No kidding. I bought a UA interface and the plug-ins I want are $200-300 on top of what I paid for it. I don’t think any plug-in is worth more than a couple of bucks.
@@hailmaryrecordings8255 just wait for the sales. They come up atleast every few months. Although, I will say, if I’m gonna pay more then $200 for any plug-in it’d be the UA ones.
Well, you have to show that you produce good quality not just with one product. That's what Apple did for quite a long time. What's the name of dev? , sorry I forgot. I demoed plugin, well, far from being groundbreaking or even nice. We must understand that in Covid times some people urgently need money- urgently!
p42 (not this version but the latest one) is one of my go tos. Absolutely rocks. Try getting similar results with any other plugin or plugin chains, there´s a video of a guy pretending to get something near, but he needed... 5 Acustica Audio Nebula instances for it!!!! And you know they are cpu hungry, so it makes no sense. These guys at Modular got the best results with 1% cpu, and I happily paid for their work.
Or you can just buy Saturn 2, get a ton more functionality (with most likely higher quality) and save €85. If you want to save even more, you can buy Kazrog True Iron for $40 (€35) and save €180.
Can I have to disagree on that one. Kazrog is basically the only saturator could ever need. Yeah there’s a steeper learning curve in the sense of figuring out which transformer emulation to drive and how hard, but you can basically get any sound you want. I even use it all the time in times two mode to clip snare drums and get some punch and save on headroom. Extremely versatile
@@sweeterthananything Didn't mean it as someones only saturator, just that it emulates the same thing as this plug-in (transformers). I wrote Saturn because it has transformer clipping algorithms, among others, and you would get so much more than that and all for much less money.
It's hard to justify that price for any plugin, but after trying the demo for a few weeks, this thing really does sound great in my opinion. Maybe you can get similar results with something like Saturn that gives you so much control. But P42 gives really great results with minimal tweaking. Obviously the price puts it way out of reach for the average hobbyist producer. But if you're in the studio full time, quick results is worth a lot.
@@helisoma It's not uncommon for me to get over excited about a new plugin before gradually returning to old favourites. But after a year P42 is still my go to plugin for some quick saturation and has become the plugin I return to. I'm very much an advocate for True Iron as well though and being able to flick through different flavours is a huge plus. Again it comes down to budget. For me P42 has definitely been worth the money.
You should try implementing Reaper's new 'Delta Solo' functionality into these videos. I think it would give us viewers and maybe even you a better/ more audible understanding of what these plugins are actually doing.? 🤔
Is is just listening to phase differences between input and output? For example, if you add a high pass filter, will the delta solo reveal frequencies much higher than what it’s actually cutting because of phase shift? That wouldn’t seem very useful to me.
Loving this plugin! It's crazy the sonic level these guys have reached here (I'm talking about the last update). It's not just an amazing saturation plugin but also a super useful EQ!
We are simply adding more features. The engine has not changed since V1. As such, listening to all the critics questioning why it is not 20 euros instead, gives you an idea of their qualifications.
For a person that was building these things by hand in the 70's and 80's this is the biggest snake oil I ever saw. I remember how much effort we were putting into minimizing and compensating the magnetic field losses and hysteresis of the transformer ferro-magnetic core to NOT hear what this plug-in is doing. You really disappoint me by not labeling this as snake oil.
Isn't the point that people tried to minimize these artefacts, but by doing so the sound got too clinical and people have been wanting to go back to these imperfections?
@@krispybowgod9656 Sorry, some people prefer lo fi, as you say, but some prefer hi fi, some people prefer natural sounds, undistorted. Absolutely all of them have their place in "modern music" whatever you understand by that... I wouldn't dare to spoil your joy of spending 214 euros on something like this ... all I say is that I will never do it, and I can be called "out of touch" for that, all right.
@@krispybowgod9656 You are out of touch with music in general. Don't fixate yourself to a single genre to justify spending 214 euros for a transformer plugin. Spend your money on Kazrog True Irons instead.
Please do check the A/B comparison at the end of that video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Y-hZvBeSAsU.html This might change your mind. I do understand your initial reaction, as the video-reviewer did completely miss the opportunity to show what P42 is actually capable of and for what purpose it was made. Cheers
i won't pay this amount of money for a saturation plugin, but i gotta say that sound was delicious! i already liked your mix when it was clean but then you played around with the filters and the different ways to drive this thing and it suddenly sounded like it came directly from some iconic old film.
Got the P42 Climax new version and I must admit that this plugin has a huge huge positive impact on the sound (channels , busses and master bus). Especially when you use it in serial on the master bus handling the M and S signal. I don't know the first version (on you tube the reviews did not convince me at this price point), but the new version is outstanding and for me really worth the money.
I actually like this snake oil series man 👍🏻 Man 214 euro is a joke for a plugin. Tbh even super good plugins should be like 100 maximum, maybe 150 for a suite or something
@@ghstnt_music acustica has sales all the time, you can get most of their stuff at a deep discount if you’re patient. i own a lot of their stuff and have only paid more than $100 once. you’re also typically getting a lot more for that price than this plugin offers.
I actually own a plugin that costs 200 dollars, TC VSS4HD, but it is an incredible sounding reverb plugin with a 100% perfect user interface. This is a decent sounding (it actually does a thing to the bass end of a track that I really like) distortion plugin with a close to unusable UI. 40 dollars is what I'd pay for it, which puts it in the Fuse Audio price range.
Hey White Sea Studios. You should try to replicate the sound of the plugins your demonstrating / testing. With stock daw plugins. Your viewers would get to hear/see . If the sounds were achievable with the stock plug ins most daws have.
I just did a little A/B against Little Radiator from Soundtoys. Little Radiator sounds almost identical but it's meatier with more punch and also preserves transients way better. It's also a bargain for only 29 euro :)
Ehhhhh,,, it's the little things that can add up though in some cases, so generally I would say this is not a good take. However, for a transformer like this, you want to hear a difference. When he brings in the extra distortion there is definitely a difference audible on RU-vid, but I wouldn't say it's worth that much money.
This sounds amazing. And I'm a bit shocked from all the comments recommending plugins that sound quite different. Yes the price is very high and the GUI is a farce, but I've never heard anything do what this does. I was blown away during parts of this video, and I consider myself very picky. As a business if you think most people aren't going to notice or care about the improvement - which judging from the comments section may be true - you have to capitalize on the few people who can appreciate it to survive. There are many popular plugins out there that have worse pricing. And if you don't like the sound then that's cool too.
Hell try the Neve preamp emulation by Analog Obsession. Free, beautiful Neve saturation and the most incredible automatic gain compensation I’ve ever used
Kazrog, Kush, Fuse Audio, all have transformer preamps that will get you close, as will a whole flood of saturation plugins on the market at a fraction of the price. The crass GUI alone will instantly put off a good number of potential buyers. That said, I like the sound and vibe this plugin gives and it's very usable. However, at the over-inflated price, I'll make do with what I currently have. Bring it down to a more sensible 100 Euros and I'd consider it.
If you look at this thing closely, it's really nothing but a waveshaper and a few filters. All very digital, simple implementations, absolutely nothing special. It's just that the parameter ranges are chosen well enough that most of its settings end up sounding reasonably analog enough. It all depends on the input though; feeding well already mixed soul-jazz-funk through it and using subtle settings it gonna sound authentic enough, but there's absolutely no justification for paying for such basic DSP work. Hell, even at 10% the asking price it'd be too much, it's barely worthwhile for free unless you just really like those parameter ranges and find them nice to work with. :)
@@ObsessiveAudio Yes, most of the above exactly. Except it's not a trig function of course, but a sigmoid, in specific just a tanh (hyperbolic tangent) based waveshaper. I've written my own waveshaper plugin (with lots of shaping functions that can be applied in series) that can do tanh waveshaping, and can null it with this plugin perfectly as long as the filters are off. The filters themselves are nothing special either; they're the usual cramping digital biquad filters derived from an analog prototype via either the bilinear transform, or approximated via trapezoid integration. Sadly they also seem to store the filter state in single instead of double precision based on the truncation artifacts in the output noise floor. Not necessarily an issue in practice, but if you boost the signal coming out of this a bunch you might start to hear some ugly low frequency "juddering" noise. At least the oversampling implementation seems to work properly, although it's using a minimum phase antialiasing filter, which is not always ideal especially considering the plugin permits dry/wet mixing. So no, there really doesn't appear to be anything special in the implementation of this plugin, just extremely basic DSP code that could probably be done by using the bundled FX devices in your DAW or reimplemented by copying a few snippets from musicdsp.org. I don't mean to disparage the site though, it's a great resource for simple well understood DSP algorithms, but it's quite misleading to put out a plugin that seems to be based on 20-30 year old algorithms and ask +200€ for it while claiming it's an accurate transformer emulation. Especially the last part is quite a stretch for me, and they'd as minimum need to put out some actual technical details to justify this. Them marketing their product by saying a "world class math person" was involved rings quite hollow at the face of objective measurements. I used PluginDoctor to look into the behavior of the plugin, you're free to do the same. Let me know if this explanation is sufficient to back up my earlier comment.
@@ObsessiveAudio > What I found was the presence of even ordered harmonics, which of course would not appear with a strict symmetrical tanh. Yes, it does apply a very subtle (practically inaudible) amount of even harmonics at about -60dB. There's many extremely simple ways of going about this and nothing in the plugin output or its sound suggests there's anything advanced going on. > I'm sure you also noticed the modulation in the frequency response, which of course a simple sigmoid function would not produce. This is with the shelving filters turned off and I don't think there is a way to turn off the HPF and LPF. That's most likely from the even harmonics. Since harmonics always imply non-linearity, you can't rely on the measurements in the "Linear Analysis" tab in PluginDoctor; this applies in general to any nonlinearities in any plugin. Also you can turn off the HPF and LPF filters with the green light buttons next to the respective knobs. > In an oscilloscope, the waveform of a sine does behave very much like tanh when gain is applied. But I could not get it to null with anything that standard. Curious how you did it. They might've applied some hard coded gain staging to the distortion. Indeed it's not a literal direct tanh function, but the shape of the function pretty much *exactly* matches a function of the form a*tanh, where a is a scalar. I could match the output of the plugin with a simply tanh function essentially perfectly by simply adjusting the linear gain of the reference tanh (or the output level of the plugin)
I have to redact that statement, that's not better than the acoustica audio tape at all.... after using AA on multiple mixes and Masters it's definitely the best tape out there
@@michaelwirth6843 Its a question of taste. I think this is a very generic saturation plugin with filters. Nothing to run home about. For me capacitor2 by itself is better than this. We just have different opinions on what sounds good.
I Love the sonic sound, it's nice but I'll Air to have knob, I'll love it to have Dry/Wet function to enable it works as Side Chain and the price is much for that amount but they can bring down more. thanks for that a nice review.
As a kid I saw guitarists using analog pedals, so I really wanted to get one. (Boss DS-1, OD-3, ML-2, MT-2 and so on) But when I got some, they didn't sound exactly how I expected. It was quite a harsh sound. Then I saw digital guitar pedals with crazy delay effects. That could add both Phaser, Chorus, Delay and what not! Then I realized that digital pedals do not sound as good as analog ones. And they felt crappy. Then I saw huge Combo Amps by Fender, VOX, Marshall and others that famous musicians were using. But I knew it was too loud for my room and I won't be able to use it as a LIVE thing anyways. Then I thought it would be a good idea to grab the best guitar VST effects, as they got much better these days and I also could edit the FX later. But it turned out that I need more of that hardware transformer/tube thing =) At the same time I've never really spent much time playing guitar itself. My skills remained the same. Maybe we don't need THAT much of plugins and simulations to make music?
I mean . It cleans up the signal compresses it , puts a little gritty shine on the signal. I actually find it more tight room seventies sound than Motown old school. But, yes I understand what they mean.Somewhat of a seventies Freddie Hubbard Album. Still. 214??? Kazrog True Iron goes for what? boutique plugins! 😉 I really like what it does though.. I Like the new snake oil style
This looks just like Elysia Phils Cascade, which also costs 249€ for the plug, but sometimes on sale. The only thing, they have a lot more transformers in the plug. I'm not fan of those. But sometimes material is so harsh, that these come in handy. And gezellig is just warmth experience by saturation of the circuits.
More music like this, please! You can really hear the difference with plugins like this when listening to real instruments. Nice track .. it did the plugin justice! Did you track, mix and master this track?
It sounds nice for the type of sandstorm that was used in this video, but the price is outrages. You could buy a full DAW with some plugins for less! Heck, you could buy even audio interfaces with “special sauce” transform mic pre’s for that sort of money. Granted the gui has a cool glowing thing in the center. Maybe if it was priced 25 euros it could have been a winner. Also, the GUI looks like an opensource Penguin OS style design. I.e. it has no proper design, the layout is a bit messy, it's a typical GUI "designed by programmer" affair.
Yeah, Harrison Mixbus and Reaper are pretty cheap and, quire frankly, both come with decent saturation, either as a plugin or a part of bus channelstrip. > the GUI looks like an opensource Penguin OS style design You clearly saw Linux more than 10 years ago, if ever did. The open source plugins I use on Linux often have a much better GUI than that, and if talking generic UI plugins (as in “stop listening with your eyes”), Airwindows is the bomb.
@@alexeypolevoybass I've tried to use linux in the past, but that was in the early to mid 2000's. I've tried it again about 10 years ago and ocassionally dabble with a raspberry pi, but it's not for me. I can handle MS Dos memory managment to get old games to run, but trouble shooting Linux issues to get stuff to work is not my cup of tea. There is also a lot of commercial software with questionable GUI design, pretty much most of what Autodesk cobbles together is kind of user unfriendly and poorly designed and badly documented at times (I have to use some of their expensive yet krusty software on a daily basis, and even worse, it's subscription based licenses as well). Like Avid, they ask outrages prices for software that hardly ever improves.
With some thoughtful tweaking, it sounds pretty nice.....but not worth 214, imho. You can get the same vibe with any number of good tape sim plugs......using the saturation, hi/lo pass, driving inputs, etc....The Radiator or True Iron in combination with some good eq'ing, can also get the same vibe as this. This is a good plugin with some real thought put into it......but I don't know that it can compete with other really good transformer/tape sim plugs, that cost half as much?
Give this plugin a test drive on your own sessions and in real life mixing scenario, don't rely on videos. I'm not arguing the price here nor comparing to other saturation plugins (a lot of great options out there) ... But this plugin has some serious potentials and has its own thing you only get to appreciate once you start using it over and over on your sessions
Dev managed to attract some attention by a very high price. Price seems to be the only thing that's high or attractive, though. Plugin is not worth my disc space. Maybe one of the worst plugin releases ever imo
@@najinelson6742 i said im not arguing the price here, and for me personally i never judge quality according to price. My feedback is based on extensive use of the plugin almost on a daily basis and on live recordings. I completely disagree with you regarding it's a waste of disc space but I understand if you say it s pricey. P.S. I absolutely have nothing to do with the developer. All i know is that they are from Turkey
Lots of hate for this? The creators are basically saying "We've made something that is going to give your sound a really distinct sound with very little effort from your part. Try it for 40 days, put it channel strips and busses and see what it does for your sound and how little effort it takes you. Our bet is a lot of people will go for it. " I don't understand the problem. 40 days free. The creators have confidence in what they've created. So why the hate? Not like thickify...
There's a lot less DAWs than plugins, the difference is orders of magnitude. DAWs still make good revenue when sold for cheap, because there's not very much to choose from. Plugins… well, these are the things that people steal even if they've got legitimately purchased DAWs. If you ever pirated a plugin, it's you to blame for such high plugin prices.
@@alexeypolevoybass This is taken directly from Valhalla's FAQ section where the question was why their plugins are so affordable: "We live in a world where you can get full featured DAWs for $200, that come with an extensive effects suite. I feel that plugins should not cost more than your DAW. I’d also rather have tools that are available to a wider audience. If the tools are more affordable, more people can use them." Tbh that plugin would totally be worth it if it wasn't as snake oil as he says it is. I just don't feel that 200 for that plugin is a good investment 🤣. You can get tons of good plugins and even bundles all under that price and they sound just as good if not better.
@@haipabli7670 this doesn't change the fact that too many people steal software, hence the prices often are somewhat inadequate. This is the sole reason why companies keep their plugin prices that high. Do you think they don't want to spread their products further? Hell yeah they do. But there's a choice to be made: you either lower the price and underpay developers, or keep the price up, and your business running. You see, there are people who buy plugins, and there are people that steal them. Their percentage does never change. I know one of the most famous Russian mixing engineers, and he still doesn't have a single piece of software paid for. He's touring the world with his own band, earns a shitload of money from mixing other bands, and never paid a fucking penny for plugins he uses. I even think that he actually stole some of his hardware too, because he doesn't feel any guilty for stealing plugins worth way over $20000 combined. This is never a matter of money, it's a matter of respect to developers. And most audio plugin users have none of that, and furthermore, a lot of them demand that developers should in fact work for free, because “it's just a computer program, you know, I could totally do that too if I knew how to program”.
@@haipabli7670 > if developers dont want people to pirate their software, they should make the official software so good that theres a benefit to actually purchasing it rather than downloading cracked versions But pirated versions don't differ in functionality. The benefits are support, free and safe updates, and you not being a fucking thief asshole.
I have it and sounds fantastic, and i also have the Kush Audio Omegas, True Iron, UAD ultimate 9, Saturn, Plugin alliance, etc.and so on. I'm a transformer and saturation heavy user mixer and producer. No one is better than anyone, is a matter of know how broad your sound palette can be and when is appropriate to use it.
Well, this dev is a no name compared to Waves, Softube, Fabfilter, Eventide, Klanghelm etc. And with such a high price you have to offer something groundbreaking and this plugin is far from being something like that. I put the dev on my lust of no-go devs!
@@sgfdancecompany of course, I did, how could I have an opinion without demoing it?! Overpriced and not groundbreaking (!!!) and ugly and I have plugins that do the job, dev is a lil late.. He asked him to present and promo the plugin, kinda shot in one's foot haha I like the fact that one can not buy and influence Wytse's opinion. And what about you? Do you also belong to dev's marketing and promo team?! ;) LOL For 10 USD I would maybe even buy it just to show how ugly a gui can be. If I used it as a screensaver it would be a good protection, no one one would wanba come near to my pc:D
@@najinelson6742 have different opinion mr Naji don't mean that i belong to promo teams, so is great that we disagree. Anyway is great to read the kind of passion you put into the dont like box. Cheers
@@sgfdancecompany well, it's known and legit that "devs" make "their" people (staff, family, friends) hype their plugin, and it actually doesn't matter what your relation to this dev is, plugin diserves an award for worst release in der is 2021 imo, it would get my vote :) And I never support greed, never ! Supply and demand makes a price and we have a surplus if plugins today, everything more than 70 can't be taken seriously, as long as you are not Softube (just one example) and have proved that you know to produce good quality plugins over some years. This dev wants to fly high quickly. "the higher you climb, the lower you fall"
I actually like it. It did get quite “cozy”. Or the $215 word you used for cozy. Maybe $40?!! Maybe? Anyway, very cool concept at the least. But at €214?! I hope they’ve come to their senses by the 40day trial. Ha.
Feedback for this format : just looking at the comments so far, not one person has said anything positive about the plug-in. I really liked the sound made with the plug in near the end, yet it seems everyone's opinion has been colored/finalized before getting to the part of the video where the plug-in sounds good. It being over-priced does not make it sound worse.
Yea but that doesnt even matter because its so stupidly priced that there is no situation ever where i would even think abot getting this. There are amazing and better alternatives for way less money.
I couldn’t see any difference in your way of presentation the snake oil Video! But would be nice to see you using the new solo delta listening function of reaper. So we could hear what it adds to the signal.
New style is basically combining what they say on the website with what the plugin is doing, normally, this would be 2 separate segments, now I’m mixing it up 🤔
I've read in the Making Rumours (Fleetwood Mac) that they used a studio in LA (forgot the name), which had the transformers removed from the console for more pristine and clean sound.
Sadly didnt notice much of a difference so i cant paint a picture of what it could do, still 214€ for this plugin is not a good investment 💜love your videos 😅dont spend too much money on these things
214 so when it goes for 79 you will think it is a burgain. This is more like a simple distortion, Iron sounds better for adding the transformer colour I really like the 10-15 minutes format videos, it feels like the right duration
For me it is the best plugin of this year next to Kelvin Tone Shaper (in terms of saturation), the best analog sound emulation so far. Try the demo for 40 days.
Love your vids. It would be nice to have an updated vid now that Marc Daniels Nelson has pushed this plugin through his vids with Produce Like A Pro brand.
I look forward to the day that processing power gets good enough for developers do a deep dive into physical modelling of components. It gets even better when you mix that progress while bypassing some of the negative effects of outboard gear (as an option) it will be awesome. In the mean time, hardware interface control needs innovative interfaces that feel creative. I hate mouse mixing but do it when necessary. I enjoyed this. Thank you White Sea Studio for all your content.
Well, component-modeling has been a part of software emulation technology for a long time now. Some plug-ins even implement real-time SPICE simulation. For example, U-he's Diva was doing that 10 years ago, which is why it was so infamous for its CPU usage (and still is!).
@@bonchbonch I do agree. Component modelling has been advancing for a long time. The models are released to the public partially based on compute power economics and availability
I think more details are coming across on RU-vid than you think. Honestly, by the looks of it, you can create this signal path yourself. High & Low Pass, Waveshaping Distortion, Transformer Saturation, High & Low Shelf, Air Band. Simple list of plugins (many may already have) - Filters (Goodhertz Tiltshift, Fab Pro Q, Stock EQ) - Waveshaper & Saturation (Stock, Fab Saturn, UAD Neve 1084) - Air Band (Maag EQ, Black Box HG-2, -any combo of high freq exciter w/ lifting EQ) Don't need to pay 214 Euros for something you all could really create for yourself. Heck, you could just use Trash 2 from Izotope and do it all in one plugin.
One could buy a decent transformer for that price and feed the audio signal through the rails. Thank you WhiteSea for another Snake Oil. I like this set up, seems more..."reasonable" lol.x
They should use the profits to pay a better graphics designer, it looks like a 2000s free plugin or a late 90s educational game, if you are going to use knobs why are they sitting ontop of the interface as if someone just drop some knobs on something.
👎The UI has me running for the hills. Saturation is built into so many plugins already, and plenty of free options exist. If I wanted to spend over $200 on a standalone saturation... I'm not sure that I could outside of this one. I'd buy Saturn and I'd still have enough left over for a Valhalla reverb.
Thank you for at least having the explanation of the GUI open! I like that you don’t hesitate to call a company out, but find it hard to watch when you’re just blindly fumbling your way through the interface with the camera rolling.
They changed the plugin in V3. The GUI looks way better! Go to 50 secs into this vid and see what I'm talking about. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GjXGS0oaSqk.html I belief it has automatic gain compensation as well. Thoughts?
It reminds me of some Acustica plugins , weird interfaces & GUI but how does it sound? I think the real question is if it does sound good is how was it made, if this is a some convolution style capture that’s then been modded it’s not worth 214 Euros! But maybe it’s been in development for years of coding & R& D then maybe it is worth it, recreating this kind of sonic enhancement very well isn’t easy..
You can get the same sound from Acoustica Audio plugins for half the price in sales, but CPU cost is high. So if this doesn't use much CPU and is M1 native then could be good.
@@shayeasy Crimson deserves an award as one of the worst plugins ever imo. I ll never forget how I demoed it, I had quite big expectations and then wondered if AA wants to fool people. Same experience with Ebony etc. do not remember all plugin names any more. It does not only have one of the highest cpu I have ever experienced, saturation sounds like the most unmusical pain you could add to audio. Thanks I have Decapitator, Klanghelm, Softube and two more (too many!) plugins to add some proper saturation whenever needed. I tested most of their pre amp sims, read some threads and posts and thought that placebo seems be quite a big power, well, like in a lot of cases people have to justify their purchase, of course. I also did some purchases I regreted afterwards, but very often you can re-sell a plugin, simple as that. I know the 2nd hand market pretty well and AA you will find a lot and there is a reason! ;) Acustica Audio and Plugin Alliance are the most re-sold brands quite often with prices almost for free compared to the stupid regular prices. There is a surplus of plugins and that's good for us consumers, we have a huge choice... and a plugin that's good for my work flow and preferences is not automatically good for you and vice-versa
