BTW this is the best, most intelligent thread I have read on any forum hands down.

plugins i found that add color “maybe not the same as their analog counterpart” are :

Waves CLA
Waves JJP
Waves API especially the compressor
Waves Vintage
Waves SSL adds some (keep in mind that the actual SSL is not very colorful nor its not known by users to have a low end saturation like an API)
Nomad Factory Blue Tubes
The T-Racks stuff adds color but lacks the low end associated with their analog counterpart
Smack! LE really like this one with the odd-even distortion in
Waves Hybrid a lot like the Smack!
Nomad British bundle

But lets face it you want the analog sound build your self a mini API or SSL using the lunchbox and ssl x rack and use as your front end for your money tracks and your back end for summing and you cover.

I read your article before and also followed the discussion on KVR regarding the same topic. It was very helpful recently in deciding to go for certain “deals” or not, with the outcome to simply save the money.

I still have a question regarding the X-factor of the EQ: the waveshaping (saturation).

Let’s say I take C. Budde’s ChebyshevWaveshaper VST plugin (which can create up to 24 harmonics on top of the fundamental, no matter if positive or negative) and put it directly after the EQ (though “pre-EQ” would make more sense IMO), then dial in even/odd harmonics to taste or even “modeled after” a certain plugin – do you think one might get the very same results?

I was recently testing Nomad Factory’s British Bundle, and both the EQ and compressor had a “vintage” knob that simply turned harmonic distortion on and off. In case of the EQ, it was a normal digital EQ (with custom Q values and not-your-used-to lowshelf/highshelf) unless I turned on the “vintage mode”, which created ton of harmonic distortion and nasty intermodulation (due to the reflection points of the antialising).

Now if one can reproduce these “fingerprints” from the emulations, would that be practical to invest the time and efforts? And what about the phasing of these “emulations”? How can somebody reproduce that one?

If all there is to it, no wonder that I instinctively used the same EQ over and over (ElectriQ in digital mode – or the “light” version: Noname EQ, ElectriQ in Analog Mode creates up to 8 additional harmonics) – cause it was just that good already!

Or rather, if you compare them to a fully parametric digital EQ you could still get them the digital EQ to null against even the analog EQ.

At the end of the day matching the curves should be possible, its just the digital EQ takes exactly how it works in a pure form but its impossible to capture this EXACTLY from the analog EQ so you’d never quite be able to do it.

Perhaps Im a little bit biased as im a computer geek not an audio geek. I grew up with computers since I was a kid and I’ll always favour the digital example over the analog example which is the exact opposite of everyone on gearslutz. I long for the day that none of them can say OTB sounds better than ITB and that day WILL come – I already think that if you’re skilled enough and HAVE NEVER WORKED OTB you are already not restricted by trying to work like you did on an SSL console and instead are throwing thousands of things at your mix that a traditional engineer would never be able to do or never think of doing…

I think in the digital world you have more ways to mess it up and more ways to make it sound better – but old school engineers and excited kids (which covers 95% of the people using these tools) appearing under the former first.

Blind shootouts on Gearslutz have time and time again show that people can’t tell the difference between a digital EQ and an analog EQ, plugin emulations and their real life counterparts. Im yet to find a single one of these blind shootouts where someone consistently spotted the plugin.

An example of the slate digital console emulation shootout on gearslutz showed that all the people banging on about how “wide” “3d” “deep” “spine tingling” and “grammy award winning” their OTB mixes compare to ITB actually couldn’t consistently chose the desk over the plugins (infact more people in the blind test kept picking the plugin over the desk!)