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!
Yup. They did it. $179/yr subscription.
Pfffft…
Bit of a disappointment, especially considering the hype that Dirk was generating (talking about cheaper plugins then releasing some of their most expensive, “Deal of your lifetime!” etc…). Although I get that this is the business model that makes the most sense for them at the moment, so it is what it is… PA has been great to me in terms of customer service and whatnot. The rage online is insane tho
They are awesome!
I’m actually really happy to see PA go the subscription route. It does 2 things for me:
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No more PA sales to compete with. Now that they are doing subscriptions, they have every incentive to make sure their plugins are expensive and never on sale. That way they can say “You get $20,000 worth of plugins for just $179/year.” So as far as I’m concerned, PA has pulled out of the plugin market. They are no longer my competitor in any way.
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I don’t have to worry about making bread and butter plugins. If people want analog style EQs, they are going to go with PA or Slate. Both of them have a million options. Nobody is going to buy one off channel strips from anybody. Good. Now I don’t have to make them.
I think the PA move to subscription is great for all small developers. Now small developers can focus on making new and/or interesting plugins while the subscription guys keep putting out more compressors.
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But Waves and UAD aren’t on subscription packages either. How or why do they not pose the same kind of competition in your market?
Waves definitely is a competitor. I don’t think UAD is at all. Their main selling point is their hardware processor. Hardware processing is objectively worse for 95% of people.
I would think that people are still buying that stuff because of how insanely useful their modeling stuff works. I dunno…I’ve always really really liked what their emulators do. Much more so than anything from Waves, PA, or Slate. I would have never spent all that cash on their stuff just BECAUSE of the hardware. Matter of fact, the hardware is a major inconvenience to me personally.
On the flip side, their digital tool seem pretty worthless. Its like the opposite of Izotope, where all UAD seems to do well is model things. Excluding plugs that someone else built (like the Masterworks EQ or Anteres Autotune for example), I’ve found never found a use for stuff like their precision package which just seems like a run-of-the-mill digital compressor/EQ.
I don’t know. It could be. Back when they started out, their selling point was “because we use DSP processors, we can use more processing power to get more accurate models in a way that would burn through your CPU.” They sort of became the defacto analog models because of that.
Fast forward to today, CPU’s are way better for doing audio DSP, unless you need near zero latency or you don’t want to lug a computer around. So they have no real reason to be the best analog models other than brand inertia.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t good at it. But it’s not like you have one guy who is really good at modeling making every plugin.
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