Plugin alliance has been coming out with a bunch of different stuff lately. I’m wondering if they’re ramping up their library to try and compete with Slate. I also noticed they’re adding a bunch of plugins that other companies have already had on the market for years. Interesting. Wonder what they’re up to.
I dunno what’s up with PA, but I love it (and my bank account hates it). I’ve been hoping they’d release native versions of their UAD stuff eventually.
A lot of people love the BX console SSLs. I bought them - rarely use them, but as they issue upgraded versions with the tolerance modeling, the newer and better ones in the future will be drastically discounted for owners with the older ones.
I’m way behind, on the new releases. I keep it this way so I can wait a year, then till things like the Cascade and SPL Iron drop to $100, then use my $75 monthly rebate voucher on them. Basically I bought $1000 worth of their stuff last November, and I’m trying to milk out the rebates for everything their worth. I have enough UAD stuff to be able to do without Dirk’s latest and greatest, but I do keep up with their library because some of their older stuff (like Waves) has just become a staple in my workflow.
I’m annoyed they released that Shadow Hills because it makes it less exclusive to the UAD owner club, but overall its probably a good thing, because its old, and because competition makes for a healthy marketplace.
@blairhall1974 - Do you think you’ll get that Focusrite strip?
So far, no. I’ve got the trial and tested it out on a mix session and didn’t really like it… BUT I think that’s because I’m too used to using the bx SSL. I’m going to give it some more chances on different material though, because a lot of people love it so far.
Also demoing the Shadow Hills and the Ampeg… so far those are both instant buys. I’ve got a $75 voucher waiting!
I tend to follow your philosophy with new releases… I’ll demo them and see if I like, then hold off until the price becomes more attractive. Although, because I own most of their catalog now and I bought into their PickPack thing, I tend to get extra discounts on releases. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever paid full price for a PA release… or most others for that matter.
Plugin alliance has always brought on other developers and put them in their system. That’s their whole thing. I figured Slate was the one who was doing what PA does.
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I’m not sure either, but I do know that there has been a couple recent changes that finally free me up to be able to provide a way to purchase/sell plugins on here, so it may be related to some of those changes?
The Cascade went on sale for $99. I’m gonna use the $75 voucher and pay $24 for that thing. Was planning on doing it tonight actually.
Pick pack. I grabbed 10 of the most expensive plugins because I needed them at the time. Within 3 months, I had caught every single one of them on sale for under $50, the went on that site Miked and Christina use (I think its KVR) and snagged the rest of the pick pack used. Once I had bought everything that I had in the pick pack, I cancelled the pickpack, but that $120 I paid allowed me to rent them for 3 months during which I used them heavily and really needed them.
So I think I ended up paying between $4-500 for about $3000 worth of junk. After that my loyalty vouchers started coming, so these days I don’t spend much more than $25 on a plugin. If its something I want…hey delayed gratification. Right? Good things come to those who wait 
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Cool!
10/char
But isn’t Slate mostly designing his own stuff? Like whoever the dude with the initials FG is?
well, they just brought on Kilohearts, they have a TH-U plugin, Repeater is a d16 plugin, LiquidSonics made the reverb. AirEQ and the De-esser are Eiosis, although Eiosis is Fabrices plugins, so I’m not sure that counts.
The Kilohearts stuff is very cool. I’m definitely not lacking in plugins, but since I had the Everything Bundle anyway (or is it called “All Access” now???), I was very pleasantly surprised when it arrived.
I’m guessing that’s Fabrice Gabriel, who I think is in France. He used to be behind the Slate development stuff, and presumably still is?
What’s up with Kilohearts? I came across them somehow, then saw Slate talking about them. I saw they have some kind of free bundle (“Toolbox”) that looked interesting. The visual design (GUI) seems different and interesting on those. They call the plugins “snapins”? And there’s a virtual rack “Snap Heap” to hold them.
It’s getting kind of mind-blowing, all the new software developers and new technologies and modeling they are doing, it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with it!
@blairhall1974… I’m just finishing up a mix for a church that wanted post production audio mixing done for their fourth of July service. They did a big 100 member choir and orchestra recording, captured it on Nuendo, then sent the picture lock to me with the multi-tracks. Its all amateurs, and this audio sample is of the youth pastor singing with a karaoke track. But for the rest of the service, I used the MC77 and the Focusrite strip on as many sources as I could just to really test drive it. Here’s what I came up with lol.
Before and after:
(Dry signal with volume boosted, and reverb added)
(With MC77 and Focusrite strip)
I know you can’t see the meters, but I’m making pretty good use of that focusrite compressor. The MC77’s meters are calibrated super aggressively compared to the UAD, Black Rooster, and Waves versions. I’m only hitting it at 1-2 db of GR, but I’m hearing it doing a crap ton of compression when the needles not even moving.
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Yup, you can do pretty much anything you can imagine with the plugin chains - parallel, series, multiband, and a combination of all - it’s pretty mind-blowing:
I used the Kilohearts bundle extensively when experimenting with the approach to mixing drums Eric Valentine describes in the video I posted in this thread, and the subsequent audio samples I posted:
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Did anyone on here buy a Pick Pack?
Now THAT’s taking care of your customers! 
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I can only speak for the waves version of the ones you mentioned, but its meter moves really fast and I’ve generally struggled to reconcile what I see with what I’m feeling from that one. The IK 1176 is more like what you describe the MC77 to be - by the time the needle is moving, you can hear that it’s compressing.
I jumped on it right when it was announced… it’s funny I just clicked on the link you posted and that’s the first I’ve seen of that. Didn’t get an email 
not that I’m complaining! Actually I just skimmed through my email and there it is!
Looks like they’re gearing up to go subscription. Which depending on price point would pretty much smash the Slate bundle, except a couple of areas where there’s no overlap (i.e. distressor). Although they have such a huge library, they could break it down into curated bundles.
Ok I just read the content of the email… here’s an interesting excerpt:
Then - and this will be the main news next week! - we are about to launch a totally new system, which will enable each and everyone of you out there to use large numbers of our titles at really affordable pricing!
We are sure you have seen some of the NEW plugins we are releasing July 15th. Lots of new brands, and a total of 14 new plugins to be released in July and August.
We have seen many of you commenting on social media, worrying about how you will be able to access all of these plugins without breaking the bank. Don’t worry, we’ve got you.
We will present you with the Deal Of Your Lifetime next week!
Kinda looks subscription-y… we shall see!
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Totally. Notice that I had the V Gain on the Focusrite ramped up to max, but once it kicked in and started doing something meaningful I liked the characteristics of how the rest of the channel strip interacted with it. The EQ took some getting used to haha. I had to stare at the strip for a minute to figure out what the hell was going on, but once I found my way around it I was good to go.
On the Neve 88R and and the SSL4/6/9 J/K if you want to side chain dynamics you basically loose your EQ strip. I like how the Focusrite has a dedicated dynamics filter section. I’ve never seen that in a mixer before. Kinda cool. I also like how you can ‘key listen’ the De-esser. I don’t know if the real console has that, but its a cool feature.
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Wow. That’s a really good deal!