I bought this a couple of weeks ago because, well, it was so damn cheap. I have to say, though, I am thoroughly unimpressed with Waves plugins in general. I've used just about everything in this bundle now and run them up against a whole bunch of other plugins. In just about every case, the Waves plugins lose. McDSP kills them for eq and compression. Every Universal Audio plugin I have is better than the stuff from Waves. Metric Halo's channel strip completely crushes them. About the only useful plugin in the bundle is the L1+, solely for the dither. The UA precision limiter sounds far better. It's kind of disappointing... I remember when Waves was awesome. But I look at this bundle and some of the plugins (Renaissance EQ, Comp, L1, Audiotrack, and about ten others) were plugins I literally had in the mid 1990s. This stuff sounds like it's old and crappy compared to the really meticulous, well planned and well executed plugins out there. The only useful plugin in the bundle is the Waves GTR plugin, which replaces my ancient Pod Farm, which is now out of date and no longer supported. The cabs in this are horrible, but with Recabinet, the included amps are not bad. I'll post some jams in the next week or two showcasing GTR. I think this plugin was available for $50 or so a few weeks back-- I wish I had just bought that instead of the whole Gold bundle of crap.
I'm glad that you have posted this as I was just about to order this package myself. The only thing that stopped me so far is I always think that if a deal seems too good to be true and too cheap then it probably is....you never get something for nothing. However I did just order 2 SE X1R ribbon mics and 2 FETHEAD clean gain boosters as there are some great deals on those at the mo ent, just hope that's not too good to be true ! Should be here in the morning
Jon — Dec 29, 2014I'm glad that you have posted this as I was just about to order this package myself. The only thing that stopped me so far is I always think that if a deal seems too good to be true and too cheap then it probably is....you never get something for nothing. However I did just order 2 SE X1R ribbon mics and 2 FETHEAD clean gain boosters as there are some great deals on those at the mo ent, just hope that's not too good to be true ! Should be here in the morning
Yes, all the chinese ribbon mics are pretty decent. The Fetheads are great if you don't have a really high gain clean preamp--they do require phantom power, and just remember that's the only time you should ever use phantom power with a ribbon mic, if one of those is on the line.
Looking at the bundle now, 17 of the 35 included plugins are plugins I had on my Pro Tools 3 system, in 1997. The GTR plugin is pretty useful. Most of the compressors and EQs are not very useful. If you want a really great plugin, Metric Halo has been selling ChannelStrip3 for $75 for a little while now... this easily the best channel strip plugin I've ever used and I've been using it heavily.
The mics just arrived. The first thing I noticed is the the instructions inside the box are actually for the condenser mic although the actual mic shipped is the ribbon mic as is the box. The mics are absolutley freezing cold as it has been below zero overnight on the delivery van so I will wait until later to test them when they have warmed up properly to room temperature.
Just waiting for the fetheads now on seperate delivery. Need the fetheads as the mic pre's on the Octacapture are very good but do get a bit hissy when cranked up.
edit: The mic pre's on the octacapture get VERY hissy when cranked....completely unusable actually with a ribbon mic unless used for on a very loud sound source of course. Fetheads won't be here until Monday but that should make a huge difference.
Did you try the mics with the h6?
BINGEWOOD — Dec 30, 2014Did you try the mics with the h6?
Not yet, will give that a go tomorrow
I can't find any specs on the gain for those Roland preamps. But for ribbon mics, you really need 70+ dB of gain. Not many mic preamps can do that. We use 4 channels of these for our ribbon mics.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RibbonPre
AEAs are designed specifically for ribbon mics, they have 83 dB of gain, and don't offer phantom power.
We also use two of these (the older Mark 1 version):
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/7602mk2
We've used a few other Neve clones we've built too. These have 80dB of gain. On vocalists, we're often running them either full out or one notch below full gain with the bigger ribbons. But goddamn it's worth it on a female vocalist. Generally, most mic preamps don't have enough juice to amplify a ribbon mic without a ton of hiss, unless it is on a loud guitar amp. We've had mixed results with the Fet inline preamps; the mics definitely don't sound the same through them. But you might like the sound you get with them.
That's interesting as I was looking at the AEA ribbon pre earlier. I will wait for the fetheads to arrive first and see if they give me what I want
charger — Dec 29, 2014I bought this a couple of weeks ago because, well, it was so damn cheap.
I have the diamond bundle and Waves IR 1 reverb. I use only one of the Diamond Bundle plugs, the Ultramaximizer 1+ I use that on my finals as a mastering tool inside of Sonar. I use the Rhyman Auditorium impulses in the IR1 verb on my finals in Sonar exclusively.
So when I export I have a mastered mix. I don't dither it down to CD quality and MP3 in Sonar, for that I use Sound Forge. It all sounds OK to me, but these days I might record something once a year if I am inspired. So when this DAW dies, so does my recording interests as far as I can tell......