Hi everyone,

How good is the pro channel? Can it replace something like the SSL plugin series by waves, or would you still be better off using that?

Any info on how the pro-channel stacks up to other plugins would be great.

Thanks!

There's a recent thread or two that AB's Pro Channel against some big name hardware. Do a search.

I could really only find 1 post out the first page of search results, and there was only one person that said they had trouble distinguishing the pro channel from the waves ssl plugins. No other comments or feedback. That's hardly a discussion.

Of course, I found a lot of threads of people asking the same question as me, but the responses were exactly the same as your response - "go look elsewhere" ;)

It makes butter taste like margarine, or vice-versa, I forget.  Either way, it makes something taste like something else.

Here you go acoustigod.

Wasn't trying to be a dick. Just thought you'd put in a little more effort. It was after all on the second page.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2189495

http://rhythminmind.net/1313/?p=2388

/rant on "As someone who uses UAD dsp's nd plenty of real analogue hardware I can tell you the gap between soft and hard has narrowed quite a bit in the last few years, I do not believe it will ever completely close, there are uses for both soft and hardware treatments, an analogue comp doesn't have "look-ahead" like a soft, but on the other hand the ease of saturating a Vox track with a tranx in a hardware is something I don't think software can do yet..."/rant off...

So...I use the UAD and Waves stuff a LOT, and also have some real 1176's (Mohog Units go to "gearsux" and search) and plenty of other pre's and EQ's to do OTB stuff with...

The Pro Channel is really, really, really close...so close I wouldn't bother spending the money on Waves or UAD if I had had this before I spent all that money...hardware...well its a bit of an addiction and I'm in therapy for it so I would have spent the money anyway (actually built a lot of my gear)...

Not won over on the EQ yet, but I haven't really spent that much time with it, its hard to beat the Waves SSL stuff here, I will still go to that particular tool for quite a while...

The tube thing...????...maybe my hardware addiction is showing thru but I don't really find a use for "tube saturation" in the digital domain, maybe that is because of the way I get my stuff into the box (plenty of really top shelf pre's and tubes if I want), so again I haven't really played with this very much just enough to know I have better ways in house to do this without using code to create random odd number frequencies and call it "tube"...now if your shop doesn't have tube pre's or tape, or even decent tranx' pre's to give it that old world sheen, by all means its a worthy tool...

It does kind of beg the question though what is the baseline for a "tube" effect? 12AX7's? A starved plate design like just about every current <$1,000.00 tube pre being sold today? I doubt very seriously the Bakers went out and bought an ADL 600 or rented time on a REDD 47 to emulate, so I kinda wonder what the point of reference for the code is going to be, the compressors are standard industry units (even though the names have been changed to protect the innocent) the EQ's are sorta standard, at minimum they are standard mastering options...but the tube thing...who picked what tubes and why?

But overall...its a great tool, very functional and pretty too...I found it satisfied my upgrade impulse spend and I'm happy I did.

The ProChannel is as good as the following plug ins.

UAD 1176
UAD 4k channel strip compressor.
UAD 4k buss compressor.

Not better, but just as useful. I can't speak to the Waves but many consider the UAD better than the wave on similar tasks. Hope that helps but remember every audio track is different and sometimes an inexpensive plug in is just the right application.
 
Just read Psychobillybob's response and I agree completely.

Middleman


The ProChannel is as good as the following plug ins.

UAD 1176
UAD 4k channel strip compressor.
UAD 4k buss compressor.

Not better, but just as useful. I can't speak to the Waves but many consider the UAD better than the wave on similar tasks. Hope that helps but remember every audio track is different and sometimes an inexpensive plug in is just the right application.
 
Just read Psychobillybob's response and I agree completely.

And I agree with Middleman, although I never use the Waves 4k stuff...but the Mohog 1176 units beat out the real 1176's we had in the shop and they are no longer with us, we use Mohog exclusively in the real hardware domain, its a bit hard for me to curb my desire to go out of box for an 1176, but I can see it happening, I have not tried out the external insert yet, its on my to do list...anyone have issues with this yet?

nice insights psychobill.
thanks

Just for giggles the guy who owns Mohog Audio is going to redo a track or two of Incomplete Neighbors last album using ONLY the Pro Channel just to see how it stacks up...(he was in the band at one time and a relative of mine)...anyway I'm sure there will be some comments although he's really busy so it might be a while.

I will say this, the Pro Channel advantage that I did not tick off on the plus sheet is the cpu usage vs. the other stuff...Waves is a bit of a cpu hog, you need a really decent amount of ram/processor to apply this stuff on very many tracks, UAD is limited only by how much money you gave them for DSP chips (we have not spent much here in the last few years still a fan though just not a priority), so I usually stick UAD on bus sends and limit my overhead there...

I'm not feeling the hate here for the cpu usage on the channel stuff....that alone makes it edge a little bit in my book especially if you are tracking a large project with 30+ tracks, this is a tool that will be very useful in this setting...

something to think about...