Teagan wrote: I haven’t decided on what to do for my opto/FET comps. I’ve been reading up on Waves upgrade policy and am kinda intimidated at the prospect of pricey upgrades down the road to be able to continue to use my stuff. I’m reading many think it’s not a big deal, many are pretty put off by it. It seems most that aren’t so bothered are possibly people that more do this professionally and have a ton of plugs, and the prospect of a couple hundred bucks every few years to upgrade a ton of stuff isn’t a big deal. I’m not sure. I have a handful of Waves stuff (Vitamin, which I love; CLA Unplugged and Vocals, a few others). What are your thoughts?
Hey Tegan, welcome, and hopefully I we can get you set up on this forum soon. Its easier for me to take some of these question here, unless there are details or information in the emails that aren’t topic sensitive. Everything you wrote above looks fairly tech-oriented, so I hope you don’t mine me fielding it here, as this particular forums link and referencing workflow makes things easier to respond to. Also, I’m on this forum much more than the other.
The W-up is a non-factor for the Classic Compressors bundle. That is totally optional. Plugins will continue to work, and you will continue to receive patch/bug fixes even after your Wup expires.
The W-up was created for people like myself that buy a bundle like the Waves Mercury that is constantly changing. It adds no value to a bundle like the classic compressors that has not changed since its been released, nor is it likely to change in the foreseeable future. And the value of the W-up for myself is that it caps at $225, so I can decide not to pay it for 3 years, let Waves add a bunch of stuff, then update ALL of my bundles under the same cap at the same time. So when I renew Mercury, I also renew Abbey Road, Ambisonics, SSL, and individual plugins (like the infected mushroom pusher) that are not included in Mercury. So lets say you had the old version 7 of classic compressors. It would have continued to work without ever renewing Wup once. But say you wanted to upgrade to the Classic Compressors V10 so that you could use them in conjunction with the Native Instruments Maschine Studio control surface. Then you would have had to upgrade them, but I think the upgrade is less than $10. So you are NOT having to pay $225 - that’s only for users with very expensive bundles.
So the Overloud and Black Rooster came from a recommendation of another guy here @AaronNarace. I’ve only been using them for a couple weeks, but I love them to death! Maybe he can weigh in you have any other questions. If you were to buy the Overloud FET, you might be able to do without the Waves 1176.
Teagan Wrote: ALSO, I’m reading consistently outstanding raves about Klanghelm’s MJUC . Seems it’s got the smoother vari-mu flavor of a tube, coupled with the ability to do very fast attack and release times, which real vari-mus couldn’t do. I’m hearing raves about how brilliant it sounds on vocals, drums, guitars, etc., etc. Can that accomplish much of the same? Or do I want to stay with the opto/FET thing.
I would get all 3. The Klanghelm isn’t a true substitute for the 1176 and LA2A in my opinion. Its something you want in addition to those. Many others (and I hope they chime in here too) are not as dogmatic about the 1176 as I am. Keep in mind this is my personal preference. Its not like there’s some federal law mandating that you MUST own an 1176.
Another thing I need to add is that the signature quality of a Vari-Mu is NOT that its slow. The defining quality of a vari mu is that the tubes reset themselves x number of times per second based on the decibel level of the incoming signal. The first very mu-compressors that were built HAPPENED TO BE slow, but being slow does not make it a Vari mu. So if you want a Vari-mu emulator, you’re gonna have some pretty sluggish (but musical) release curves. But companies like Manley adapted the Vari-Mu technology to give the user more control, so don’t judge that family of compressor only by its speed differential.
