Hey Aleksey,

With all the craze right now over plugins emulating well known analog consoles, such as the Waves SSL 4000, API and V-Series collections, the URS Classic Console Strip Pro, the UAD Neve 88RS, etc, etc, have you considered developing anything along these lines?  I know I read in another post that you've been working on other issues that have kept you from developing new plugs.  Any news on those things?

I'm a proud and very satisfied owner/user of a lot of your plugs, and just like I think they're as good or better than the equivilent plugs from the companies mentioned above, I think you could do better than them on a plug like this as well.

I'd love to see a Channel Strip plug that would have sections for Gate/Expander, EQ, and Compression, with routing options, such as putting the EQ before the Compressor or vice-versa, plus incorporating some sort of gear emulation of some big consoles.  I think it could be a huge seller.

I currently use your TapeBus plug for tape saturation, and TubeAmp and Lampthruster for Tube type saturation, but Solid-State, transistor type analog saturation seems to be tougher to find.  I'm currently using Tritone's ColorTone plug for it, but I'm not in love with it.

Anyway, just wondering if you'd thought about it.  I'm looking seriously at the Waves SSL Bundle, but I'd much rather give my money to you than have to go to the Dark Side (Waves, iLok, uggh....)

Thanks!
Dan

I forgot to add, The Voxformer plug seems VERY close to the type of functionality I'm talking about here, with the exception of internal routing options and the gear emulation.

A question about the Saturation knob in VoxFormer: What type of saturation were you trying to model on that?  Tape?  Tube?  Also, is the Saturation knob completely independent of all the other controls?  In other words, can I have Saturation without any compression, EQ, gain increase, etc, etc?

Thanks Again Aleksey,
Dan

Thanks for your message.  However, I just have to resound what I've already said: I'm not very keen on emulations.  In my opinion, it is a wrong way to go for me at least.  I think marketing hype like that should not overtake this whole business.

Voxformer features more-or-less 'transistor' saturation curve, with a bit of frequency adjustment so that it does not affect higher frequencies much.  Saturation knob can be used with all other modules disabled.

Aleksey - the thing that appeals about emulations,- certainly to me anyway,- is that they are generally very very simple to use and have a defined purpose.

The only criticism I would ever make of voxengo plugins is that they sometimes are too complicated to immediately spring to mind during a mixing session.

A plugin like la2a for instance, you turn the knob, it works.  It has it's own behaviour but I know the behaviour I'm looking for.

In that sense I would find it much more helpful to have 3 or 4 different flavours of Marquis compressor with only 2 or 3 knobs than having to remember what does what and having to deal with the fact that the release controls I still dont understand at all.  Psychologically it would be better for me to have a more restricted plugin which I can anticipate easily.

I hope that makes sense.

Whilst I agree that emulations themselves may or may not be valid - their ease of use and the speed at which you can get the sound you want with them should definitely be something any plugin maker would do well to appreciate.

I'd buy marquis again if you made different versions of the gui stripped down for specific purposes,- say a La2a type marquis gui, or an 1175 type gui with specific "flavours" in mind.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

Dave, I fully understand this, but I'm feeling a loss thinking I'll have to offer such 'one trick ponies'.  Of course, I will be working on further improving the work-flow and ease of use, but since I have no legal right to use 'LA2A' or '1175' labels, this logic won't work for me fully - it's based on market recognition mainly.

On the other hand, I do plan to supply 'hidden control panes' where possible, with a drop-down menu for instant 'character' selection.  But then again, having to select from dozen different characters will put you into the same situation as having to dial four additional knobs.

Anyway, as I've said, I'm not able to use LA2A labeling and offering something called 'LAVX' won't work for you or anyone else.

It's a good dilemma overall, but I do not want to change the way I produce plug-ins since I know for sure that sh*t recordings can be produced with any kind of device: be it simple or comprehensive.  While I as professional think that having a comprehensive and thought-out tool is better than having a simple tool that does most of its things 'automagically'.  With complex tools it's you the engineer who creates the sound, and with simple tools the tool creates the sound (due to degrees of freedom difference).  It's almost a philosophy: I'll better release a plug-in with 6 knobs (or with 3 knobs and a 'character' selector) than a plug-in with 3 knobs.

It's the same as with sound-recording, for example: you can put every person that visits your studio into the same corner and be happy; or you can put them in different corners depending on the instrument they play with.  Both approaches require a different amount of work and personal ability.  I think the same applies to plug-ins.  If you like UAD-1's compressors, or Waves', or URS's ones there is no single reason to buy Voxengo plug-ins if even they are cheaper if purchased individually.  It's my business to make Voxengo plug-ins good enough to purchase not only due to their affordability, but also due to extensive features they offer.

Aleksey, not to go over old ground at all here, but to pay attention to a specific thing Dave said.

I think he gives a good clue around dilemmas here, and you have said it yourself then with your talk about 'hidden control panels', and also, 'presets'.

I like to think I am pretty knowledgeable, having started out in broadcasting when I was 18, and we are not going to speak of how many decades between, or technology invention, or other things at Bell Labs, BBC, etc..

But in the heat of getting a recording done, such as for a 3.5 hour multimedia presentation of a giant corporation's sustainability thinking, I find I just can't work out all the subtle permutations that another day I will really need one of, and that your plugins can deliver.  Such as that trick I showed you once with the Transmodder plugin, that allowed 'fix' for a very peculiar echo slap caused in the end by something very unusual in a variable condensor mike pattern - a sharp frequency-filtered open back node....

Transmodder did the job of knocking this speech-formant-reflecting transient back, as you know - enough to get the big job done with no impossible re-recordings.

When you try to get your head around what I just said, then you see what we face ourselves with your very personally-designed and personally-explained approaches, and some loose or multi-coupled knobs you give us to tweak and control them.

I think you are right on the money to think of overlaid control panels.  These let you keep all the original functionality - but let us control it based on a presumed pattern - as the _type_, not _model_number_ of effect that Dave mentions, or on unique types you make up yourself.  Faces indeed.  The controls then can bring back, for example, antique, decoupled attack/release/level controls as an example, to control the beast.  And you can easily put in auto-out-level compensation, for an example, to make the effect even more nicely controllable than in its original form.

I think the creative possibilities are very great.  And now, imagining, if I tried a '1960's tube compressor' made out of your wonderful GlissEQ, and with its own overlaid control panel.  It almost does just what I want - what I 'heard'.  But....I actually want some of that BBC warmth from Gliss.  So, I click the overlaid panel away to reveal the original, with all the settings I made still applied.  I tweak up the dynamic activity on mid-base and mid-highs...and now have just what I want.  Because I had a base to build it on, from your specialist panel.

I am sure you see - and maybe it will leave something for your imagination to play with, as I am sure has given us many wonderful things so far.

Thanks, Aleksey, and apologies that I am too really busy to come here much.  But for the interest, I do ;).

Regards,
Clive (Narration)

Clive, one point you are probably missing: factory presets already represent what I would call 'character': you'll then just need to tweak three knobs that are program-dependent (attack/release/threshold).  This applies to almost any Voxengo plug-in.

Not to note that most 'modelled' equalizer plug-ins come with a lot of knobs while with GlissEQ you basically need to move 'control points' around - that's way simpler than what any hardware device can offer.

Actually, Crunchessor plug-in already represents what I'm talking about: it's a set of 'internal' presets for various aspects of plug-in.

But given these examples, I do not think you'll still be happy, because I think that you really opt for a two-knob device that does the job.  SSL Talkback compressor, LA-2A, 1176...  There's really not that many of them, but still they give the feeling such approach will make your life easier.

Hi Aleksey,

Well, I think too many people have been asking, and I am probably stepping into a well-bounded discussion here.  Even if with my own experiences and viewpoints.

Aleksey, I am not asking for such 2-knob wonders, though perhaps some of the requests are.  I think the places I have trouble is when the usual controls are conflated, and as in Voxformer, I think, we have just one or two knobs indeed!  Then I really puzzle, just to re-hear and discover what you've done.

I don't have any trouble with Gliss at all, once doing those experiments, nor with Transmodder, which is a bit exciting to discover about.

Anyway, I am not sure, but I still think there is a hint in there, in these auxiliary controls-from-point-of view.  But you would have to see what you think yourself.

Crunchessor always is great for my use, for anything I try with it, if mainly as a fast attack, slow decay gain rider, which it does very well at among the other things it can do.  So is GlissEQ, whether I am using the dynamic senses, or just using it as a very nice sounding and easily tunable EQ.

To finish, I completely agree that your presets are the main way to go with these plugins.  I think I wrote you a note saying so in the forum, when I realised that some months ago.

So, if there is any strength in this alternate control panel idea, it's to give reasonable controls -for purpose - to tweak your presets.  You can see there's a chance to combine presets with the control panel to be used for each.  That's what I was thinking about when made this comment.

The last thing understood well is that if there are no places this kind of approach would really help, then we are all done.

I am too much involved with other things to make good suggestions where it really would help - except perhaps at untangling mystery controls like the ones on Voxformer ;) - back to exactly attack, threshold, release.

You see, it's when you have mysteries, which maybe don't seem mysteries to you.  This is the 'problem' with an imaginative mind.  I may have some experience elsewhere with it...often!

All best your direction, and I hope your large plans and their development are shaping up as well as you hoped.

Regards,
Clive

Thanks for your comments, really.  You've nailed the 'problem' I have with Voxengo plug-ins: some parts are too cryptic to be understandable, and their impact on overall sound is uncertain.  I will be working on improving this situation for sure.  Probably 'coloration'-related controls should not be exposed immediately.  I'll try to put them to backpanel in the future plug-ins versions, where applicable (including exposing some of the hidden Voxformer parameters like attack/release).

yes!

Backpanel, - like the digitalfishphones blockfish plugin,- would be the perfect solution.

It hadn't occurred to me that that might be a way around this.

Kind regards

Dave Rich