Does ANALOG REALLY SOUND BETTER?
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- Опубликовано: 4 авг 2024
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INDEX:
00:00 - Intro
00:19 - I had a comment
00:57 - The setup
01:38 - Creating the settings
03:12 - Manually adjusting the Pro-Q
04:04 - Using an analyser to check?
04:50 - Comparison
05:36 - Automatic matching in the Pro-Q
06:30 - Comparison
07:48 - UAD Pultec
07:56 - Gain problem?
08:49 - Matching the UAD Pultec
10:35 - Comparison
11:25 - Will they null?
14:35 - What is going on?
15:34 - Disclosure
16:20 - Support me! 
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Thank you so much! First thing.. I'm glad you took my original comment as positive. I didn't mean for my original skepticism to come off as aggressive. I think this is a valid line of enquiry and I am happy you think so too. Not going to lie, I was hoping for cheap plugins to match the hardware because I can afford one and not the other. I think the top sounded a bit more 3d on the hardware? Perhaps not enough of a difference to keep me up at night though. It's difficult with youtube compression. I'm guessing the additional harmonics play a role. I both stand corrected and feel slightly vindicated. Bravo x
By the way I think your point that no one would use pro-q in this way (and would therefore not achieve the same curve) was an excellent observation.
Thanks a lot for the initial comment, I didn’t see it as aggressive, as I’m saying in the video. RUclips compression makes this comparison, unfortunately, a lot more difficult.
RUclips sounds surprisingly good. Do your own test, upload and download a sine sweep
@@GingerDrums Yes I agree, Side are ugly when listening solo but in context Its not apprent, like 320bps MP3
@@DarkTrapStudio it's pretty damn linear. It's essentially a myth that RUclips has a sound, according to my tests it nulls very well, certainly not audible in blind test. Yes I'd compare to 320 mp3 (most people can't even hear 240kbps mp3 double blind).
I think what makes analog sound good is the same thing that makes a grand piano sound good. The waves going through the tube almost organize themselves through sympathetic resonance, making the higher frequencies fall in line with each consecutive lower frequency, like a raft riding over the peaks and troughs on an ocean wave.
this is my favourite voodoo description . you are a true poet ! :)
Are was just about to type this then I seen your comment
As a student of the piano I concur. Very well said.
Love your channel bro. Your reviews are unbiased
Very interesting video. Like the your approach how you analyse stuff, very technical, which I think we all like. I’m looking into getting my first outboard gear and some of your videos really helped me do decide. Keep going the nice work. Greetings from Germany
Lets face it the Empress looks WAY cooler, and will be much more fun to use and immediate. Having been ‘in the box’ for the past 10-15 years I’m going back out in a huge way. Just because I can. We live in an amazing time for music equipment. We have so much choice, can have the absolute best of both worlds, digital for cost effectiveness and convenience, analogue for a little added warmth and tactile immediacy, hybrid for infinite choices with little limitation. Why do we have to pick just one when we can have them all! I’ve ordered an Empress, already have full Fab bundle. It is amazing…. But hell moving a mouse around is so boring and soulless! Have fun folks and enjoy whatever you choose to use.
"But hell moving a mouse around is so boring and soulless!"
I've seen people say that a lot and am surprised more aren't using midi controllers. I rarely touch my mouse when EQing.
@@marloband7238 i have a UF8 and IC1 and they are a big step up, but still one knob per function is so easier. (Assuming you don’t have to switch between mixes 5 times a day, or recall a mix 6 months later) of course. So i get both arguments.
I think a lot of the pro engineer / audio scene is more about aesthetics and simply ownership and wealth/success display to a large extent. I think there's a lot to be said for entering a studio full of hardware and lights and cables though than just a laptop and speakers for the creative atmosphere, the setting of the mood to enter the creative mindset. It's a lot easier to do that from a computer screen in a studio full of hardware, than a blank room with two speakers and a computer and mouse.
@@SamHocking also of you’re in the creative zone it os rather easier to be spontaneous and collaborative with real gear than a Daw. But I appreciate that’s likely a niche use case: more than one person ‘playing’ the EQs, Sat/filter boxes and compressor to see what magic happens of what beaks. Not sure if it has much to do displays of affluence. Far easier to park a Ferrari outside the studio if that’s you’re bag
It is all horseshit anyway. When the Sun burns out if won’t matter what Eq was used. Nobody will hear it. 🤣🤣
But what’s really cool about audio - whether pro not - is that it does not have to be binary. Not like Mac vs PC, iPhone vs Galaxy, It does not have to be either or and tribal. There’s a harmonious middle ground where bliss and joy exists….. The Hybrid Workflow! 🤣
I agree with hybrid with a heavier leaning towards hardware.
I enjoyed this video, as I've been doing many comparisons vs my hardware and plugins, for many years. Personally, Plugin Doctor would've been the best option to get the eqs to match, because you can see both (hardware and software) eq curves at the same time. These videos will never get old, even as software gets better and closer to physical gear.
Very timely video. I have an empress and it should arrive soon.
Would love to see more videos like this! I am also really interested in the remaining differences between digital and analog.
Curious - if this was a digital plugin review perhaps you would’ve investigated things going on beyond just eq and used multiple tools to try to recreate the plugin, would it not have been similarly fair to add some Saturn on the top end or something similar to try to recreate the difference you are hearing?
It seems like plugindoctor would be a perfect plugin for actually comparing the exact EQ curves between software and hardware. Just did it for the first time this past week between the BX SSL4k E plugin and a DIY 4KE Black knob 500 series module clone and it made it so easy to match the hardware and software curves together. Also cool to really hear such a precise A/B of analog and software against each other from the daw.
exactly my thought !
What are your thoughts on the comparison between the hardware and plugin version?
That opposite pan + stereo analyzer trick for matching the curves was so efficient
Anyway, this is an interesting test that confirm my choice of going ITB. In the video is fairly evident from the analyser that there are artifacts when matching. But is a fair test and I am impressed by the ProQ 😛
I am ITB since ProTools 4 and never regret it.
what's the name of the plug-in you use to analyze the frequency curve of the equalizer at 08:11
Thanks in advance ❤
Great Video! They sounded both good but different - I preferred the Pro Q TBH
Excellent comparison, thank you. Couldn't you get a little closer by adding a transformer saturator like True Iron before/after ProQ? This is the approach I'm starting to take, adding transformer saturation with plugins to try to get as close as possible to analog characteristics.
Thanks for your videos very instructive for me an autodidact.
Why the null test is interesting, I would be curious to see how many people could hear a difference in a blind test and which they would prefer.
I'd say the guy who left the comment was right. In my studio there wasn't a significant difference. A difference yes, but it was minor and only engineers could hear it. My girlfriend thought I was crazy when I said "You don't hear a difference at all?" She's a great example of an average listener.
The Auto Matched EQ was definitely the closest. Great work as always my friend!
I don't think you showed this, but I'm assuming you did some manual latency compensation by adjusting the timing of the recorded hardware signal? I would guess a good amount of the differences would be attributed to the tube amp stages adding some harmonics. As you know, this could be tested by feeding in a sinewave and viewing the frequency response... or automatically using the new hardware modes on PluginDoctor 2 I think :)
Thanks for the testing!
Nulling a digital signal with another one, which went through a converter is not possible by simply flipping the polarity. One reason is because sample shifts can happen in subsample ranges when going throug a converter (given you tried to match them by aligning them manually). Phase shifting is definitely less of a problem here compared to that.
In order to compare these two, it would be better to make an analog roundtrip with the ProQ as well and compare that with the empress. That way the effect of the converter can be negated (even if it might not be that big, but still, some converters have a small impact on the transients as well).
Love your channel, What is the analysis tool you are using?
Sick video! What is that analysis plug in btw?
What you think in trying to match the curve with the Q Clone from Waves? Do you think it will match better?
The proQ has a natural phase setting at the bottom of the UI which from what I remember it is quite different from the zero latency in terms of phase shift but personally I think at the end these are just tools, I’ve heard some terrible sound music with really nice analog gear and also the opposite is true too and with digital also that applies too.
Yeah, I think there's this widespread myth that digital gear not only makes music "sound worse", but even drives musicians to "make worse music"
When i found the switch, for me the difference of "zero Latency" vs "Natural phase" was almost night and esspecially for the low end. I think with it it would be way closer to the empress.
Could you please tell me what video you made where you sat in at an anolog mastering suite with a freind
to each his own workflow. I use Bertom EQ curve analyzer to match the curve as exactly as possible, I mean like 0.1 - 0.2 db accurate. Of course I don't know how accurate you were behind the curtain (for such things I usually don't trust approximations by automatic processes) but I wonder if the audible difference is worth the 2000,-
Would be cool if you could provide the white noise rendered, the Empress track rendered and we try if we can null it. I mean, if a bigger community comes to the same conclusion...we can happily lean back and know for sure. 🙂
on my system i couldn't hear any difference after you fully adjusted the curves on the pro Q 3. very interesting video
Get your ears cleaned and/or a better system - there was a massive difference - the HW version had loads of saturation not present in ProQ.
You should've matched against Pro-Q in Natural Phase mode, which has equivalent phase response with analog EQs. It's practically impossible to hear this slight difference in the top end phase response by ear, but it will show up as significant difference when nulling. (This applies to other digital EQs too, except many don't offer such a mode at all.)
who cares if you can't hear it
@@this_is_jmdub For the sake of comparison you should, because otherwise the null test results are flawed and unreliable.
@@this_is_jmdub The frequency response of IIR filters begins to differ a lot from analog as the frequency increases (it's just math). You can avoid this by increasing the sampling frequency or using more filters to compensate the difference. Noone can hear this only because different doesn't mean bad, who cares what type of filter is used if it sounds good?
@@this_is_jmdub sound waves can also be heard by ears , ears convert them . they travel allover your body brain etc and envoirment no matter you have ears or not
Talking in general about emulations: Analogue gear would be affected by power fluctuations in the grid. So which powergrid a console is hooked into and what the wiring in the building is like would have an effect.
You could also measure the empresses response using REW or something similar to more closely match the eq curves. That would also allow for having a look at THD, IR, etc.
I strongly believe that a lot of the time when people say that analogue gear has a certain "magic" to it they still just mean a combination of measurable differences and describe it like that for a lack of technical knowledge. Would be quite interesting to see how analogue effects not just the FR.
i wasnt looking at the screen for this video i didnt want to bias one way. i could not tell when you were switching between the pro q one but i could with the uad pultec.
Recently I tried something slightly similar. Got a tube preamp for my hifi (or midfi) in an attempt to warm things up slightly before my class D amplifier. Does the trick. However I do most of my listening from a mini pc with Equalizer APO that can also run VST's which got me thinking. Found a bunch of tube preamp simulators and it gets very, very close. (Similar smoother high's, more body and a sense of improved imaging perhaps due to added harmonics.) I guess the placebo effect of having actual analog components is hard to overcome though.
Hey man, love ur videoes!
Got a question for you, im releasing a song.. a pretty bass heavy tech house song, and im struggleing a bit to mix/master the song with the vocals. The vocal should be prominent in the mix, but if i use a MB or a Dynamic EQ on the Instrument stem when the vocal is playing, i feel like the sound looses all the character it has.
It just becomes a sub heavy dunky tune, with no hi-bass basically.
Any tips on what i could go about trying?
Also, im using soothe2 to sidechain the intruments. I have it set to flat so it basically takes everything (a tiny bit) that clashes with the vocal.
Automate the sounds that you want to hear to come up more when the vocal is not playing.
Also you could try trackspacer on the the other sounds with the vocal as the side chain input, but be very gentle with it. It will make the vocal standout by only attenuating the freqs that are present in the vocal.
I look at it like every plugin and piece of outboard gear is just another paintbrush in your sonic palette, none better than all and each good in their own respective right. The more you have, the more exponential creative options you have to help define sounds to your taste. I'm also glad this shows the difference, I'm always a fan of more options personally.
the point being that plugins are great when they offer us something analog cannot do (very few plugins actually) but when they are just emulations of analog gear, they are always inferior.
@@mollyoko I just don't believe in things like "this will always be better" when it comes to audio
@@asteroidmrecords the proof is in the listening.Theres a reason why hi quality productions still use analog consoles and outboard gear. Accumulation of ringing/phasing/distortion etc with multiple plugins thins out productions.
@@mollyoko maybe in 2004, as far as these days there is no issue with plugins "thinning out the mix" especially when using proper sampling rate. Every hi quality production you hear now days has tons of plugins on it. I appreciate your opinions but you're pretty far off base with how music is actually produced nowadays. We have everything drop API to Neve preamps, a huge mic locker different compressors, limiters etc, but there isn't anything on the analog world that can do something like eventides split EQ plugin does, it just doesn't exist. Outboard gear is nice to have just as plugins are nice to have. Like I keep saying, the combination of both is better than either. The only real rule in audio production is "if it sounds good, it is good!"
@@asteroidmrecords I use an api and burl, cranesong, atc, split eq, fab filter etc. I have an isolated tuned control room. I can hear the differences that stacked plugins make to my productions and mixes. Like I said, I use plugins where they can be creative and do things I can't do with analog. If you can't hear the differences maybe you should improve your monitoring.
Cool video! It would be interesting to also hear a version with the ProQ + your converters against the Empress + your converters. IMHO you already get a lot of analogue vibe by running through the converters alone.😃
Yup. This is the error most comparisons make
Ahaha "analogue vibe", do some testing yourself before you comment. Nobody can hear a single pass in practise.. you would even struggle to hear five passes ADDA! Things like aliasing play a far more important role in the difference between software and hardware.
Thx for another great video! - im looking for an analog EQ for my mixbus - can you recommend one - in the 1500-2000 Euros-class.
Thx again!
Elysia does great, rack and 500 series, and so does Wes if you run 500series :)
Tegeler Audio EQP-1. Best mixbus polish in that price range. I've seen used units for around 1700,-
I found an interesting situation about one of eq bands on the UAD Legacy SSL channel strip and when I emailed them they said it was accurate to the original.. then they come out with an "updated" version of the SSL channel strip 🤷🏻♂️ still like UAD
what you hear that is different between Empress and ProQ is that Empress also adds saturation and since its analog and stereo, small difference between L and R give it some more "wideness"... software is great if you need clean sound but if you need saturation/distortion/character/randomness analog is still irreplaceable
I have been putting off buying a 500 series compressor or EQ. They just sound so close to software counterparts. Do you have any favorite 500 series EQ or compressors?
Wide q 5k boosts really seem to give the openness I had been looking for. I am not sure if the 5k thing is a response of converters or digital processing, but the subtle 5k wide q boosts really seem to compensate for me, on literally everything. Give it a shot.
This is often good with digital eqs that have high frequency cramping. Boosting lower high frequencies sounds better thx to less cramping. Pro Q of course does not cramp :)
Hi what is that analyser. Thanks.
The UAD Pultec is out on Spark. Could you do a comparison video?
Even on my phone i can hear easily that hardware has something extra micro articulation which sounds bit more alive. But it doesn't mean that it is better. Probably on main elements in the mix it could make some difference but maybe with some little saturation and minimal transient enhancement it would sound indistinguishable from the hardware? Who knows?
A) try Pro-Q in "Natural Phase" mode
B) I always assumed that the "match EQ" in a bunch of plugins are essentially Null Testing internally to the lowest residual signal. They won't perfectly match an Analog piece of gear. But 2 brand new pieces of the same analog gear won't perfectly Null either. There's an Acceptable Tolerance that should be the goal.
C) did you measure THD on the analog gear? Might that effect the results?
You have to measure phase.
what is most in the face for me is that the hardware glues the bass to the rest, while the software eq doesn't. I am sure you could do this with adicional software though
The word ‘better’ is rife with subjectivity. Your idea of ‘better’ is just as valid as mine, and vicea-versa.
So you get to decide relative to the track you’re working on if it’s better.
Do you have plugin doctor, because I think you can measure your hardware with plugin doctor, then try to match the curves and the saturation of the hardware to ProQ3 and Saturn?
I was hoping Pro Q would have been updated by now with the inclusion of vintage curve modes 😃 coincidentally -
Kirchoff EQ is basically that. Might want to check that out.
Imho using analog eqs is mostly a workflow thing, to get a certain sound in seconds instead of minutes. If you're doing mostly hobby projects, they're probably not worth it (but still fun). If you're a pro, and your time is worth a lot of money, they can be very helpful.
Also, the dropoff in the high end is not only because of your convertors, but also because iirc a pultec attenuates a little bit even with the attenuation at 0.
I'm pretty sure most pros would disagree entirely considering graphic eqs are much easier and faster to dial in than non graphic ones, but even if you prefer stepped eqs like a pultec for example, most still reach for plugins because recalls on analog gear at this point, make it nearly worthless to use outboard gear on their level unless there's a sound they really really want, or it's a master bus, or drum bus for color that just never changes. Outboard gear is way more time consuming
Also UAD Pultecs are known to be 1 to 1 with the hardware, they will actually null and in some cases even sound better than older hardware units. There are some great videos like Paul Thirds showing thay they are identical
What’s that analyzer he used?
4:14 What analyzer are you using?
For me, Pro Q is perhaps best because you can add warmth with another VST if you need to emulate or improve on the Empress. But, like vinyl records, the Empress is expensive and inconvenient so it should sell well in the contemporary music business.
Great compare! To POV i think you are the distortion harmonics, and the mono left/right not really 100% mono on analog. But, the most important for me is the usage. I use a plugin or an analog because I have what i what easier. The musicality is the first priority for us yep?
Listening on phone
Matched curved comparison works pretty cool
In my opinion the Warmth and smoothness of the empress comes through very clear anyway
Very interesting. Thanks for doing this test. While I preferred the hardware, it's more evidence (to me) that investing in hardware EQs does not provide the same ROI (sound quality improvement over plugins ) that investing in hardware compressors and pres provide versus plugins. UA EQP, Acustica EQs, Kirchhoff, ProQ3...they're really good. Yet, I'm still getting a pair of Audioscape EQPs later this year ;)
Its always small differences when it comes to analog vs digital. But the small fidelity differences in a 20+ tracked projects makes a big difference in the final mix.
Total Harmonic Distortion as well as self-noise? Saturation might come into play.
Apart from the phase settings that others have pointed out, it sounds to me like the hardware unit adds a little bit of compression in the bass that pro-q doesn't. This wouldn't really be surprising as analog is non-linear by nature and that's the sort of thing circuitry just does. I think you could replicate it even better with more plugins, but part of the goodness of analog (and more specialized digital plugins) is the all-in-one package of the sound you're looking for.
That's probably also the reason of identical sine/square wave tests, but difference in actual practice. Those tests only valid for true LTI systems and analog circuits are neither linear nor time-invariant.
I think empress has different Curves from a pultec. Also has less of the Dynamic reduction of the pultec. The pro q matches well but has no saturation.
To me the biggest difference is dynamics, the pro Q is fully linear and the filters react exactly the same no mater the gain level or low end energy it needs to proces. The Empress clearly has shifting bands and amounts of filtering depending on how hard the tubes are working. This was most obvious in the more quiet part of the song, where all of a sudden it brightened up a lot compared to the Pro Q.
I'm wondering if the difference has less to do with overall added harmonics, and more to do with how harmonics are generated in response to transients and micro-transients. I've often noticed (and did notice with this example), that analog gear tends to not only make things feel warmer, but also more present. It has a way of bringing out sounds, even when certain things are cut. I noticed here the kick felt slightly more present, even slightly compressed. I think this could apply the feeling of "air" which is maybe quick transients in the high end getting harmonic boosts due to a quirk of analog processing? Maybe those tone generating components have a transient response that's just not getting captured by sweeping a sine wave through them and seeing how they react.
There's also just so many differences in analog gear, even from unit to unit, depending on age, model, any number of factors. Even in newer models, I wonder how variable these units really are, and is that variability/randomness a factor in why they seem new and unique and special to us? Or are these component parts even so unreliable that we need to start introducing randomness at the sample level, and see where that gets us?
I also often ask myself... If we started with digital, and then analog came later... Would we like digital better? I guess it's more of a philosophical question, but I do have to wonder. As we get closer and closer to truly indistinguishable plugins, does it matter? Is a song really benefitting from a full analog mix vs. a digital mix if most people are gonna listen to it on an Echo or AirPods? I know we want to do our best work, but when it comes down to it, is hardware actually necessary for that?
What is the name of the analyser that draws this multicoloured line?
Bet no actual consumer can tell a difference. It would be fun to see you and a few other folks try and identify the hardware/plugs in a true blind test, if such a thing is possible.
empress sounds tighter in the lowend then the q3, esp the low lows
How much is difference 2K Euro? Time to sell my hardware eq :) Thanks for convinced me.
Agreed about testing with a more extreme setting. General thought is always that analog is more forgiving and the digital with get harsh.
did you compensate for delay
Appears to be a very subtle limiting-type effect on the signal through the Empress - presumably analog distortion - which is not present on the strictly Pro-Q track. This would seem to demonstrate the main difference/benefit of analog vs. digital. The curves are matched, but tone is not. Moreover, if one's goal/standard for a mix is the sound of great recordings from the pre-DAW era, then these types of subleties associated with analog gear are essential.
Freq curves aside, I usually hear a little bit of extra dynamic saturation from the analog units. Somerimes analog eq,s sound like if they would compress a bit, and viceversa.
why would you not measure the hammerstien harmonics curve also? surely that's the other half the signal.
You should try Fabfilter Volcano 3 that is a non-linear EQ unlike Fabfilter Pro Q which is clean. For me, that plugin is a game changer for subtle distortion more like a real Pultec, Pulsar Massive is amazing too, not as flexible as Volcano 3.
The automatic matching could be useful to take your hardware "with you" on a laptop as a preset.
To my ears the hardware is adding another element which is somewhere between compression and saturation. With the hardware I can hear the low-level information (like reverb) moving to the timing of the music's dynamics. Transients are also softened in the hardware version. I'm not hearing this with the Pro Q. I've always thought that one of the things good hardware does is make low level things move in a subtle way. You can hear that really clearly here. Not all hardware does this, which is why some hardware to my ears doesn't sound particularly great. Whereas some does sound really good and I think this might be why. No reason why you couldn't do this with software though I think if you put your mind to it.
There is a difference in "better" that is directly proportional to the Mixer/Mastering person's Music backgorund. ear maturity, experience and the knowledge of Science audio engineering. Then, the answer is really simple.....what sound holds the the closest to the original sound....so that is the answer. I do like the presenters style and approach. From there you keep on creating... 🙂
the empress sounds slower and denser, also had a lot more saturation than I anticipated. I think if you added a simple saturation with a very low mix value you would probably get very close
Okay what I will say has nothing to do with audio quality, you basically said everything that I was thinking and more. What I do want to add to the choice regarding getting gear vs a plugin. Hardware you can always resell, most plugins with a few exceptions, you can't re-sell if at some point you found something else or over time notice that you don't use it. I think that's a valuable reason not many people consider when making a hardware vs software decision.
One big reason why they never null is analog always have THD and the THD behaviour is so complex which is kinda impossible to mimic. The analog gears I have they always have slightly different amount of THD on each frequency and different frequencies may interact with each other. When it comes to digital its always 'fixed'.
always entertaining!
Spiritual CHAKRA EQ - Calling Dan Worrall !
I hear some subtle changes, but which one is better....
i LOVE THE WARMTH OF EMPRESS
I echo what others have said, it's easier and accurate to use either Bertom EQ analyser or PluginDoctor to match them, and i would try Crave EQ in Analog Phase mode to see if that gets closer to the hardware. That may possibly present something similar in terms of phase, and what i like about it is that it doesn't ruin the stereo imaging nor smear transients. But of course, it's doesn't add any harmonics, so any distortion added by the hardware won't be replicated.
After rigorous testing, even the best Pultec emulations software has to offer, did not come near the pillowy low end girth that a pair of lowly Klark Teknik Pultec modded clones added. And what beat UAD and Acustica was the old Focusrite Liquidmix, it emulates harmonics also.
Aside from the mixbus, i'm happy to use a top digital eq, software eq at least comes closer to hardware than plugin compressors do.
I can hear the kick sound bigger and warmer on the empress even on a 30€ bluetooth speaker :)
You should do a frequency domain null test so the phase is shift ignored? Is that even true? I think not because the two are coralated
Could you please tell which analyzer that is? Thanks.
Flux pure analyser
@@Whiteseastudio Thank you.
For a mix and mastering engenniers the difference between them is like Day and Night. It's not just about the curves, is about the texture that the hardware adds to the signal.
you didn't say if you believe we will get there sometime in future we pretty identical emulations ...I need something to hope and be excited for!!...let me know asap??
Much lower with the matching. I'd be interested in hearing them phase shifted to hear what's left. What exactly the analog signal is adding before matching. That's what we need in plug-ins emulating analog gear. That's what's missing. The saturation the warmth. Omg you're doing it! That's so much left!
Are the files time aligned to the sample?
yes, you can literally see me doing that...
@@Whiteseastudio thanks, so the phase align must be the change.
I have such a beast of a CPU right now on my PC that i can push oversampling and other stuff for many plugins so far that i don't notice the difference between well made analog emulation and the real stuff.
what is your vertical analyzer???!!
Flux Pure Analyzer
Similarly, I don't know fully but I think analog gear is literally organic and works with non-linearity. That's why they response dynamically, to dynamic source. I believe that we human is animal and we find non-perfection "pleasing" and "musical".
An EQ doesn't respond dynamically to a dynamic source as it is a static processor (unless it is a dynamic EQ). If you measure analog gear, you'll see that it is much more precise as a lot of people try to make you believe. The non-linearities are coming from distortion/saturation of certain components, which have a certain transient softening effect, which is not present in the fabfilter EQ. It would have been nice, to measure the distortion of the empress as well and try to recreate it. We'd probably see a much closer match and people would probably really struggle in a blind test.
Why didn't you do the test in linear phase or natural phase mode and also @96k to eliminate the antialiasing filter of the conversation?
I'd say that analog equipments's electronic elements always introduce a bit of distortion that adds harmonics. Likely impossible to fully replicate in digital unless you overload the cpu/dsp.
I don’t know about everyone else… all those eq sounds could be more than useable in the mix. It sounded fine. Haha.
I hope you're aware that the warmth of Empress doesn't necessarily come from the curves but from the harmonic distortion which the ProQ lacks. Perhaps a better digital EQ to compare with Empress would be TDR Nova (there is a free version with 4 bands), which is a parallel EQ, like the Empress, so the phase shift would be more similar. Nova features a subtle saturation in individual bands in +modes, but imho the best would be to use it clean and add a separate saturation stage after it, but you'd need to first analyze the harmonics added by the Empress's make-up gain circuit in order to know what kind of saturation we're talking about here.
Pultec curves are really nothing that can't be achieved with a digital eq. The other problem is that many Pultec-style EQs have a fixed hi-pass filter at around 20Hz in order to prevent the shelf boost to overly boost the extreme subs. A visit to Plugin Doctor would probably reveal this and imho using PD would be better than ProQ's auto-match and you also wouldn't have to guess where the curves and boosts match. Different Pultec re-creations have different amount of boost on same positions and this is the pitfall of most Pultec comparissons.
To me the transients sounds duller on the plug ins. Like it does indeed boost and cut the same frequenzies, but in a dead way. Hardware seems to affect the sample in a more musical way. Hard to explain, but the hardware sounds much nicer in my opinion.
That's the ghost and magic in the analog machine! And you can't deny it!
Analog just seems to make things sound more present while plugins put them behind a thin screen. It's like having a little bit of blurred vision but not realizing it until you suddenly put on glasses.
Those who say that usually fail blind listening tests.
There are a lot of 1176 plugins out there and they do sound like a real life 1176 on hardware, the problem is your reference point. Even hardware varies, each real 1176 sounds slightly different.
What you get with digital is consistency and predictability.
One thing I learned from this is that there are known unknown unknowns. Wytse knows he doesn't know what is going on in analogy audio gear exactly. But he doesn't know specifically what it is that needs to be investigated. Hence, known unknown unknowns.
I also learned, by looking it up, that the Empress isn't too horribly expensive. Less than £2000. Thanks, as always!
I'd like to know more about the term "ringing" (there being a difference of phasing but also of ringing). I imagine that analog filters have non-linear response but in level and in time, so is the ringing variation being considered happening somewhat equally in both the amplitude and time domains, whereas the digital version is more static? Anyway, I'm not clear at all so I'd love to see someone's thoughts on this.
Hey, ringing is an artifact of linear phase digital EQs. As far as I'm aware, analogue eqs don't ring, they cause phase shift. It's a bit misleading here that he suggests the empress could have different ringing...
@@GingerDrums Thank you very much. Yes, I believe you're correct about the most common usage (linear phase EQ's). I guess that's why I am confused - I know that steepness can cause issues and that sometimes analog EQ's can have more musical filter curves, but in terms of digital, I started facing the idea of how FFT approaches and introduced latency would affect this, I bailed. Anyway at second glance, there are maybe some other meanings that have been used for "ringing" and this is what my search found: "That's a lot of questions to answer in one post, plus some of those concepts need a background knowledge to be understood.
Ringing means Oscillation, and it happens in several situations, the Gibbs phenomenon links a certain type of ringing with the frquency response of a given system. Described in simple words the response of a very steep LPF to transitions will cause an initial overshoot plus several oscillations around the desired output for a certain settling time (the picture in the wiki page describes the phenomenon pretty well). On the other hand a LPF with a smooth transition and a gentle slope will have a longer settling time than its steep counterpart but no overshoot and/or ringing.
Another kind of ringing can be caused by feedback. In several filter topologies (both digital and analog) part of the output is fed back to the input to create the desired frequency response. Feedback can be positive or negative. Negative feedback means that the output is phase inverted before being fed back to the input and positive means nothing is done to it. It's important to know that while positive feedback can prove itself useful in certain situations it can also cause instability and self-Oscillation. Just to make an example we cause positive feedback every time we place a mic in front of a speaker that's monitoring its output).
A common use for positive feedback is in shaping the knee of a low or hi pass filter. The higher the Q the more the feedback required. At some point the feedback will be too much and the filter will start to self-oscillate. A circuit near the threshold of self-Oscillation will have a tremendously boosted frequency response around the cutoff frequency, which will translate in a continuous tuned ringing.
Phase response can also cause ringing. If a circuit uses negative feedback, a phase inversion due to a bad inherent phase response of the system itself might gradually turn negative into positive feedback, causing all the trouble I've just described above."
- Hope that helps someone!
@@cachelesssociety5187 very good. Yes in linear phase digital eq I should have been more specific "pre-ringing" is the name of that artifact. The type of ringing from steep filters and self oscillation refers to synthesisers more than EQ in this article.
@@GingerDrums Ah, that does make sense (synths rather than EQ - different) Thanks for helping me get my head around it.