Someone one the Waves Facebook group took a snapshot of the NLS summing plugin with Q clone. Is there more to this than meets the eye? Or did I just not get the memo?
https://www.waves.com/plugins/nls-non-linear-summer#classic-console-sound-with-nls
That does seem odd… basically just a 3dB bump across the spectrum. I have this, but have rarely used it… I’ll have to dust it off and run some of my QClone tests.
The odd part is, vs Slate VCC, NLS is regarded as being a more aggressive and colored… so you would think there’d be some some less-subtle harmonic mojo as you move up the frequency spectrum. Innnnnteresting!
I spent all morning dicking around with that NLS trying to get good enough preamp saturation in a way that could replace the UAD SSL E strip when I run out of DSP. I even went on the Waves FB group to figure out why the mic pres on the channel strip were so unusable. Its not real clear.
What I did find is that the Scheps Omni strip is one of the best saturation emulators that Waves makes. That saturation knob just SHINES compared to some of the other Waves preamp emulators. I have no idea why the hell they put a ‘mic’ button on the NLS channels that was so poorly implemented…it sounds better with the damn thing off! Wow - that thing is useless!!!
I just can not get that Slate VCC to dial in for the life of me. Try placing that thing on a violin section, or a smooth airy ambient female vocal and you’ll hear the problem. Even with the drive wide open, the i/o decoupled, and input attenuator in the sweet spot, the Slate VCC just damages everything. Its like the 3rd order harmonics above 7k fall right off a cliff. it makes whatever its on sound less open. You don’t notice it as bad if its on a bass guitar or a kick drum, but for everything with sensitive information higher than like…4k it just seems to destroy detail somehow.
One work-around that I was pretty impressed with was the Kush Omega units. I never gave them much credit in the past because the Neve and API aren’t as good as the UAD, but when your UAD card is out of DSP, it’s a whole different scenario. I am REALLY digging that Omega 458!! It has all of the openness and clarity that I love from the SSL and 88rs 
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I did a few tests on the NLS a few months ago when it was on sale to see if it was worth $29 for me to buy. Some of the models have a stronger eq curve than others, and some of them have much low distortion thresholds. One of the models (I don’t remember which one) had a hard clipper built in at -6dB.
I figured there were easier ways to distort and eq tracks than using this plugin. But sometimes it’s nice to have a plugin hardcode the distortion flavor in rather than try to come up with it myself.
I started really learning my way around the UAD fatso and thoroughly combing through the manual while experimenting. Its a gorgeous sounding saturation plugin. Both the Distressor and the Fatso are REAL deep versatile units.
As I mentioned to blairhall in the replay above, that Kush 458 caught my ear right away too.
The other one I’ve been having a hay-day with for distortion is the Manley Voxbox.
For distortion, have you tried that Scheps omni?
no, channel strips don’t really work for my workflow.
Too bad Waves (probably) won’t just give us the saturation knob from that thing as a standalone like UAD does!! God knows they have enough other worthless one-knob plugins lol.