Interesting and informative thread. I just had a bit of a disappointment for what I like to use for glue. My UAD-1's have a demo in the control panel for the P4k G buss compressor. With all the coupons and sales, I was able to run the demo about 3 times and was ready to buy it only to find out that the updated P4k is only for UAD-2 cards. I wrote them and they confirmed that the version I demoed, is discontinued...no soup for me. My focusrite liquid mix has a pretty decent P4k, but I'm using up all the DSP power in other buses and channels. Long story short, I stumbled on The Glue today and so far I'm liking it as much as the UAD plug. Thanks Bouy

Brother Jon, Thanks again, you turned me on Ferric TDS a while back, somehow I missed Density mkII when I was there, I'll grab it now. Thanks again.

ohgrant


Interesting and informative thread. I just had a bit of a disappointment for what I like to use for glue. My UAD-1's have a demo in the control panel for the P4k G buss compressor. With all the coupons and sales, I was able to run the demo about 3 times and was ready to buy it only to find out that the updated P4k is only for UAD-2 cards. I wrote them and they confirmed that the version I demoed, is discontinued...no soup for me. My focusrite liquid mix has a pretty decent P4k, but I'm using up all the DSP power in other buses and channels. Long story short, I stumbled on The Glue today and so far I'm liking it as much as the UAD plug. Thanks Bouy

Grant, I've not heard anything good or bad about that plug yet....but have you tried the bus compressor that comes with Sonar X1? I sincerely don't think you'd need to shell out the cash for the other compressor man. It really is close to the UAD and the Waves 4k bus comp. Unless maybe you're still using Sonar 8.5?
 
-Danny

DannyGrant, I've not heard anything good or bad about that plug yet....but have you tried the bus compressor that comes with Sonar X1? I sincerely don't think you'd need to shell out the cash for the other compressor man. It really is close to the UAD and the Waves 4k bus comp. Unless maybe you're still using Sonar 8.5?

Thanks brother Danny. I've used a few instances on buses and channels, but to be honest, I'm a bit underwhelmed with it and causes extreme CPU usage on my old box. Probably a system specific thing but for me, the less I use the Pro channel the better off I am. I have been using the concrete limiter and softsat knob sparingly and getting away with it, but the PC's P4k and gliss eq causes me problems. Probably due to the fact my old box doesn't meet the minimum system requirements to even run X1. So far, the glue plug seems as light weight as a Sonitus plug and I really like the sound. Thanks Jon for the info on Density II nice 670 plug I'm sure I'll have use for.

Jonbouy, 
   I downloaded the ferric tds plug and checked it out....   Seems pretty tame to me?   I am not getting much of any compression or really anything that seems like saturation?  Maybe I am using it wrong but it seems like I could A/B it with an eq gently boosting the mids and a 2 db overall boost and have the same end result.

What am I missing on this one?

ChuckC


Jonbouy, 
   I downloaded the ferric tds plug and checked it out....   Seems pretty tame to me?   I am not getting much of any compression or really anything that seems like saturation?  Maybe I am using it wrong but it seems like I could A/B it with an eq gently boosting the mids and a 2 db overall boost and have the same end result.

What am I missing on this one?

Hi Chuck, Dean is on it.

It's not a distortion unit thats for sure and the use here is for making a bunch of tracks or an entire mix more unified and belonging together.  To that end this plug is providing a fake ceiling and behaviour similar to how a tape machine would start compressing more heavily as you approach that ceiling.

Many of Bootsy's plugs I've found require a higher input level than many plugs to find that sweet spot where the good stuff starts to happen.  So make sure when you are driving it that the meter is swinging in a good and lively way before making adjustments to the compression and saturation.  There are two controls here on it that will help you find that sweet spot, one is the trim on the meter itself, the other (which I think is the key for success with this one) is the little 'Input' trim screw under the big dynamics knob.   This is where you will get that characteristic that was found by spanning the red on a tapes VU meter.

Remember that guitar amp style overdrive is not what is required here we are just keying in the same harmonic saturation behaviour and top end compression to a bunch of different signals to 'glue' them together somewhat.  Trust me you can smash stuff up with Ferric too but that's not what's required here.

Here's another handy hint for it too if you put a frequency response curve from your favourite tape machine via a spline based eq (sonitus will do, best results are obtained putting the eq in before ferric) you can get pretty close to emulating the behaviour of pretty much anything you want, low end 'bumps' and HF slope offs and all.  Of course you don't get the hiss and wow and flutter artifacts that remember back in the day were the curse of audio engineers.  Those things seem have been romanticized as desirable in the quest for 'vintage' these days but we can do without that stuff today just as we would have liked too back then...

Remember if you were doing this to an outboard tape machine you'd be aiming for the best reproduction possible not a squashed version of your mix, that is what is required in the box also, if you need to creatively smash your tracks into submission as an effect, here isn't the place to do that.

FWIW heres an example of how I'd use it on a drum bus, to make a fair comparison the first example has had it's gain matched to the second example so that the perception of the gain increase alone doesn't skew the comparison.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11433789

As you can hear (or maybe can't hear) the difference is very subtle.  I've left it downloadable so you can examine the waveform if you wish, although bear in mind the mangling during conversion to an mp3 is likely more brutal than the tape sim itself, but anyway there ya go.

I have got a completely rebuilt Revox B77 1/2 track high speed reel to reel machine. I don't do it much these days but I do know what it sounds like to transfer a complete mix over to it and back. And FYI in this mode I never abuse the reel to reel machine and put it anywhere near distortion. There is another total clean mode where you are well away from any distortion. The mode where the tape machine sounds beautiful, clean, transient, smooth, warm etc..and talk about adding glue. Many styles of music benefit from being transferred to a nice reel and back. But I also agree with Danny in that sometimes the tape can destroy some aspect of the music you want to keep so then you simply avoid it. Digital sounds better than tape in many areas.

What is most likely happening here is that a plugin that claims to do what the actual machine does might be falling well short of doing so and you are better off leaving out plugins like that all together. Each time you add an average quality plugin that does not do much, it damages the integrity of the sound that is going through it by some degree. Leave it out.

The plugins that can do effective tape emulation cost a large amount of money usually. I am not saying it cannot be done but it is done at a price. The overdrive mode of a tape recorder is of course valid too and in that mode it is adding some gentle crunch and compression to the signal. But I am not sure you would ever do that to a full mix, you gotta ask yourself why would you, a buss maybe.

I don't like overdriving tape machines because it looks terrible and the machine looks like it is having a fit! Also I believe you can easily obtain that same crunch and compression somewhere else, digital easily now and have a lot more control over it at the same time.

All this talk has got me wonderin if I should pull out and setup all my reel to reel machines. I have got a whole collection of them. All because part of my backup library extends right back to 1980 when everything was on reels. I have not transferred everything over as yet. Some tapes need baking now before I can even play them. It still amazes me how incredible the stereo masters sound on the high speed half track tapes.

Thanks for the heads up on that!

Cool, glad you like it, I too found it's a bit of a strange beast at first until you get it working in that sweet spot. 

In fact in the public beta I actually suggested incorporating a greater range in that little Input trim screw, originally it was offering just +/- 6db working range.

I joked around about The Glue and had not tried it; however, The Factory Yoyo has me intrieged now.  I tried out the Ferric plug this weekend on a remix of one of my songs and liked what it was doing.  I am going to continue to experiment with it.  Yes, the trim screw does make a big difference in the way it interacts.  I started with 2 presets, "Modern Tape" and another with "Glue" in the preset.  I believe Modern Tape, tweaked was what I left it on.

@Chuck, Jon, Danny, Yoyo, MakeShift, Droddey, and all: I love your input on the buss 'glues' and how they are affecting your mixes.  Of course I'll probably test-drive "The glue" to see what I'm missing.  I've never been happy with Izotope's Alloy (nor Ozone) for giving robust cement.  (Currently I'm quite intrigued with the Slate Limiter ... which does a lot of 'low-bass' and 'treble-detail' 'welding' for pop-listeners ... but 'tis not for the timbre-consciousness of diverse instruments.

@Jeff: Yeah, that tape reel stuff is a whole science of glue that helped make for some powerful pomp in the 80's.  I'm sure its tempting to overdrive the Studer 800 (or UAD emulations) and the other tape machines.  Its great to hear your thoughts on it!

I'm willing to foregoe timber and transients to obtain psycho-acoustically robust tracks, busses, and masters ... that can take repeat listening!