Fabfilter total bundle vs $1000 in Waves plugs

try the fab filter ones as demos, I bought the bundle last Christmas, then the Saturn plugin after..  I'm happy with them. YES it's a big hit of money, but it's worth it.

also look at Dan's youtube videos for them. He shows them very well.

if you do decide to buy em, bitflipper will give you a referral code if you want.

other people I know use waves, but well how they are with doing upgrades in the past, made me decide against getting them.

Right now, there are a few plugs I am totally looking into picking up this year...  I would be looking at these web pages...  and explore the sites and download all the demos of everything these companies have

http://www.nomadfactory.com/products/magma/index.html

http://www.nomadfactory.com/products/bt_bundle/index.html

http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/delays/psp_echo/

I already own products from both those companies, so I just want to expand my collections.  That magma thing is cool as all luck



There are so many awesome options for plugins..  but I guess beyond Fab Filter and Waves, PSP and Nomad are very good brands too!

$1000.00 worth of plugins?  Hope you're at Quincy Jones levels of production...yeesh...

I've been looking at the FabFilter Pro bundle at $549. Do they ever have a half off sale?

Agree with Bit.  FF is tres fab.  Get them and then whatever WAVES you need individually.

Wow...just demo'd the FF comp and eq. All I can say is "dammit! I hate you guys soooooo much" 

They're really really cool. The visualization tools alone on them are just so cool. The realtime comression envelope display on the ProC is amazing and everyone should really include some kind of similar display. Gah! Don't you people know I just bought a Beeznees Tribute 3 and can't spend more money?!?! Are you trying to get me divorced?!?!?

*sigh* Somebody (Bit? Ol Pal?) PM me how to get the 10% thingy? Also, do they ever go on sale? If I wait a bit will the price go down?

I feel dirty...

Dean

Hi bigboi,
I figured I'd give you a quick comparative review since the original point of this thread was to compare the FF stuff and the Waves stuff. I've only demod the EQ and Compressor so far from FF, but I do own a bunch of other stuff...Waves, UAD, IKMM, PSP, and a bunch of hardware (UA, SSL, Empirical Labs etc).

Regarding the EQ, let me start by saying I'm not a big EQ guy. To my ears most of them sound pretty much the same (with very few notable exceptions) and the real difference is how quickly and easily I can get them to do what I want. The FF built-in analyzer is really cool in this regard, as is the control set...I really like the ability to easily bypass and solo bands and the shelves and filters are nice and functional. I don't think I own any Waves products that do what the FF does, and while I'll still use the UAD Manley, Pultec and my hardware, if I do pick up the FF it will see a lot of use.

The compressor: I am a bit of a compressor nerd...I own lots of plugs and a fair amount of hardware and I know my way around compression pretty well. The functional dynamics control aspects of the FF are really very nice and the display that shows both the dynamics domain and time domain effects is really really good. If you have any lingering questions about how compressors affect sound, the display will help tremendously. Even if you're just still trying to figure out stuff like "how does 2db of compression with a medium attack sound as compared to whatever other setting", being able to see what the compressor is doing and then correlating that with what you're hearing is very valuable. The FF will not replace my hardware or some of my "character" compressors, but if I do buy it it would see lots of use.

So, shorter answer, after an admittedly short demo period I really like what I've seen so far on the FF stuff and may be buying shortly. For most of my everyday, workhorse tasks they'd certainly be near the top of my list. I think I agree with some of the other folks who posted, FF first for everyday stuff, Waves (and others) for specific things.

Good luck, and thanks for bringing the FF stuff to my attention.

Dean

Cj....You had someone write that for you, didn't you...So poetic...:o) :o)

The more you own, the higher the discount is when buying new plugins from them

CJ

A couple of weeks ago , i made a track and the kick was taking from Maschine library .....but after some eq and comp , on clcik artefcas appeared obviously ....this was in the sample !! so i opened sundforge and try to edit it , but no go ... i then used Waves X-click : bingo saved my day !!

Yesturady i wanted a rotating effect on a TOM roll , so i was like ok let's do this and that with automation , then i remebered having Mondomod (waves) and bingo , tempo sync rotating effect ...

I can go on and on ......yes i may use those less than 5 times a years !! but those tools are just life/time saver ....and alwayz welcome this is the strenght of waves bundle : all you need , you have !! they might be other better processing in certain area (Pro L , Pro G ect) but i assure you that you can definitly make a pro sounding mix with waves without a doubt !!

to get the equivalent , you will have to buy FF and way  more .....

> I just found out that Fabfilter is VST3. Is it VST3 only?

I just purchased FabFilter Total Bundle. It works perfectly with SONAR. VST3 is an option, not mandatory.

bigboi


Would love to hear your opinions. I can get the total bundle, every plug fabfilter makes, for $900. Just wanted to see if you guys preferred comparable waves plugs, or the fabfilter stuff. Sound off guys
 

It's a tough question to answer without knowing the Waves plugins/bundles that you are considering, but these are two of my favorite plugin developers, so I'll give you my perspective.  I have all of the FabFilter plugins except Micro and FabFilter One.  I think I've purchased every one of them as soon as they were released because they give great loyalty discounts and because they make some of the best plugins on the market IMO.  I also have several Waves plugins/bundles (Gold, Renaissance Maxx, SSL 4000, Maserati, and H-EQ).


Two things that really set FabFilter apart from Waves and the rest of the pack is their (1) really intuitive and nice-looking interfaces, and (2) implementation of m/s processing.  I highly recommend that you watch some of the product videos and tutorials on their website to really get a good feel for how deep these plugins are.  My go-to EQ, compressor, gate, and limiter are Pro-Q, Pro-C, Pro-G, and Pro-L, but the Waves L1 and C1 are excellent as well and get a lot of use.  Between Pro-Q and Waves Q10, there is no contest IMO - Pro-Q is a far superior EQ, but Waves H-EQ is a nice alternative to Pro-Q and has more filter types and better "color" options.


FabFilter Saturn (multiband saturation/distortion) is unmatched by any Waves products IMO.  Same goes for FabFilter Volcano (modular filter effect) and Simplon (basic filter plugin).  Timeless (delay) is a very flexible delay with a ton of modulation capabilites - it's a bit overkill for basic delay needs, though, and is better as a sound design effect, rather than a bread-n-butter delay IMO.  Waves SuperTap or H-Delay are better in that respect IMO.  FabFilter Twin2 is a great synth and, obviously, Waves does not offer any synths.


On the flip side, Waves has a ton of products that FabFilter doesn't offer (yet).  I won't go through all of them, but a few things that jump out at me are the some of their specialty effects, like MondoMod, Doppler, Enigma, and MetaFlanger, and some of their color/vintage-style compressors and EQs (e.g., V-series and H-series).  The RenBass and MaxxBass plugins are really excellent and unmatched plugins.   Actually, the entire Renaissance bundle is an excellent buy.  If you're a channel strip whore like me, you'll probably love RenChannel (one of my favorite plugins ever) and the SSL channel strips.  FabFilter doesn't offer any channel strips, although they have mentioned in the past that it may be offered in the future.  Waves also offers several de-essers, doublers, auto-tuning software (i.e., Waves Tune - very underrated IMO), guitar amp modeling, etc., not to mention several reverbs, which FabFilter does not offer.


So, really, it's hard to make a comparison without knowing which Waves bundles you're considering, but for the most part, I generally prefer the FabFilter plugins where they overlap with an equivalent Waves product, but I personally couldn't get by with FabFilter alone and I don't think I have any projects whose FX bins aren't stacked with FF and Waves plugins.  Not sure how helpful that is, since you aren't considering buying both, but I guess if you can narrow down where your plugin needs lie, it might help you choose between the two brands.

cclarry


Waves has announced that their next major upgrade will be VST3 only

Where are you seeing this?  The only thing I've seen so far is that they will support AAX native, but not HD.

cclarry



It's the same way they adapted to VST.  They didn't want to ...they had to.

I remember this!! And they kicked and SCREAMED all the way!! Tried to  get everyone on board with DirectX plug ins!! That was like the Beta and VHS wars!!

cclarry

bitflipper

Waves has announced that their next major upgrade will be VST 3 only.

I think you may have mis-read that. What's more likely is they'll be adding VST 3 support in the next major upgrade. 


An awful lot of Pro Tools users would be pretty upset about an exclusive shift to VST3.

No, no mis-reading....Has nothing to do with RTAS or AU, or AAX, only VST.  It means that the next Major upgrade, after Version 9, being Version 10, will only support VST 3, not both VST 3 and VST 2.4, as version 9 does.    They're saying that they won't code VST 2.4 support into the next major upgrade as they do now. That means that Non VST 3 compliant hosts won't be supported in the next major upgrade basically. 

Source?