[Theo Werner]

ORIGINAL: FarBeyond

So now with the majority of the gearslutz community going all gung-ho on native,  is that because there is now a disadvantage to UAD cards?

I guess they are talking about pure CPU horsepower and the fact that what used to be one of the great advantages to UAD – offloading your host CPU – isn’t that much of an issue anymore, since those powerful i5/i7 processors has been released. Furthermore new plug in developers has stepped up and delivered some wonderful plugs in the past couple of years, narrowing the competition even more. I’m sure the UA developers has to cut some corners to get CPU consumption down, but I’m guessing that native developers has to be equally cautious about it.

Some people are claiming that the current UAD cards are underpowered in relation to some of the recently developed UAD plugs. I sort of agree. My Solo card gets pretty much fully loaded with one instance of the Massive Passive EQ, so I do a lot of offline bouncing and that’s fine with me until I decide to buy a second UAD card, because I really like what the software does.

AFAIK, whatever CPU you are using – the one in your computer, or the UAD card – it’s only about number cruncing/math. It doesn’t add anything to the actual sound. That’s all within the software, and for me at least, the UAD advantage today isn’t really it’s CPU capabilities. It’s the plug ins.

[Theo Werner]

Whenever I need to manipulate the stereo image of SD i use the Flux Stereo Tool (freeware).

http://www.fluxhome.com/products/Freewares/stereotool

[Theo Werner]

It’s a good idea. Personally I’d like to see preset packs from producers, performers and programmers who has been involved in the process of making various Toontrack products. I have got a feeling they really can unleash the full potential.

[Theo Werner]

I feel your pain on some of your issues, but imho you have to approach it from a mixers point of view. You’ve got a recording – with all the imperfections that’s goes with it – and work it out from there. With a bit of tweaking you can end up with a damn good raw drum track. That said, I guess it would be pretty difficult to transfer your Avatar settings to Metal Foundry without any major knob fiddling. It’s different drums, recorded in a different enviroment.

What I do when I come across a strange sounding beat, is to simply change the velocity on the offending hit until it gives me another sample. It can be a bit time consuming, but hey.. I can’t afford a session drummer.. 😉 Well, that combined with a careful balance of leakage from OH and Ambience mics almost always does it for me,

Big and tight kick: Play with the EQ presets in combination with the compressor and possibly the transient thing. I guess you want that nice low end thump, combined with the click from the beater. Try to boost 60-80 for low end, and a pretty narrow 4-5000 boost for the beater click. These are only suggestions (as they all say). Sweep the EQ to find your sweet spots. And a friendly reminder: It will probably sound just fine in isolation when you find your ideal sound, but remember to match it with all the other elements in the mix. Another good thing is to cut a couple of db’s around 250 and/or 400. That sometimes gets rid of the boxy, tin can sound.. Err.. I’m sure you don’t know what I mean, but try it and you’ll see what I mean.

I tend to filter out unwanted low end from almost all tracks to avoid muddy sounding mixes. This also gives me headroom enough to produce louder final tracks.

[Author]

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