TB ReelBus ... Load Test ......

I think the first thing UAD owners will tell you is that UAD is not an alternative to CPU, but a complement. So they could run all the same 36 ReelBus above, many others PLUS UAD powered plug-ins on top of that. 

What's the point of the test, timboe? I wouldn't expect a tape sim to be a particularly CPU-intensive effect. It would be more remarkable if you couldn't run 36 instances. Did you benchmark similar products for comparison and find ReelBus to be more efficient than others? Or was the objective just to demonstrate that ReelBus was a viable alternative to hardware DSP?

Timboe - sorry if some of my post was a little over the top, but you hit me wrong first thing in the morning after a rough week... and frankly when someone comes on here bashing something time after time it really starts to grate on one's patience.  Especially when it's something I find to be very useful and high quality. 

I haven't read all of your posts on UAD, but I've read several.  When it comes to overstating an opinion, I think that saying the Quad is simply a hardware dongle is about equal (and opposite) to saying that some UAD (not all) plugins blow away anything else I've tried.  So call us even on that.  The ironic thing about the dongle argument is that the UAD DSP card is just about the only form of copy protection I've ever heard of that actually works against piracy... AND it benefits the user by adding to the power available for plugins.  (I think that's the dictionary definition of WIN-WIN.)

While it's well known that the UAD tape sims do eat a lot of UAD resources, they have many other great sounding plugins that you can use many more instances of, even over 200 instances of a few.  Nobody mentions those when they complain about the "dongle" because they don't create controversy.  For me, I'll stick to using ReelBus for tape sims and save the UAD for some of the slightly less CPU intensive plugins.  That's one area where I'd say we agree. 

I don't think anybody has ever bought a UAD Quad to use it for 12 Ampex's.  (Another over the top shot.)  I think most users figure out what works well in native and what works well in UAD and balance sound quality vs CPU usage and/or take advantage of freezing or bouncing tracks when necessary.  I know when I use some creativity and a little common sense I can get a whole lot more effects and synths running by mixing native and UAD than I need on most songs, and my computer is somewhat moderate by today's standards.  I rarely freeze tracks unless I'm doing a lot more synth stuff than usual.  When I freeze it's because I'm running out of native CPU headroom, not UAD processor headroom.  I know that some of the UAD plugins take a lot of CPU, but not all of them do. Many of these lower or moderate CPU plugins are quite useful and very good sounding.

Again, sorry for being a bit over the top with some of my earlier statements, but the bottom line is that I do agree with you that ReelBus is a great plug at a great price, both in money and in CPU hit.  And personally I think it stands up fine on it's own without having to put down UAD in order to do so.  In fact I first heard about ReelBus in a thread where someone mentioned it as a viable alternative to the UAD and Waves tape sims.  They did so without putting down the UAD and Waves offerings (and indirectly insulting their users).

Peace to you as well!

 
Well one thing I agree on is the quality and price of the Tone Boosters plugs are very cool. 

 As with the others I'm a bit lost as to why you are on this crusade against DSP products. Not sure why you choose a mastering plug like Studer to do your theoretical test. The only real test that I would be interested in is possibly an A/B comparison from someone that is not just trying to come up with evidence to back up their already existing beliefs. It doesn't seem practical to me to use the Studer as anything else but icing on the cake. So I'm going to have to call shenanigans to your entire first post.

 I'm not upset with you or anything but I'm wondering why someone would go to such great lengths to repeatedly try to belittle UAD users. My guess is you have an unsettled debate going on with that colleague of yours with Pro Tools and UAD?
You once again refer to the price of UAD's most expensive card. As far as cost....If you paid retail for your RME fireface I have less invested in my, UAD-2, both powercore's focusrite Liquidmix and the new I5 DAW I just built combined. 

 I'm certainly not suggesting to anyone that DSP's are the only way to go but here is an example. 99% of this was mixed on my old single core P4 win XP, started in Sonar7 studio finished in X1. I would have to say 95% DSP powered.  This is a remix of a forum collab here.
Rocker  No way could I have done that with my old P4 and native plugs. My 3 dongles weren't helping out much either.
 Now that I have got a workflow going with the DSP plugins I'm likely to stay with what I have and give my CPU a break in between games.
 

backwoods


Hey ohgrant- sorry to veer off topic a bit here.

How does the liquidmix work with 64bit. There seem to be quite a few cheap units floating about and the occasional horror story as well. Have you had good luck with yours?

Well, I don't have 64 bit yet but I have a feeling the LM is 32 bit only. It's in legacy support already so I doubt any future driver development.  Finally got the LM working well on my new build and must say. My favorite channel strip for comp and EQ My favorite buss compressor for the vocals as well. Great thing about it, nothing more to buy. Just download their presets (impulse files) each file is an IR of a different hardware unit. They have to use code words for the actual name of the hardware being emulated. You can download a PDF that tells you what they really are. I can't express enough my appreciation for the liquid mix. I think you're out of luck with 64bit though.

They do enjoy a substantial margin on the hardware, but the software is where the big bucks are. Who else is charging comparable prices for plugins? Only other vendors with similarly hardware-dependent products. I don't think UA is even up to competing in the cutthroat native arena, where few are willing to pay $350 for a reverb plugin.

timboe, I just wanted to say thanks for prompting me to revisit this plugin. It's been sitting here on disk for a couple of years, since I last demoed it. So today I downloaded the latest version and ran some tests, then bought it. At $18US it didn't require a great deal of deliberation.

However, the CPU usage - on my machine anyway - certainly ain't nothing to brag about. I put it on a track that was hitting 44% on the first core and Reelbus pushed that up to 62%, making it one of the heaviest CPU hits of all the effects I routinely use. Right up there with Ozone.

Not that it's a showstopper. I intend to use it on the master bus as a final bit of spit 'n  polish after all the tracks have been frozen, so I can live with the overhead.

You're right, it's only a few months old, so I may indeed have confused it with Ferox, or even some other tape sim. When I saw that I had version 1.x, and that the current version was 2.8, that further reinforced the presumption that it had been around awhile.

Also high CPU usage compared to Slate VTM

Tim, Not for or against people buying any plugs that they like. The price point to value is what steers me a lot of the time. However, your post prompted me to take a closer listen and I bought the TB-Reelbus. One of the best $20's I ever plopped down. Great plug that found a place in my favorites' folder and will have a home on the master buss.

Last night I popped Reelbus into several projects just to see where it might fit. One of the old projects I brought up already had a tape sim on the master, the ancient FX:TapeSim that's been bundled with SONAR since Day One. I was therefore able to A/B it against Reelbus and hear how superior the new TB product was - except that it wasn't. The old Cakewalk plugin sounded better.

Not sure what the point of this post is, except as a reminder not to dismiss the older effects you already have.

Man, I was going to ask if anyone even thought of comparing them. Thanks, Simeon (and Bit for mentioning it).

  Thanks Dave, and cool video Simeon. It's great to hear from folks that are capable of being more objective about the matter.

 

simeon


I don't know how much of a true comparison.  Just a little bit of the surface and seeing behind the curtain so to speak about what might be happening with the various approaches to this idea.
It seems that it is really just another attempt a a different type of saturation model.

Very interesting though when you get into the head of the developers and the inner workings of the  plugin itself.  A lot of times we get distracted by meters, lights and other GUI eye candy that influences what we perceive so having tools like this to actually visualize things is really a plus!

Thanks Simeon that's a cool vid.

It certainly shows the similarities between these types of tools in that they all produce harmonics from the fundamental frequency, I've never stopped using the old Cakewalk sim, and you really showed up why I don't use the 'hiss' feature on it at all ever...  My favourite though is still the free one from Bootsy 'Ferric TDS' simply because it provides a fake ceiling to push against like tape but doesn't introduce a bunch of noise artifacts, just a nice amount of saturation which only bites if you push too hard.  If I want loads of distortion I'll use an amp sim...

I like what you say here to as you seem aware of the limitations of this particular test in not showing up the differences.  Like you say too it's hard to understand the rationale employed by the developers on a particular model.

Some of the things that the test wont show up are things like how the plug in is performing under different conditions as programme material is passing through it over time, and the effect of the different noise artifacts introduced (which you did show up) along the frequency domain and why they are included in a particular model.

The only real test for these kind of DSP algo's, because they have an abstract function aside from the harmonics, is to match output levels and use your ears, so they are always going to be down to a matter of taste to a large degree.

Some of them are resource hungry because of the amount of modelling going on and I'm sure some still are a big fuss out of next to nothing at all as an aid to get us to part with some cash but at least we have a choice...  It's a good reminder that you might save yourself a few bucks by not pretending to hear some magic going on that isn't there, although with some of these plugs there clearly is some good stuff happening.

Thanks for the vid, I enjoyed it.