Regarding the Overloud sounding aggressive there is a trick to reducing the distortion. Turn the two Output knobs at the bottom to the lowest setting (fully counter clockwise) and then use the single Output knob at the bottom right for your output level. That knob is post the emulation so your signal should sound much cleaner. This relates to distortion and not aliasing. I have the Overloud and love it. When I first got it years ago I was floored by the distortion until I learned the trick I just shared.
This was actually one of the first UAD plugins I bought after I got my UAD Apollo interface five years ago, it just adds magic to vocals and acoustic instruments that I can't get any other way
When I was an assistant engineer at a recording studio we would hire a Fairchild every now and again. When I did the recall sheets I would have to write down the serial number of the unit so we would have the same unit for the recall :) (We always hired the same unit. It always felt special. It weighs a lot. 2 man lift.
@@hajianekena6909 the first one it's the blue one,2nd is sta lvl that's grey, and the green is a altec if I remember right. The Fairchild is definitely the first one though. It's getting some age on it but it's still a go too for alot of top mixers. I got it from watching Marc Daniel nelson and it's got some magic to it. The Fairchild especially in limit mode with a CPL db of comp adds mojo and depth that no other plugin IV used. Great parallel on drums and is unbelievable on bass and vocals in the other models.for 25 euros it's a must have! The Jr is free I think and it's just the Fairchild but I don't know if it's different than the paid version. Hope this helps 🤘
The free version is one of the best vst comps I've ever used (another freebie, the Analog Obsession 1776 is another top choice). Incredibly simple interface, kind of a cross between a Fairchild and an Altec - basically what I think they were going for in the free version (they said themselves it's "between version 1 and 2" of the paid) was sort of a middle ground "generic variable mu compressor" but whatever it is they nailed it. I don't have a real Fairchild or Altec to compare it against, as I am but a poor boy, but I have heard a whole lot of records, and I know what compression sounds I like. And I definitely like the MJUCJr. When I get my new computer set up I need to spring for the paid version - I have all their free plugins, and they're all terrific - Klanghelm deserves some of my money.
@@VinceWhitacre I wish they would make a new version with 3 different vca's ! It's crazy they made one of the greatest plugins in history and nothing new in years 😢
I've used original Fairchilds and they all sound a little different - depending on age, how well they have been serviced and what has been "updated" over the years. To my ears the UAD and Acustica plugins are good enough to work with ;-)
@@Jazzguitar00 Acustica plugins sound amazing but I have nothing but stability issues when I use mine. So I don’t use them anymore. It sucks because I paid for them.
UAD one has a bit more clarity and lighter sheen, which is what it was designed to do, be a mastering compressor before it hit the lathe, for lat vert work on the stylus needle. The perfect mastering comp for that application.
I have and love the UAD. They make some of my favorite plugins. People can complain that they’re expensive or need more frequent updating and all need to be native faster etc. etc. but regardless of all those things, they’re just excellent.
I still feel ripped by UAD...I bought a bunch of UAD1 cards originally and luckily 1 was pcie...in 2005...Im still just using that card and basically run the fairchild, 1176 occasionally (still the orig versions going using JBridge). WARNING! In this day and age...DO NOT buy any card based plugs...its just a dongle and once GPUs finally get used, it will be a moot point. Over time, your mix strategy (hopefully matures) and now I use distinct 'fix' as the first part of the chain (pretty much sonible seq and comp)...by this stage the sound stands alone and is devoid of the smear that all these emus impart. THEN for a push/pull for staging and colour, these are just the option...what Im saying is learn to just paint first and then apply the 'effect'...biggest mistake was not doing this up front. Get time at a proper studio, learn and understand why, eg 70s albums still smash the dynamic space and feel of today BUT we now have the bottom end of today which is missing in the old recordings...ie tape and compression just mash it. just my2c but the UAD Fair is the best to my ears on the basis of just a good compressor...but use it judiciously...when Wytse started dialing in right in...just destroyed the space...on my monitors anyway :-) Final point is...can you hear the diff in a mix...especially a dense one? Um for the sake of all the investment...NO. Just get a decent one as its your ears and talent that will make it good just using your stock plugs...seriously.
To your comment about the UA interface being messy: if you load it as a VST in a DAW, there will be an option in the upper right hand corner labeled "View". If you switch the view from Editor to Controls, you will get a maximally optimized interface with none of the visual hardware replication... just numbers and sliders that can be adjusted for each of the plugin's parameters. Sometimes, I find that useful. A lot of UA plugins are built that way.
Some time ago we compared almost all Fairchild plugins with a drum loop except Slate and Universal Audio as we couldn't get access to them and clearly "Acustica Audio Ultramarine" was the closest to the original hardware (we compare matching the sound as much as possible, since the same parameters in each company almost always sound different) and over compressing to clearly notice the differences. It was impressive to hear how different the plugins sounded from each other (it's really noticeable on drums!)
Ultramarine is fantastic. I use it often. Between Ultramarine and UA, you have everything you need. I do have Overloud and like it, but after i got Ultramarine I don’t reach for it much.
technically, the audible level depends on how loud you're listening... 0 dB SPL is the threshold for human hearing. But you could also make the case that something is inaudible when it goes lower than the noise floor of your capturing medium (for example the tape noise, or below -96 dBFS at 16 bit etc etc). In the radio/RF world you'd also have something called Minimal Discernible Signal (MDS), which would be x dBs above noise floor... You also have a masking effect of course, so that would also bring the audibility threshold of some noise/aliasing up a couple decibels... But then you add speaker systems and level etc. So in some cases a signal could be inaudible at -40 dBFS, and in some cases you can still hear -120 dBFS. I'd say a safe bet would be that if a signal is below -120 dBFS (in the final master!) you won't hear it. If you introduce noise at -120 but then compress the signal to smithereens it won't stay that low of course. This is not academically sound, just a rule of thumb for myself. If you're going to CD, -96 would probably be the threshold, or dither level maybe, but sounds louder than that can in a lot of cases be considered inaudible
I started boycott waves long time ago. 5-6 years. Because I bought plugin from them and year later they said to continue using it I need to pay again. And claimed I didn’t buy plugin (for full price) only rented it (for full price)…
@@BrofUJu not if you’re on Mac and you ever update your operating system. Then they just don’t work. I uninstalled all my waves plug-ins because I got sick of forced updates. It’s basically scamming people into a subscription.
I avoid waves because of their update plan (even though I'm on windows), only one license (I mix on a desktop and record on a laptop), and lack of modern features like oversampling.
I am always amazed that you actually hear all those tiny differences. I don't but I do think those little differences in sound can get lost in the youtube audio compression, I could also be deaf^^
To answer your question about when something is audible or not is a good one. I’ve seen a lot of people online say “two plugins null down to -90dB. I can’t hear a -90dB signal so I can’t hear a difference” That just isn’t my experience. Having said that I prefer to not use oversampling when running at 96kHz and wish UAD gave you the option to turn it off. Steep, linear phase low pass filters color the sound and in my opinion can be more destructive than aliasing in a lot of cases. Some plugins use shallower low pass filters for oversampling at higher sample rates and these sound better to my ears.
I compared Tone Empire`s Firechild with both from UAD and Firechild wins. But it`s a matter of taste. [Edit:] @Wytse: In your video for Firechild by Tone Empire, you had raised issues that I and many in the comments couldn't relate to. It would have been fair to give this great plugin a second chance in your new video. Especially since you had mentioned this possibility yourself in the first video. But with so much content you create, it's logical that something always falls under the table. I just wanted to point that out. You're doing a great job...keep it up!
Great video. I have 16 DSPs from UAD, an Apollo Quad silverface, an Octo satellite and a quad card. I use a LOT of their plugins, but the Fairchild is definitely a go to.
THANKS!!! For the readers here: you have to participate in a survey. Register a customer account, if you haven't done that yet. When you finished the survey you get the license in your account.
A very important (to me) feature that the T-Racks 670 has is the "lat vert" mid-side setting. It was actually the compressor that introduced me to the wonders that mid-side compression can work on a stereo bus
I'm listening on a very good Class-A valve system and the UAD plugin still has some distortion which maybe the original Fairchild has(?) but it is deep and lush and open, breathy and gorgeous whereas the others where agressive and flat - suddenly my system sounded like it was transistors, ugh! Thanks for the demo, I will have to get this now! LOL
Hey! So my prof at music university was a real audiophile. He never used emulations of analog gear (apart from UAD!). I showed him a lot of plugins from other developers and we often talked about it. Back then I used oversampling whenever it was available. And when we tested plugins with oversampling on transient heavy stuff, most of the time it smeared the transients. So I've become quite cautious of the tradeoffs of all these workarounds. Btw my Prof used a lot of (but not exclusively) analog gear in his studio.
Interesting comparison! Been using the Overloud one from time to time and really liking it precisely for it's character and aggressive tendencies. It's been modelled after a tube unit, after all, they sort of almost supposed to do that. And btw messing with the «HARM» knob helps to clean it up a bit. And yeah, OS implementation in their plugins is kinda bad and unintuitive. The UAD one is pretty cool tho, really smoooooooov.
Regarding the GEM 670: the D.C Threshold setting changes the knee behavior of the unit from soft to hard. The UAD has this feature too, and the default settings most likely are very different. The GEM also features a HARM setting to be adjusted, what regulates the non linear processing, resulting in different harmonics. UAD does not have that. So one might have want to adjust those parameters and them compare... Greetings to Holland!
There is one problem that does occur when you oversample, which is that you need perform a process that includes a filter, ie, you're going to introduce some kind of delay. If you use an IIR filter which almost all analog filters utilize, it's going to cause a delay, although slight, in the upper frequencies. If you use FIR, it delays the entire signal. Either method also introduces ringing artifacts, which will shape how your compressor reacts to the audio.
I also got their Distressor plugin like that. Just filled out the survey and got the 670 for free too, thank you for the tip ;) But the install process is a pain and I was forced to install a ton of plugins I didn't have licenses for, when I tried to install the Comprexxor plugin. So now I have 2 plugins I am not using from Ik Multimedia, haha :) When they get their installers updated, so you only have to install the plugins that you have, I will probably try it out.
Thank you. I'm a self-taught recording engineer. I work only on my own original music and do basic mixes. I'm retired and considering acquiring a bunch of recording studios all over the world and creating the first truly international audio recording corporation. I'm a retired investment banker and have played and recorded music professionally all my adult life as well. So I have a pretty unique blend of businessperson and music-artist background. This video opened my eyes to lots of technical questions I never before thought about. As I learn more I consider also founding a great audio engineering university! Why not?
You can really drive the 670 very hard. So much so that I often track vocals with it before an 1176 to catch very high peaks in a totally transparent way.
The TrackS 'Link' functionality is on the right? So you have three options: Left Right (Left) Link (Middle) Lat Vert (Right) Doesn't make the annoying sound go away, but I'm guessing that's it. :)
You missed the D.C Threshold Controls. Thanks for the video! I never do this kind of thing of commenting in videos but I wanted to point out some stuff that people regularly miss in this lines of unity so called "670" because it may help everyone to use the unities. You have the Di Maria one, the original one and many others, so obviously they will have a different sound, which is great for the industry! There is a control called D.C threshold set to different settings on every plugin in every comparison you did. I'm sorry, but, with this setting set to different positions, the detector circuit should behave very differently, likewise the way the compressors behaved in the video. So you are using, basically slightly different threshold points as well as VERY different knees behaviors in every comparison, what makes the comparisons, in my opinion completely useless, since every characteristics in a "670" compressor will change its compression, harmonic distortion and so fourth. Mainly when they are emulating the original unity that struggles to have enough from its power supply when the tubes are to much requested, (the ones that compress as well as the ones from the amplifier stages) so it changes the frequency response and every behavior when you request more from them. For example, when you compared the Overloud unity with UAD one, the Overloud is using "harder knee" behavior and a slightly higher point of threshold, meaning that it will have a "harder compression feeling", so it will hold a little less the signal, but will be more towards to the "limiting compression" type than the soft knee one, therefore more aggressive, and more perceivable compression. Besides the calibration regards from the plugins, that's why you also felt the gain difference as well. I know you hate the "scrolls controls" on the plugins but this one changes everything. Thanks for the video! Best regards!
I believe this is the best video and comparison ever! Also, thanks for revealing what Overloud does with their plugins. I was also looking for a great Fairchild. Thanks!
For IK Multimedia plugin's you can operate the demo without "hiss" being inserted by running the Custom Shop. Once in the demo period and IK Custom Shop App open then no hiss.
I wish the Puigchild was compared in this video too. Searching around online people seem to think the UAD and Waves Fairchild stack up pretty much the same. I did however pick up the UAD in the sale as ive wanted it for a while. Intresting to see the aliasing analyser too.
I find the uad plugins made by uad tend to be very meticulously modeled in a very musical way, maybe its because UA makes hardware of some of the gear they model so they can reference how gear is supposed to work more often.
My music college (back in the late 90s) had a Fairchild Limiter, among other great equipment,.. I think we students were spoilt. Edit: Really good comparison video. 😃
I personally think the UAD is probably the most faithful (and I've used many real Fairchilds, and used to own a 670). But the runner up for me, and sometimes the better choice in a session, I'm sorry to say, is the Waves Puigchild.
Jack Joseph Puig is a REAL stickler for correct reproduction. Probably because he has spent SO MANY thousands of hours of his life IN studios using this hardware in very critical circumstances. He has admitted to making WAVES jump through a lot of hoops to get the Fairchild and the Pultec plug-ins accurate. However, I heard from someone I know at the company that in reality, he was EXTREMELY harsh in his judgement and would deny the use of his name entirely until it met the standard he was holding them to. He had little to gain from letting companies slap his name on products for simple licensing fee. He has what they call “fuck you money” when it comes to something like this, so there’s little in it for him unless the product really meets his standards. This is probably why I also find his Puigtec Waves emulations of the EQs to be the most accurate recreations of Pultecs in the digital realm. I worked many hundreds of hours in the 80’s and 90’s hands-on with the 670, and even FAR more with the Pultecs, and I can advise, with confidence, anyone who is interested, that they can use these plugins with a completely reasonable amount of confidence that they are getting a really really close representation with them. 😎👍👍
Fantastic work Wytse, UAD is definitely proving the quality of their stuff. Expensive, but right what you're searching for in a plugin. My favorite Mu is the Magic Death Eye Stereo version. I won't probably never buy a hardware Mu considering how good it sounds. Weight, transparency, smoothness, punch.. A dream
@Max Milian JUst people that they believe slams them lol... I like Waves have most all... We'll soon be to a point where there will be enough free plugins that are awesome lol. Just a guess...
Oh, I can answer that :) aliasing is audible when the frequency going into the distortion is high enough to bounce off the sampling rate. So it only happens when you have high frequencies, and low sampling rates, and there are different ways to suppress it. My Console7 which you use, resists aliasing when run at a higher sample rate such as 96k (Console8Lite will resist aliasing even more), and people usually use oversampling which is like resampling everything twice for every plugin you use :) When there IS aliasing, from a sound OR harmonic high enough to reflect off the sample rate and come back down again (sounds like 'birdies'), it will be at the loudness of whatever that distortion harmonic would have been, but it can be at ANY frequency including very audible frequencies like in the midrange, where almost anything is audible :)
I'm disappointed we couldn't get this next to the Acustica plugin; they're stuff has impressed me a lot lately and I was thinking about getting it. The UAD Fairchild definitely sounded great though.
hello, the unnamed company is...waves i think :) i have the puigchild and i dont like it, i was looking today for a fairchild/although (i already have kazrog true dynamics for vari mu style) i understand your point of view about oversampling set as default...but sometimes latency (or cpu in realtime) can be a problem...does the uad fairchild has os/latency by default? regards
Since I got ALL the IK stuff for 199usd and UA being only that much less characteristic, I think I won't be spending onit. Close enough IK, close enough. Besides, I still don't know which is more accurate and I don't really care to be honest.
All UAD plugins imo really shines on the low end where I feel like other companies kinda drop the ball. You get almost the same tightness and definition that you would in the hardware. Obviously you can get the exact same results from the low end that you get from hardware. But UAD comes damn close.
Hey can you do a video on the new plug-in alliance tape face plug-in I know how you and all of us like tape saturation and it’s interface seems like something you’d enjoy, very functional.
I have a Fairchild 670 plugin emulations the Waves PuigChild , the IK Multimedia version, the Tone Empire version and Acustica Audio version and the Klangheim MJUC version
Really helpful shootout and discussion. You were a bit unfair to Overloud at the end, though, in my opinion. You say that processing is not an issue, but that's just not true. Plugin developers *of course* consider processing power when they develop and optimize their algorithms. Oversampling requires significantly more processing; a developer makes up for that by altering their algorithm (almost inevitably, by simplifying it in some way) when it is oversampling. That is, there is a basic "faithful" algorithm that tries to do what the physical device does to a continuous waveform. Once you discretize the waveform, that algorithm produces aliasing. You can handle that in various ways, one of which is by oversampling, which directly multiplies the processing power required. So keep the processing burden under control, you do less math per sample than if you were not oversampling. What Overloud's dialog box is saying is that they are giving the user a choice here: use the more faithful algorithm (which is in operation with the box unchecked) which will produce aliasing that (they claim) is imperceptible in many situations, or turn on oversampling and use the more computationally optimized but slightly less faithful algorithm (with the box checked). They leave it unchecked by default so that the most faithful algorithm is being used by default. Where you're right is that they really should have provided guidance for when the artifacts could become audible-something about how the settings and the loudness and dynamic range impact perceptibility. -Tom
Yes, that was my first thought while watching Wytse's review, that the different plugin makers are all modeling different unique original hardware units and doing their best to recreate their characteristics in plugin form, hence the massive variation between all the different plugins.
I love that your videos are of the best audio quality Ive heard, like ill be watching a professional ass video about audio and the voiceover quality is really trassh, but YOU got that beautiful tone and highend on that lewitt mic? (whatever mic) anyways in short, shoutout to you for not dropping standard lol
Hey wytse, if you get a chance try out the antelope audio ones. You’ll need to borrow one of their interfaces with the dsp. I love the antelope one. Would be amazing to have a shootout!
"aliasing below audibility" makes sense only when it is a last thing in the chain. If you put an eq or compressor after the plugin the inaudible may easily become audible :) And with multiband processor like Gulfoss it may become super-audible :D
Distortion is inaudible if it is below 0db SPL on playback. This will depend on how your DAW outputs are fed to your monitors, how you control volume, and the sensitivity of your monitors. As an engineer, listening to audio for prolonged periods you shouldn't really have the volume much above 75db SPL for some time at your listening spot anyway, although some monitors are capable of putting out audio at more than 110dB SPL. If the distortion is less than -75dBfs in your DAW, then at normal volumes, it will indeed be inaudible. If it's lower than -100dBfs in your DAW then it will be inaudible at 100dB SPL.
The UAD does sound VERY nice!......I hadn't heard that they were now offering they're stuff as native. A while back you tested the Tone Empire Firechild, and did not have a good experience with it. I've got it and have struggled to get a sound I really like. I have no experience with and actual Fairchild, other than twiddling the knobs on the one at Capitol 😏. I think it would be revealing to compare the Firechild with the UAD.
I have the uad Fairchild and the waves Puigchild. There's no comparison side-by-side as far as I'm concerned. I didn't use the Waves one again after getting under the hood of the UAD version.
I still really like the Overloud version specifically because I like its distorted quality. It's my go-to bass compressor, and when you're putting something on bass, anti-aliasing is really not that important.
Loving the UAD, absolutely! I have accumulated at least ninety billion compressors 😛ranging from free to $ Weiss $, but UAD won me over with their Fairchild -- I love the creamy, transparent sound, and it really would complement any toolkit, I think; as for the "inaudible" question, it's probably best if producers just stop saying that, because depending on where the plugin is in the effect chain (say, before upward compression, saturators, EQ's and the like), the "inaudible" can become "audible" -- I think a healthier viewpoint would be: does the aliasing SOUND GOOD? I haven't dug into it to see if such a concept is possible, though...🤔 Any thoughts?
What you link with the "link" control on the IK-Multimedia one is the threshold. There is no option to link the inputs. The boost it does by default on the output-knob is something I took as a hint: Dial in the threshold so that you get that amount of gain reduction - usually (as in: 2 dB of GR is what we intended as the default). There are very different output-values in the presets ranging from 3,5 - 8,5 dBs of gain on the output. I've never used a real fairchild, but the VC-670 from IKM sounds good to me and won many "shootouts" against some of the most expensive and revered plugin-compressors that I own. I agree that the noise in the demo is very unhinging, however there is the option to test it noise-free for (I think 2 weeks) some time, via their "Custom Shop". The UAD version sounded cleaner to me in this comparison, wether that's better will be very audio-scource dependant. I would have preferred that you add pop and rock-examples. We're also comparing a brandnew-plugin (UAD) to older (Overloud) and very old ones (IKM). It honestly would be a shame, if the new plugin didn't outperform the older ones on technical stuff like aliasing. Although in a perfect world they'd all fix these issues in their old plugins (but I don't know how easy it is to "patch" that). I must admit that I didn't notice audible aliasing on the IKM on single scources. I'd be surprised if anyone did without pushing it in an unreasonable manner.
While the UA native Fairchild is “new”, it is based on the dsp version which was released in 2013 (iirc). I have used the uad dsp stuff for a long time and to my ear all of the native versions sound and behave exactly the same as their dsp counterparts. I am betting they’re 1:1 ports. You can even copy/paste settings from the dsp version to the native ones.
UAD's current Fairchild plugin has been around around since 2013, This is just now available in native format. Their original mark I version was from around 2004. So it's not necessarily new code.
@@Tychomusic To my knowledge both IK and UAD had fairchild emulations for a long time. Going back to at least 2009. Hopefully we can agree, that there is a difference that comes with (re)releasing _and selling_ a plugin today in comparison to providing cost-free patches. There is more budget for polishing the plugin before "rerelease". You wouldn't just release an old plugin, without fixing some of the issues, right?
I love the UAD FC a lot. I had the AA one but was hard to set up properly. I really dislike subscription models but only for UAD I made an exception cause their plugins are absolutely awesome. First I was a big AA fan but I moved over to UAD :)
The best review ever, UAD wins far and away from the rest. i was curious because , UAD has two versions of Fairchild plugin, the LEGACY version instead of the one you used in the video.
Would be great if we could get an honest comparison between UAD, Acustica and Overloud - maybe even the Herchild? I love Acustica's Ultramarine but I've never had the pleasure to experience the hardware.
hey for the IK multi. you have to go in the app and actually start the demo and you have to keep the custom shop app open too, otherwise it just spits out noise like that. Also im gonna guess Waves ha! so lame they do that.
I want to make a comment about this to UPDATE everyone in chat of the information. Fairchild themselves has officially re-released an official hardware version of this unit again. It now costs $13,800 dollars to purchase. It was in the latest AES Audio show in Q4-2023.
