into it
Thanks for sharing your take!
On your recommendation, I checked out the White Sea video (at least the setup and AB test portions of it) and he seems to be making a couple of substantial errors.
In the first part, where is using a compressor as part of his chain, it seems he expects the trace itself to provide compression. But that's not how it's designed.
While a trace can pretty accurately emulate the box tone of a compressor, and even can get a sense for its ratio, attack and release characteristics to influence the default settings in the compression module on the bottom, the trace itself does not provide compression.
You can see before he even begins playing the examples that one has significant compression and the other doesn't, just by looking at the differences in the waveforms. If he wants to emulate the amount of compression applied in his original example, that's what the compressor module is for.
So, the trace will get you a very good emulation of the EQ curve and harmonic distortion added by the unit. However, it will not add compression by itself. That's why the compression module is there.
To be fair, it's not exactly that the trace just doesn't do a "good job" of emulating the compression-rather, it's that it doesn't directly emulate the dynamic range control at all, and instead passes that function on to the compressor module.
That said, the actual AB comparison was quite favorable! Seeing that there is compression in his analog signal and not in the trace, it's quite heartening to see that the two got as remarkably close as they did in a listening test!
The biggest (although still very minor) difference one can hear is that the bass is compressed a bit in one version and not the other-which is to be expected. This is also likely part of what is causing the slight difference in EQ curves between the two examples.
To his credit, he tries an additional test without compression, and the null test is much closer. What's left over is mostly a bit of low and high frequency content.
HOWEVER, there is a fatal flaw in this test as well: *He never turns off the modules in the bottom*-which are on by default-nor does he indicate that he knows that he *should be* turning off those modules to get an ideal comparison between the raw trace and the original signal.
The failure to turn off these modules means that his trace is going through the color and compression modules, which are themselves changing the signal somewhat even in their default settings.
I wish he had taken a little bit more time to understand the tool so he could have set up a more suitable test.
This process helps explains why, in the first null test, we are basically hearing the component of the signal you'd expect for a compressor to act on. And in the second null test, why we are hearing a difference predominantly in lows and highs, where I believe the color module may have the greatest effect in its default position.
That said, in his first measurement of the EQ curve, he saw that the low end curve was within 1dB in both examples.... and this is on an example in which the low end is compressed in one example but not in the other! Once you take that into account, it suggests the difference in EQ curve is *substantially less* than 1dB.
That said, even if the test was done perfectly, I'd be surprised if it nulled completely. So I don't want to discount his take entirely here. There is naturally going to be some tradeoff between ease of use and accuracy.
Think about it: If it was possible to create 100% perfect plugin emulations of hardware with a tracer tool as incredibly easy to use as this, then practically all plugin companies that emulate hardware would be out of business over night!
That's just an unrealistic expectation. Exactly emulating hardware is HARD WORK. But *getting this close* is now surprisingly easy! I think that's worth recognizing and seeing if it has a place in our workflows.
Ultimately, I think this is a very good tool for getting a great starting point in reshaping a sound that you can tweak from further, or for offloading tasks from some of your favorite analog hardware in high track count sessions.
It is probably NOT an ideal tool for making exact 1:1 replicas of gear from which you can use to release your own plugins :-) But I don't think it strives to be.
Ultimately, I think you've got to try it out, see if the workflow and results are fun and inspiring to you, and from there, decide whether or not it's a useful addition to the toolkit for you!
Personally, I like subscriptions and favor them over "purchasing" plugins. But I understand that there are people who feel very much the other way on that.
I think it's wise that they give customers a purchasable option though, and they do. But I honestly think the subscription is the better value.
(I personally subscribe to, but do not own, software from Plugin Alliance, Universal Audio, iZotope, Adobe, and several others I am probably not thinking of off the top of my head.)
I hope some of that makes sense!
Very best,
Justin
unsubbed, no acknowledgment to messages.
Go away, nobody needs you here
What does this comment mean? Sorry, but I don't understand.
-Justin