I think it's the first time I'm so impressed by a plugin. I used it on several masterings and kept it subtle, but when you notice the depth it adds and realize how sterile it sounds when removed, you know you have a great tool in hand! I will definitely keep it in my collection and I'm looking forward to try it more aggressively on individual tracks or busses.
Just used the Oven for the first time on three songs I mastered. I’m much more of a saturation as a dynamics controller and colorizer over compression on masters. I find it balances music more effectively that most compressors because when the music gets louder, having it get a little grittier makes sense to our ears and especially my ears since I’m also a guitarist. Since I can enhance the tones with the Oven I can decide which bands I want to keep tight or to make more aggressive sounding. I’d love to get the hardware some day but I do have an Overstayer MAS hardware unit for that now which I use more for mixes.
Liked this plugin, used it a fair bit, love it even more. Anywhere in the project. Sound design, track, bus, master. Really useful. Should have put a brickwall on it, then I could be more lazy ;)
I fell in love with this plugin as soon as I tried it. I've got decades of audio engineering experience, and that is often a hindrance to me creatively. I'm inspired by not knowing exactly what this thing is doing, yet getting great sounds from it! It's forcing me to use my ears rather than fall back on my usual moves.
IMO, The Oven is the plugin of the year. Absolutely amazing and unique, to say the least. FYI, using Reaper's oversampling modes, The Oven sounds even better at 2x - 8x OS.
Everything under 8x OS is just placebo, cause nothing changes. The plugin internally oversamples to 4X, if you are using it at higher samplerates, it just does not upsample that much. You can check that it uses the same amount of CPU up until 4X oversampling. Then at 8X it doubles.
Of all the saturation plugins from Plugin Alliance The Oven is the magic touch. The EQ curves that Oven uses are the perfect compliment to the saturation making it a joy to work with. Maor is such a nice guy and deserves a huge thank you from the audio community for allowing this tool to be made in software. Even as a working engineer like myself a $6600 box would take some some time to consider a justifiable purchase but I would consider picking up the hardware as a tracking tool now for sure. Congrats to everyone involved!!
I already have several recipes with this oven - color box, nice plug-in that I have fun with and really "tone shaping" , in the mix. Good addition to my arsenal of plugins. Thanks, Justin and Maor. PS: Maor is right, you have to use your ears, to find each sweet spot. Great work guys.
I love plugins with parameters based on abstractions like feeling, style, energy, etc. versus strictly scientific terms like Khz & Q and so on. For me, it helps to focus on the feeling you want to achieve with the sound as opposed to focusing on being “by the book”. Kudos to them for being willing to step outside the box. (…& into the oven ahaha 😉)
