Dan Worrall is the king of all reviewers on Yotubue: Always very competent, straight to the point and incorruptible. And as a side-effect, I always learn a lot about audio-processing in general from his reviews. We must take good care of such a treasure.
I don't understand why they can't make two GUIs or even slightly different versions of the plugin: One for people who demand a close emulation of the original hardware, and another for people that want to make music without frustration.
Oh no, you see, just wait about 6-12 months and Brainworx will come up with "The Oven MS", graciously available as a mere $49 upgrade for existing license owners. Maybe they'll also add a filter or two into the signal chain for good measure!
6-12 SIX TO TWELVE S I X T O T W E L V E SIX TO TWELVE WHAT!?¡¿!? YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE US HANGING LIKE THAT IM ASSUMING YOU MEANT MONTHS BUT I'M NOT SURE AND I DON'T FEEL SAFE ANYMORE MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL
I hope it’s not just a dump of a bunch of content he had been working on, soon to be followed by another long space of dead air waves. Seems like Dan gets in a pattern of dropping a few videos at a time, and then taking a break for a few weeks before dropping another few vids at once, followed by another break. If we’re moving into new-video-every-few-days consistently, I’m about to become a much better engineer very quickly ❤
Want to know what's really funny? On the hardware, the Calibration has a continuous gain control for each side (left and right)! 😂 I watched a bit of an interview with Maor and he flat-out said that the plugin doesn't sound like the hardware. It captures the "essence" and "vibe" but the plugin doesn't exactly emulate the hardware. At least he was honest!
@@Nipogadzauba I like some PA Plugins so I guess I am just one of those people! Classy man, super classy. You are certainly entitled to your opinion but to judge others because they don't share your opinion is a bit immature don't ya think? Dan said he likes the plugin too so I guess he doesn't know quality when he hears it either? This plugin sounds great man, all I was saying is that I thought it was funny that Maor had said this. If you go on the website and look at the description they don't make any outlandish or wild claims. I respect them for that. Yes, there are several PA plugins that just aren't very good but there are some real gems there too. I guess I'll just keep being deaf and stupid tho so thanks! 🤡😂
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer Sure man, Did not want to come off like this, I meant it is obvious they are targeting aspiring producers and musicians, mixers that can't afford UAD or DMGAudio, those things are expensive so PA just release something new all the time, but it is the same shit over and over, how many saturators or EQs do you need, especially not so good ones, they use predatory marketing tactics to sell lots of cheap plugins to people who don't really need them to make great hits, it is not about the plugins, they are just using GAS to make tons of cash on poor musicians who do not know better yet, thats all. Sure some professionals use them, but it is not their main market.
@@Nipogadzauba Well, that I can agree with. Most of the bundle I get is nothing but filler and lately, they have just been pumping out new stuff and most of it is useless or wasn't ready to be released. The new AMEK eq for example. If you look in Plugin Doctor, the old one and new one are almost exactly the same plugin except the new one has more bugs lol. I absolutely agree there are more HQ tools out there for the most part. I think they keep pumping out the same crap because people eat it up. Instead of focusing on the quality, they are focusing on quantity. Never a good look. I feel Acoustica is much the same recently. Never got much into their stuff but lately, I feel like they are releasing something new a few times a month lol. Everything is buggy too. I beta test for several companies and the companies I work with test their plugins till they are beaten to death! We find all the bugs and work out the kinks before it's released. I think part of the problem may be that they opened up their betas to basically anyone willing to pay at this point. That doesn't help anything lol. Your beta team should consist of people who know how to beta test and what to look for. That's how you release quality products. This way they get a false sense that everything is ok or bombarded with issues which makes it hard to focus on the real core issues. I don't like the path they have gone down recently if I am being honest. I think I am going to change my subscription and get a license for the few plugins I use and not look back. I mix professionally and I use a few of their products but not on every mix. Not even on most mixes lol.
I agree with most things said here, 90% of PA stuff i don't care for, and all the EQ's sound the same for me. But I found this one was special, and it does do things that others can not. I don't care if it sounds like anything, it sounds good.
Dan, I really appreciate your agitation for the M/S processing to be more common in plugins. I personally have run my matrix similar to what you’re using almost for every creative fx for years already, so I actually kinda accepted the way things are done by the most developers by now, since turning plugins to M/S mode manually isn’t that hard. but it’s good to see someone pushing this idea to the masses. the most of productions will benefit from this feature in the end of the day.
Thanks Dan, with these videos the plugin developers will have to improve a lot, your videos are clear and precise, a plugin developed by Dan and Wytse (White Sea Studio) would be interesting. Keep growing this channel !
Great video Dan, Thanks a lot!! Being a Reaper user, I've learned that using the mix knob near the bypass effects toggle is even more efficient than any other parallel mix knob in any plugin, and I'm also using it to "bypass" any plugin (just crank the mix to 0%). I find this very useful, as in bypass mode the plugins are deactivated, and when brought back, some of them, are taking longer to activate (due to their coding nature) and start crackling or interrupt the audio
They asked me for some feedback on this early on and I gave them the same comment about the burner types not being under the corresponding knobs and they were bascically like, the hardware is that way and we're not making any changes to the gui.
Plugin Alliance have an awful tendency to put some of the most useful controls for their plug-ins in that top right tiny tool bar. It's so infuriating.
Another great review! I think PA needs to rework how their TMT is implemented it already feels dated. I find it handy on certain things when doing mixes entirely in the box to get a bit of this blurry width that comes alongside using hardware in dual mono but their current implementation is a screen clusterfuck. tone projects kelvin does this more elegantly by making it the width control to begin with. When increased you get L/R variance in a very active manner which is essentially all tmt is snapshots of to my understanding. PA already offer tools for standard M/S processing that dont need to be present every step of the way.
I just ended my PA subscription this year, fell on hard times from a divorce. I had already been able to grab perpetual licenses for the ones I use most… but the sound of the midrange band on this one is making me feel the pain of losing that subscription!! I like it, a lot, despite agreeing with you on all the usability criticisms
I don't know if it helps, but PA has temporarily opened for the registration for Forever29 again, I think you may wanna take a quick look to it. Hope that helps. Good luck.
@@MixedbyJoshua It does exactly what it says it does. Changes the eq curves on the left and right channels slightly. Works great for individual stereo tracks, not always on the 2bus.
One thing I'd be really interested in in terms of plugin reviews is the Analog Obsession emulations of the LA2A (called "LALA"), 1176 (called "FETISH") and SSL buss comp (called "BUSTER"). A lot of people rave about them, but given that the plugins are free, those people often have relatively little audio experience. It'd be great to have them analysed thoroughly, and compared with the originals or similar plugins. See if we can really ditch our Waves or UAD plugins for a free alternative.
@@levondarratt787 All I mean is, there are many bedroom musicians out there who are young and just starting out and have little money, and plugins which CAN be acquired for free without resorting to piracy appeal more than something like UAD. Therefore the reviews skew towards being less experienced on average than reviews for expensive options. When I say they're free, I don't mean to imply anyone shouldn't donate.
@@levondarratt787 I'm almost completely sure that isn't true. To quote his Patreon page's description, "My plugins are now available exclusively on Patreon, and they're free!... For just a few dollars a month, you can help me to devote more of my time to developing new and exciting products." It's certainly good to donate once you are capable and have the resources to do so, but AO makes it really clear that you don't have to. I certainly think he does this to enable more people to have access to good plugins, and I do think that's a pretty cool cause :)
@@ey3600 hmm interesting.....felt like teh guitar case with dollar bills next to the musician...if you lingering more than 30 seconds or keep looking, you're supposed to put a few bucks in his case....it' free technically - but he stands there for a reason, and the guitar case has dollar bills in it. But I get your point.
Thank you for putting words to my feelings and thoughts about that plugin and the reason why I don't really use it that much as I wanted to. You covered pretty much every thing about it! :D
"...that bloody screw..." LOL!! You had me rolling, Dan! Quite frankly, although I grew up listening through and playing/working with analog/outboard gear, within a DAW, please let's make some sense! :)
I kinda like the true to hardware gui plugins. I'll never be able to afford hardware eqs so it's quite fun playing around with these emulations. Functionality might not be that great but then there's millions of EQs and saturation plugins out there that have functionality. I believe making music should be fun and fiddling with knobs is that for me.
Just received this plugin in the latest update and of coarse watched the Plugin Alliance videos about the plugin from the developer. Love your brutal honesty and laser focus as to how to improve the plugin. You always have a great way of slicing and dicing the features apart and separating the wheat from the chaff. Keep up the great work. Thank you for all your videos. Eric
Hey I would love to see you do a review on Clips By Sixth Sample. It is a Drum punch and clipping plugin that features multiband clipping, compression and Gating. It has become my go-to for drums because it has all my fav tools for punchy drums at my fingertips. It's a small company that could use the promotion and they take feedback and implement it quickly. They added a 0db hardclip to the output in addition to the other clipping features when I requested it.
I get all the PA stuff as part of my sub. I'm more of a mix engineer, so I can see this as great for individual instruments or groups. All of Dan's points are excellent, especially for mix bus uses.
Dan, since you are doing tha Plugin Alliance stuff, can you please check the Louder Than Liftoff Chop Shop EQ plugin by them ? the HiCut and Tilt functions seem normal, what is interesting is the Lo-Cut section especially when you turn on the the Lo- Rider function, it does some weird curve if you look with Plugin Doctor. It seems Pultec like shelves with a dip but the HPF switched to LPF when you activate it. I don't really understand how we suppose to use the plugin, with the Mix function. Is it safe ? phase relation wise for the low end. Just try to look at it with the doctor and see if it's worth your time to talk about it. Cheers.
This is the thing I find frustrating about PA, IK Multimedia too. At their core, their plugins sound very good, but they're often so dressed up with unnecessary features and marketing bullshit, and weighed down by poor UI choices, that I found myself not reaching for them after a while. Why deal with the frustration, when Arturia, Fuse, Goodhertz, Fabfilter etc have none?
Filtering the side content is not making a mono signal. Panned instruments will be present in mid (L+R) and will stay panned after decoding - which is not mono at all. Mono would be splitting the frequencies with a crossover, summing the low end part L and R, then mixing them back together into a single 2-track. Not sure what the actual plugin is doing, wanted to add just for clarity.
Your observations is spot on! Sounds really great! I got this yesterday! Its different than any saturation I got! I think worth more as a tone shaping, Very good broad eq! better than a lot expansive eq!
I got to listen to the hardware while it was in development and fell in love, but waited for the plugin version with bated breath. TL:DR Guess I'm still gonna have to shell out for the hardware at some point. Also @Dan Worrall - the hardware has variable input calibration(on each channel to boot)! The "Low, Mid, High" thing is totally a digital creation. The only thing you missed is the interesting stuff that happens with the Bunsen / Sizzle type - I was really curious to see if they actually got that part right. Flow also does some cool things on the hardware, not sure if they got that right or not here either.
At least try the demo... This guys just rants for clicks ya know... He can be so ridiculous it's comical at times lol. I'd even say if you like what the physical unit did, you'll like the plugin as well.
Hi Dan. What are the other harmonic enhanceur that you talk about ? Could you inform us about the plug-ins you think they are goog and sound great please ?
How does it behave with Reaper's built in plugin/chain oversampling if you want to drive it really hard? I know some (usually older) plugins freak out and end up with filter frequencies in the wrong place.
it's sooo weird that they had the small meters! it's my biggest gripe with it. then they have the looptrotter plugin and it HAS amazing metering. I feel you on the TMT thing, i don't get why they do that for like every plugin now. but i guess it does give you the option to use it on more than one instance. Personally i found the oven really helpful on a drum bus. so if i put it on multiple buses the TMT could come in handy. I love that you always are able to find details in plugins i never even thought of before, in this case the parallel mix knob and output. great idea i hope they take your suggestion! Honestly i felt the naming scheme is perfect because it gives me an idea of signal flow and gain staging like if i was turning on an appliance.
Simply Great review, as usual I wanna say & it Does sound lovely great, sure! Thank you. (ah.. and actually the musik used for the review is completly "in phase" for this kind of sound, I love glitchy/Melancolico/violino-Bassy sound you make)
The TMT feature is useful I think personally, maybe not from a real practical perspective but from a feel perspective. The point of it is so that when you have multiple instances of the same plugin, even if they're doing the same processing, they will still sound slightly different. All they're doing is generating a set of values that will alter the way the emulation responds based upon the set tolerances of each component in the hardware unit. This is part of what makes analog analog, in that no two hardware units will ever sound exactly alike since, unlike digital systems, analog has continuous, infinite variability. Obviously for mixing purposes you're only going to need a much smaller set number of those variations to use in your DAW's mixer, but its nice to have that variability nonetheless. Even if it isn't really "useful" in the most practical of senses, I still think its a cool feature to have regardless. Anything that makes plugins react more like the real analog hardware without making it harder to use, i'm all for.
I hope the Brainworx designers are listening. As soon as you pointed out the Parallel Mix / Output issue this plugin was off my list of plugins to demo.
Just when I was thinking how much I would love for Dan Worall to shed light on the new plugin everyone seems to be talking about called The Oven, this appears... amazing!
Dan it would be great if you would do something on Klanghelm, especially SDRR. Such a nice saturation especially when unlinked with drift. Also Tony is the opposite of PA - 1 man show but he still delivers. MJUC is great as well.
Did you check out the god particle? I’m a bit worried about using things that get my mixes way better without understanding what they do because they might be ruining something that I just can’t hear since I’m mixing mainly with headphones
Not yet, sorry. I suggest you check some God Particled mixes out in the real world on a few different systems, and if it still sound good, bank it and stop worrying. It is possible for mix bus processing to improve a mix dramatically: as long as you're bypassing at equal loudness when comparing it's perfectly valid in principle.
Hope you are well, Dan. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on the recently released Kirchhof EQ as compared to Pro-Q3! All the best, love your videos.
I'm curious about how this plugin would compare, head-to-head, with the Vertigo VSM-3? I use the VSM-3 on the master bus to bring out certain parts of the mix, which it seems The Oven also does.
I want to see Dan review an Acustica plugin so bad, and talk about the so called volterra kernel sampling methodology. If he decides to do it eventually, I would recommend something like Magenta, which is the Manly Massive Passive, or Aquamarine (Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor), or Azure, a Knif Soma Mastering EQ, supposedly sampled from a mastering engineer's signal path (whatever that means).
Hey, Dan, hope you are well. I was wondering, if you ever read the comments here, could you make a video on mastering classical music? I struggle really hard in making it sound good on soundcloud for example. Your help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
Perhaps you could consider to take into account using a simple gain utility after and before the oven, I mean just for the sake if its too annoying otherwise to me it seems to make sense here to have an attenuation before and after the dry wet plugin internally. However using gain utilities could massively help in much cases.
Audient has done the opposite of that dry/wet knob with the output level on the Evo interface: turning the dial enough to light up 1/3rd of the indicators gets you only to 10% of max output. The other 90% is in the remaining 2/3rds of the scale. If you are wearing sensitive headphones or you are listening through monitors at low volume, you don't have to worry that a tiny adjustment will be too much. Also there's an acceleration curve built in to the dial's rotation. If you turn the knob quickly it takes 2-1/2 turns to get from 0-100%. If you turn very slowly, it's closer to 4 turns. (Unfortunately the mouse control over the output level in Audient's software is just linear, with no acceleration, and over a pretty short runway.)
Not sure why the issue with the mix knob is such a surprise - Surely the signal will always get louder when combining wet and dry right? And the output knob is basically a fader for the entire plugin?
A properly designed cross fader will maintain the loudness when mixing between dry and wet, but only if the wet part of the signal is loudness matches. The dry signal doesn't need loudness matching to the input signal: it is the input signal.
I've been messing with this plugin for a few days and I really like how it sounds, I do find the features to be lacking for a plugin made in 2022, but overall I'm really happy with it
The parallel mix button workflow fail is unfortunately present in most CUBASE stock plugins. I think that when you move from 100 to 50 %, it just turns up the dry signal, leaving the wet at unity, resulting in a (6 db?) louder setting at 50 % . From 50 % to 0%, it turns down the wet signal, resulting in a decrease in volume. I never tested this hypothesis however.
Hey Dan! I’m a big fan of your videos! I would love to see a review of Eventide split EQ. some of my other fav plug-in reviewers talked about it but I always am thinking about the behind it he scenes (how it works, phase relationship, null comparisons) I also am curious to see how you would use it, and areas where you wouldn’t. Cheers!
Parallel mix knob will always affect the loudness, no matter which odred their in. But i do agreed a dry/wet knob would partly solve this. Only problem is it's a distortion unit. And only hearing the 100% wet signal of that would basically be useless. Would be just noise. And im not sure how that would correlate with varying input sources. Hmm
Kind Sir Dan. Please, please make a video about some of Analog Obsession's plugins. Really keen to hear what your thoughts are about his compressors and EQs (especially if they cramp or not).
Hey Dan! Hope you're doing good with all that is going on right now. I have a question about plugin doctor. How do you test hardware with it? I cant seem to find any tutorials on that
There's a 'use hardware' button at the top next to the plug-in slots. You will need to configure the correct IO, possibly in settings iirc? And I think there's a set latency button or similar. Then just be careful to keep your test signals below full scale: plugins don't care about that usually but your converters do.
i don't understand why so many distortion/saturation plugins get the sequence of mix and output wrong. have they never tried to a/b compare different mix stages with each other or with dry? this even happens in one of my favourite saturation plugins. when i told the developers about it they accepted to fix it tho, so that was cool
Dan, I would love to hear your take on Vertigo VSM3, an older PA release. I have the Oven but in spite of not having oversampling I'll still grab the VSM3 because it does have MS processing and in my opinion is more versatile.
the melda saturator, which i love, has the same issue with parallel mixing and output volume - i really don't understand what the point of that is even supposed to be?
Besides the lack of gain matching..... Can this take massive Oversampling? I have to rewatch this. No plug-in doctor graphs? Ok. I guess i get that. You just think it sounds good. Always nice to know if you can crank upper end harmonics and compensate with oversampling though .... Many can't. And it's a really cool effect that hardware can do.
i have a video request: maybe you could make an explanation of how lossy audio works, there aren't any videos that would explain it in depth so maybe you could do it
I won't be too surprised if they eventually release a MS version of it as they did with the Black Box. And I'll probably get it too because that just works so well :)
Not only is there a bolt in the way of the Low/Mid/High burner types, they are not spaced evenly as well, hurting my brain. Despite or due to the device being branded "Brainworx"?
@@DanWorrall Making fun of them hertz them too, there goes your discount! I wouldn't bother anyway, I don't see the point of these magical devices, can't we just mix with what's been available for years, understandable and transparent devices that make overview and troubleshooting so much easier? Thanks for the video anyway!
I was sure Brainworx's Mono Maker didn't just remove bass from side channel. Instead, it moves the removed side bass into the mid channel. So if your floor tom is panned 100% to the right, then applying mono maker will leave the attack panned but the sustain centered. Can someone confirm that?
If you dislike the Oven plugin layout you will HATE the next saturation plugin "Looptrotter" from plugin alliance. If you want a great alternative to the Oven it's NOT the plugin alliance version but the VERTIGO Sound VSM-4. Vertigo sound made their own emulations and updated the VSM saturator and the VSC Compressor. They are not cheap but do sound good.
at this point, the option to have Automatic Gain Compensation should be standard for any mastering type plug-in
Excellent point. Developers, please take note.
It’s fascinating how it isn’t yet
Absolutely
It's not so trivial with non-linear processing.
for ANY plugin, not only in mastering.
Dan Worrall is the king of all reviewers on Yotubue: Always very competent, straight to the point and incorruptible. And as a side-effect, I always learn a lot about audio-processing in general from his reviews. We must take good care of such a treasure.
"Ditch that silly screw, and move the bloody switches over" made me spill my tea on my screen you bloody Dan!!! can't stop laughing! ^^^^
"Perhaps that should be a consideration as well" oh dear I just can't stop laughing!! ^^^^
"Get in the bin!" Had me rolling! 🤣
I mean... it's a totally valid observation haha
I don't understand why they can't make two GUIs or even slightly different versions of the plugin: One for people who demand a close emulation of the original hardware, and another for people that want to make music without frustration.
In the pocket of Big-Iconography. I knew it.
Oh no, you see, just wait about 6-12 months and Brainworx will come up with "The Oven MS", graciously available as a mere $49 upgrade for existing license owners. Maybe they'll also add a filter or two into the signal chain for good measure!
6-12
SIX TO TWELVE
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I
X
T
O
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W
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SIX TO TWELVE WHAT!?¡¿!?
YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE US HANGING LIKE THAT
IM ASSUMING YOU MEANT MONTHS BUT I'M NOT SURE AND I DON'T FEEL SAFE ANYMORE
MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL
@@cursedmuse6951 with that pentagram, your sure need some Jesus
@@cursedmuse6951 Thats how it worked with the HG2 MS hahaha
@@cursedmuse6951 lol 😂
@@DoitYHWH lol x 2 😆😆
Dan's upload schedule seems to be heating up, and I'm all here for it.
This is great! :)
“Heating up”…I see what you did there
It has always been relatively inconsistent, but I don't mind since the quality is always there and top notch.
He's out of control. Or bored.
I hope it’s not just a dump of a bunch of content he had been working on, soon to be followed by another long space of dead air waves. Seems like Dan gets in a pattern of dropping a few videos at a time, and then taking a break for a few weeks before dropping another few vids at once, followed by another break. If we’re moving into new-video-every-few-days consistently, I’m about to become a much better engineer very quickly ❤
You are a fantastic reviewer, and your criticisms are technical and spot on. Companies should really consider hiring you as a QA tester of some sort.
If they were clever, they did.
Some companies, Tokyo dawn, Fabfilter, Ursa, and others already have.
Want to know what's really funny? On the hardware, the Calibration has a continuous gain control for each side (left and right)! 😂 I watched a bit of an interview with Maor and he flat-out said that the plugin doesn't sound like the hardware. It captures the "essence" and "vibe" but the plugin doesn't exactly emulate the hardware. At least he was honest!
nothing by PA sounds like hardware, just a cash grab company for people who think they are getting quality for cheap
@@Nipogadzauba I like some PA Plugins so I guess I am just one of those people! Classy man, super classy. You are certainly entitled to your opinion but to judge others because they don't share your opinion is a bit immature don't ya think? Dan said he likes the plugin too so I guess he doesn't know quality when he hears it either? This plugin sounds great man, all I was saying is that I thought it was funny that Maor had said this. If you go on the website and look at the description they don't make any outlandish or wild claims. I respect them for that. Yes, there are several PA plugins that just aren't very good but there are some real gems there too. I guess I'll just keep being deaf and stupid tho so thanks! 🤡😂
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer Sure man, Did not want to come off like this, I meant it is obvious they are targeting aspiring producers and musicians, mixers that can't afford UAD or DMGAudio, those things are expensive so PA just release something new all the time, but it is the same shit over and over, how many saturators or EQs do you need, especially not so good ones, they use predatory marketing tactics to sell lots of cheap plugins to people who don't really need them to make great hits, it is not about the plugins, they are just using GAS to make tons of cash on poor musicians who do not know better yet, thats all. Sure some professionals use them, but it is not their main market.
@@Nipogadzauba Well, that I can agree with. Most of the bundle I get is nothing but filler and lately, they have just been pumping out new stuff and most of it is useless or wasn't ready to be released. The new AMEK eq for example. If you look in Plugin Doctor, the old one and new one are almost exactly the same plugin except the new one has more bugs lol. I absolutely agree there are more HQ tools out there for the most part. I think they keep pumping out the same crap because people eat it up. Instead of focusing on the quality, they are focusing on quantity. Never a good look. I feel Acoustica is much the same recently. Never got much into their stuff but lately, I feel like they are releasing something new a few times a month lol. Everything is buggy too. I beta test for several companies and the companies I work with test their plugins till they are beaten to death! We find all the bugs and work out the kinks before it's released. I think part of the problem may be that they opened up their betas to basically anyone willing to pay at this point. That doesn't help anything lol. Your beta team should consist of people who know how to beta test and what to look for. That's how you release quality products. This way they get a false sense that everything is ok or bombarded with issues which makes it hard to focus on the real core issues. I don't like the path they have gone down recently if I am being honest. I think I am going to change my subscription and get a license for the few plugins I use and not look back. I mix professionally and I use a few of their products but not on every mix. Not even on most mixes lol.
I agree with most things said here, 90% of PA stuff i don't care for, and all the EQ's sound the same for me. But I found this one was special, and it does do things that others can not. I don't care if it sounds like anything, it sounds good.
Dan's version of TMT is fkn genius!
Plugin Alliance do it! DO IT! 🥳🎉
100%
I never touch the TMT on all of PA plugins that have it.
On the other hand,
Dan’s suggestion is logical and I would use it most of the time.
Your mixes always sound so heavenly.
Dan, I really appreciate your agitation for the M/S processing to be more common in plugins. I personally have run my matrix similar to what you’re using almost for every creative fx for years already, so I actually kinda accepted the way things are done by the most developers by now, since turning plugins to M/S mode manually isn’t that hard. but it’s good to see someone pushing this idea to the masses. the most of productions will benefit from this feature in the end of the day.
Thanks Dan, with these videos the plugin developers will have to improve a lot, your videos are clear and precise, a plugin developed by Dan and Wytse (White Sea Studio) would be interesting. Keep growing this channel !
Great video Dan, Thanks a lot!!
Being a Reaper user, I've learned that using the mix knob near the bypass effects toggle is even more efficient than any other parallel mix knob in any plugin, and I'm also using it to "bypass" any plugin (just crank the mix to 0%). I find this very useful, as in bypass mode the plugins are deactivated, and when brought back, some of them, are taking longer to activate (due to their coding nature) and start crackling or interrupt the audio
In Reapack: amagalma_Toggle wet 0-100% (or current value) for focused FX
They asked me for some feedback on this early on and I gave them the same comment about the burner types not being under the corresponding knobs and they were bascically like, the hardware is that way and we're not making any changes to the gui.
Ugh, of course PA would be stubborn as well as incompetent regarding GUIs. That’s infuriating.
Have you tried writing to Damian Lewis to tell him to spell his name like the original hardware? ;)
Plugin Alliance have an awful tendency to put some of the most useful controls for their plug-ins in that top right tiny tool bar. It's so infuriating.
Yup.
Another great review! I think PA needs to rework how their TMT is implemented it already feels dated. I find it handy on certain things when doing mixes entirely in the box to get a bit of this blurry width that comes alongside using hardware in dual mono but their current implementation is a screen clusterfuck. tone projects kelvin does this more elegantly by making it the width control to begin with. When increased you get L/R variance in a very active manner which is essentially all tmt is snapshots of to my understanding. PA already offer tools for standard M/S processing that dont need to be present every step of the way.
I just ended my PA subscription this year, fell on hard times from a divorce. I had already been able to grab perpetual licenses for the ones I use most… but the sound of the midrange band on this one is making me feel the pain of losing that subscription!! I like it, a lot, despite agreeing with you on all the usability criticisms
I don't know if it helps, but PA has temporarily opened for the registration for Forever29 again, I think you may wanna take a quick look to it. Hope that helps. Good luck.
I like the TMT implementation Dan is suggesting. It could be called circuit tolerance divergence.
It's just a gimmick unfortunately
How about signal tolerances divergence and call it std.
@@MixedbyJoshua It does exactly what it says it does. Changes the eq curves on the left and right channels slightly. Works great for individual stereo tracks, not always on the 2bus.
would be redundant with the beast the Oven is.
We should call it Critical Race Tolerance to annoy the anti woke brigade (otherwise known as racists).
One thing I'd be really interested in in terms of plugin reviews is the Analog Obsession emulations of the LA2A (called "LALA"), 1176 (called "FETISH") and SSL buss comp (called "BUSTER"). A lot of people rave about them, but given that the plugins are free, those people often have relatively little audio experience. It'd be great to have them analysed thoroughly, and compared with the originals or similar plugins. See if we can really ditch our Waves or UAD plugins for a free alternative.
they are not free - if you didn't donate, you basically got them illegally. he is asking for a donation - that's not free. You just took it.
@@levondarratt787 All I mean is, there are many bedroom musicians out there who are young and just starting out and have little money, and plugins which CAN be acquired for free without resorting to piracy appeal more than something like UAD. Therefore the reviews skew towards being less experienced on average than reviews for expensive options. When I say they're free, I don't mean to imply anyone shouldn't donate.
@@levondarratt787 I'm almost completely sure that isn't true. To quote his Patreon page's description, "My plugins are now available exclusively on Patreon, and they're free!... For just a few dollars a month, you can help me to devote more of my time to developing new and exciting products."
It's certainly good to donate once you are capable and have the resources to do so, but AO makes it really clear that you don't have to. I certainly think he does this to enable more people to have access to good plugins, and I do think that's a pretty cool cause :)
@@ey3600 hmm interesting.....felt like teh guitar case with dollar bills next to the musician...if you lingering more than 30 seconds or keep looking, you're supposed to put a few bucks in his case....it' free technically - but he stands there for a reason, and the guitar case has dollar bills in it. But I get your point.
+1 for the request. I've been going Dan will look at AO for a while now!
Thank you for putting words to my feelings and thoughts about that plugin and the reason why I don't really use it that much as I wanted to. You covered pretty much every thing about it! :D
"...that bloody screw..." LOL!! You had me rolling, Dan! Quite frankly, although I grew up listening through and playing/working with analog/outboard gear, within a DAW, please let's make some sense! :)
you are my favourite plugin dan
I kinda like the true to hardware gui plugins. I'll never be able to afford hardware eqs so it's quite fun playing around with these emulations. Functionality might not be that great but then there's millions of EQs and saturation plugins out there that have functionality. I believe making music should be fun and fiddling with knobs is that for me.
these improvements can be implemented without ruining the fun of fiddling with knobs
me too..I just map my SSL UF8 knows to them, and close my eyes....
Just received this plugin in the latest update and of coarse watched the Plugin Alliance videos about the plugin from the developer. Love your brutal honesty and laser focus as to how to improve the plugin. You always have a great way of slicing and dicing the features apart and separating the wheat from the chaff. Keep up the great work. Thank you for all your videos. Eric
Hey I would love to see you do a review on Clips By Sixth Sample. It is a Drum punch and clipping plugin that features multiband clipping, compression and Gating. It has become my go-to for drums because it has all my fav tools for punchy drums at my fingertips. It's a small company that could use the promotion and they take feedback and implement it quickly. They added a 0db hardclip to the output in addition to the other clipping features when I requested it.
I get all the PA stuff as part of my sub. I'm more of a mix engineer, so I can see this as great for individual instruments or groups. All of Dan's points are excellent, especially for mix bus uses.
Dan, since you are doing tha Plugin Alliance stuff, can you please check the Louder Than Liftoff Chop Shop EQ plugin by them ? the HiCut and Tilt functions seem normal, what is interesting is the Lo-Cut section especially when you turn on the the Lo- Rider function, it does some weird curve if you look with Plugin Doctor. It seems Pultec like shelves with a dip but the HPF switched to LPF when you activate it. I don't really understand how we suppose to use the plugin, with the Mix function. Is it safe ? phase relation wise for the low end. Just try to look at it with the doctor and see if it's worth your time to talk about it. Cheers.
This is the thing I find frustrating about PA, IK Multimedia too. At their core, their plugins sound very good, but they're often so dressed up with unnecessary features and marketing bullshit, and weighed down by poor UI choices, that I found myself not reaching for them after a while. Why deal with the frustration, when Arturia, Fuse, Goodhertz, Fabfilter etc have none?
Truth.
Totally agree, I stopped purchasing plug-ins when they did not bother fixing known bugs.
Filtering the side content is not making a mono signal. Panned instruments will be present in mid (L+R) and will stay panned after decoding - which is not mono at all. Mono would be splitting the frequencies with a crossover, summing the low end part L and R, then mixing them back together into a single 2-track. Not sure what the actual plugin is doing, wanted to add just for clarity.
I hope RUclips is paying you a crapton cause these videos are invaluable and we need more
Your observations is spot on! Sounds really great! I got this yesterday! Its different than any saturation I got! I think worth more as a tone shaping, Very good broad eq! better than a lot expansive eq!
8:08 = I’m f’n crying 😂 awesome video as usual, Dan!
I got to listen to the hardware while it was in development and fell in love, but waited for the plugin version with bated breath. TL:DR Guess I'm still gonna have to shell out for the hardware at some point.
Also @Dan Worrall - the hardware has variable input calibration(on each channel to boot)! The "Low, Mid, High" thing is totally a digital creation. The only thing you missed is the interesting stuff that happens with the Bunsen / Sizzle type - I was really curious to see if they actually got that part right. Flow also does some cool things on the hardware, not sure if they got that right or not here either.
I can't get "Flow" to do anything different from the output knob. It just... makes things too quiet.
At least try the demo... This guys just rants for clicks ya know... He can be so ridiculous it's comical at times lol. I'd even say if you like what the physical unit did, you'll like the plugin as well.
Hi Dan. What are the other harmonic enhanceur that you talk about ? Could you inform us about the plug-ins you think they are goog and sound great please ?
“…eye watering expensive hardware unit”
*cries in Alpha Compressor*
How does it behave with Reaper's built in plugin/chain oversampling if you want to drive it really hard? I know some (usually older) plugins freak out and end up with filter frequencies in the wrong place.
I didn't try it. Built in oversampling is generally preferable, and the Oven's own should be fine in most cases.
it's sooo weird that they had the small meters! it's my biggest gripe with it. then they have the looptrotter plugin and it HAS amazing metering.
I feel you on the TMT thing, i don't get why they do that for like every plugin now. but i guess it does give you the option to use it on more than one instance. Personally i found the oven really helpful on a drum bus. so if i put it on multiple buses the TMT could come in handy.
I love that you always are able to find details in plugins i never even thought of before, in this case the parallel mix knob and output. great idea i hope they take your suggestion!
Honestly i felt the naming scheme is perfect because it gives me an idea of signal flow and gain staging like if i was turning on an appliance.
Because I'm a sad fanboi I thumbs up'd Before I listened, but, my confidence was NOT misplaced. As always clarity elegance info tips and snark. 10/10
same. i haven't finished watching yet, but I'm sure you're right. Edit: thanks for the confirmation that I already have enough saturation plugins.
I hit like before the video even plays
Simply Great review, as usual I wanna say & it Does sound lovely great, sure! Thank you. (ah.. and actually the musik used for the review is completly "in phase" for this kind of sound, I love glitchy/Melancolico/violino-Bassy sound you make)
No one else on RUclips teaches audio like you Dan. Hope you're enjoying a well-deserved break and loving life.
You will have a well-earned 100K+ subscribers soon. Congrats!
Clearly will do the Kirchhoff EQ next RIGHT? Please!
Always a sanity check for plugins a Dan Worrall video :D
"what is zis? Some kind of catch phrase? It makes no sense with the wake n bake"
Funny, I had the same issue with the output level and dry/wet knob mixing with the SPL Iron vst today...
3 videos in 1 week??? Dan, you are spoiling us!
The TMT feature is useful I think personally, maybe not from a real practical perspective but from a feel perspective. The point of it is so that when you have multiple instances of the same plugin, even if they're doing the same processing, they will still sound slightly different. All they're doing is generating a set of values that will alter the way the emulation responds based upon the set tolerances of each component in the hardware unit. This is part of what makes analog analog, in that no two hardware units will ever sound exactly alike since, unlike digital systems, analog has continuous, infinite variability. Obviously for mixing purposes you're only going to need a much smaller set number of those variations to use in your DAW's mixer, but its nice to have that variability nonetheless. Even if it isn't really "useful" in the most practical of senses, I still think its a cool feature to have regardless. Anything that makes plugins react more like the real analog hardware without making it harder to use, i'm all for.
I hope the Brainworx designers are listening. As soon as you pointed out the Parallel Mix / Output issue this plugin was off my list of plugins to demo.
Just when I was thinking how much I would love for Dan Worall to shed light on the new plugin everyone seems to be talking about called The Oven, this appears... amazing!
Hope they make the updates you recommend. Is this appliance available at Lowe's?
Dan, all good by you mate?
Dan is the man. Could fall asleep listening to this stuff.
Knowing more is so much important than having more.
Dan it would be great if you would do something on Klanghelm, especially SDRR. Such a nice saturation especially when unlinked with drift. Also Tony is the opposite of PA - 1 man show but he still delivers. MJUC is great as well.
Seconding this!
I'd love to see him do the DC8C3.
@@weeschwee me too!
I second this. These are true gems. I've tried many saturation plugins, but I keep coming back to SDRR and DC8C is a workhorse.
Chris over at Hendyamps is a madman when it comes to designing color boxes.
Did you check out the god particle?
I’m a bit worried about using things that get my mixes way better without understanding what they do because they might be ruining something that I just can’t hear since I’m mixing mainly with headphones
Not yet, sorry. I suggest you check some God Particled mixes out in the real world on a few different systems, and if it still sound good, bank it and stop worrying. It is possible for mix bus processing to improve a mix dramatically: as long as you're bypassing at equal loudness when comparing it's perfectly valid in principle.
Hope you are well, Dan. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on the recently released Kirchhof EQ as compared to Pro-Q3! All the best, love your videos.
I'm curious about how this plugin would compare, head-to-head, with the Vertigo VSM-3? I use the VSM-3 on the master bus to bring out certain parts of the mix, which it seems The Oven also does.
I want to see Dan review an Acustica plugin so bad, and talk about the so called volterra kernel sampling methodology. If he decides to do it eventually, I would recommend something like Magenta, which is the Manly Massive Passive, or Aquamarine (Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor), or Azure, a Knif Soma Mastering EQ, supposedly sampled from a mastering engineer's signal path (whatever that means).
Dan, thanks for all your knowledge you share,
Can you say anything about the Weiss DS1 from Softube? Mostly how do you find the limiter?
Cheers!
Sorry, haven't tried it yet.
Excellent review. The random channel thing on PA plugs always irritated me and I wasn't sure why but you nailed it.
Hey, Dan, hope you are well. I was wondering, if you ever read the comments here, could you make a video on mastering classical music? I struggle really hard in making it sound good on soundcloud for example. Your help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
Have you got a SoundCloud link so I can hear what you mean?
Perhaps you could consider to take into account using a simple gain utility after and before the oven, I mean just for the sake if its too annoying otherwise to me it seems to make sense here to have an attenuation before and after the dry wet plugin internally. However using gain utilities could massively help in much cases.
Audient has done the opposite of that dry/wet knob with the output level on the Evo interface: turning the dial enough to light up 1/3rd of the indicators gets you only to 10% of max output. The other 90% is in the remaining 2/3rds of the scale. If you are wearing sensitive headphones or you are listening through monitors at low volume, you don't have to worry that a tiny adjustment will be too much. Also there's an acceleration curve built in to the dial's rotation. If you turn the knob quickly it takes 2-1/2 turns to get from 0-100%. If you turn very slowly, it's closer to 4 turns. (Unfortunately the mouse control over the output level in Audient's software is just linear, with no acceleration, and over a pretty short runway.)
You okay, mate? Send up a smoke signal.
Not sure why the issue with the mix knob is such a surprise - Surely the signal will always get louder when combining wet and dry right?
And the output knob is basically a fader for the entire plugin?
A properly designed cross fader will maintain the loudness when mixing between dry and wet, but only if the wet part of the signal is loudness matches. The dry signal doesn't need loudness matching to the input signal: it is the input signal.
I've been messing with this plugin for a few days and I really like how it sounds, I do find the features to be lacking for a plugin made in 2022, but overall I'm really happy with it
Don't bake ya brains too much. Crystal madness was already fucking wild
The parallel mix button workflow fail is unfortunately present in most CUBASE stock plugins. I think that when you move from 100 to 50 %, it just turns up the dry signal, leaving the wet at unity, resulting in a (6 db?) louder setting at 50 % . From 50 % to 0%, it turns down the wet signal, resulting in a decrease in volume. I never tested this hypothesis however.
Hey Dan! I’m a big fan of your videos! I would love to see a review of Eventide split EQ. some of my other fav plug-in reviewers talked about it but I always am thinking about the behind it he scenes (how it works, phase relationship, null comparisons) I also am curious to see how you would use it, and areas where you wouldn’t. Cheers!
Parallel mix knob will always affect the loudness, no matter which odred their in.
But i do agreed a dry/wet knob would partly solve this. Only problem is it's a distortion unit. And only hearing the 100% wet signal of that would basically be useless. Would be just noise. And im not sure how that would correlate with varying input sources.
Hmm
I’m all for this new upload schedule. These vids are amazing.
Ahhh one of the few times I love having reaper and having a mix knob that’s proper for every plugin 😊🙏🏿🔥
Kind Sir Dan.
Please, please make a video about some of Analog Obsession's plugins. Really keen to hear what your thoughts are about his compressors and EQs (especially if they cramp or not).
Honestly I love this plugin and if you know how it behaves it sounds dope
Hey Dan! Hope you're doing good with all that is going on right now. I have a question about plugin doctor. How do you test hardware with it? I cant seem to find any tutorials on that
There's a 'use hardware' button at the top next to the plug-in slots. You will need to configure the correct IO, possibly in settings iirc? And I think there's a set latency button or similar. Then just be careful to keep your test signals below full scale: plugins don't care about that usually but your converters do.
@@DanWorrall thanks Dan! Found it, got it to work. Now I can test out the only piece of outboard gear I have... guitar pedals :)
Your requests are more than valid for such a great sounding plugin!
Hey Dan! We miss you!
dan you’re the man saving our day once again
i don't understand why so many distortion/saturation plugins get the sequence of mix and output wrong. have they never tried to a/b compare different mix stages with each other or with dry? this even happens in one of my favourite saturation plugins. when i told the developers about it they accepted to fix it tho, so that was cool
To create a MID-SIDE mode for any plug-in in Reaper I use the JS blumleiner (Reaper resources).
Thanks for the review. Great job.
Dan, I would love to hear your take on Vertigo VSM3, an older PA release. I have the Oven but in spite of not having oversampling I'll still grab the VSM3 because it does have MS processing and in my opinion is more versatile.
what make you think it doesnt oversample internally? Most PA stuff does.
Great video, with clear explanations of the flaws in this plug in.
Style over function appears to be the general theme.
Dan, have you tried the new Tone Projects plugin, Basslane Pro? I have a feeling you’d like it
Not yet, sorry...
@@DanWorrall No worries. Definitely worth checking out though, even if you don’t make a video for it. Cheers
Why is it called "The Oven" if you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food?
Thanx once again for this insights, I would love to hear your opinions on the God Particle plugin!? Cheers
With great power comes great responsibility...
How about Maag plugins? From Plugin Alliance too. I often see they EQ, everywhere.
the melda saturator, which i love, has the same issue with parallel mixing and output volume - i really don't understand what the point of that is even supposed to be?
Wake and bake with Dan! ❤
Besides the lack of gain matching..... Can this take massive Oversampling? I have to rewatch this. No plug-in doctor graphs? Ok. I guess i get that. You just think it sounds good. Always nice to know if you can crank upper end harmonics and compensate with oversampling though .... Many can't. And it's a really cool effect that hardware can do.
"wake and bake"
way ahead of you, man
i have a video request: maybe you could make an explanation of how lossy audio works, there aren't any videos that would explain it in depth so maybe you could do it
I won't be too surprised if they eventually release a MS version of it as they did with the Black Box. And I'll probably get it too because that just works so well :)
Easily the most savage RUclips video description I've ever read for music channels. I had to google SP and WOW lol
Too much?
@@DanWorrall Not in the slightest, she surely would have appreciated those linguistics
Had to google that too. Blackest of black humour.
Not only is there a bolt in the way of the Low/Mid/High burner types, they are not spaced evenly as well, hurting my brain. Despite or due to the device being branded "Brainworx"?
Brainhertz.
Lol.
@@DanWorrall Making fun of them hertz them too, there goes your discount! I wouldn't bother anyway, I don't see the point of these magical devices, can't we just mix with what's been available for years, understandable and transparent devices that make overview and troubleshooting so much easier? Thanks for the video anyway!
I was sure Brainworx's Mono Maker didn't just remove bass from side channel. Instead, it moves the removed side bass into the mid channel. So if your floor tom is panned 100% to the right, then applying mono maker will leave the attack panned but the sustain centered. Can someone confirm that?
If you dislike the Oven plugin layout you will HATE the next saturation plugin "Looptrotter" from plugin alliance. If you want a great alternative to the Oven it's NOT the plugin alliance version but the VERTIGO Sound VSM-4. Vertigo sound made their own emulations and updated the VSM saturator and the VSC Compressor. They are not cheap but do sound good.
Miss you Dan
Dan you're the man! Your views are much appreciated. Thank you Sir you have my subscription 😉
Hey Dan, hope you're doing well. No videos from you in the past 3 months, just hope it's all ok and you're just busy with cool stuff.