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Old 04-25-2012, 09:26 PM   #30
Mercado_Negro
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Caracas, Venezuela
Posts: 8,676
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Another vote for Nebula here. For me it's hard to be a Nebula user and know the power of this plug-in when it comes to consoles emulation... it's hard because I can't use it like I want, "live", right there in my tracks while I'm mixing from start to end. The whole freeze/render before mixing paradigm just doesn't cut it anymore for me because I can't spend time on that while having lost of clients waiting on the line for their songs.

I needed to be quick and deliver good results so I had to look for second options and VCC, and SatSon, were on beta stage when I started looking around. SatSon wasn't ready by that time so I had to purchase VCC. I haven't regreted it a single bit, that plug-in sounds great in my opinion. I was a bit skeptical when I heard some audio demos (I didn't have an iLok by that time) but I bought it anyways (they started offering free iLoks which made it even more appealing).

I've been mixing with VCC and SatSon for a long time now (2 years or something) and I couldn't be happier. SatSon is more aggresive on the low end and, as far as I can hear, delivers a better definition in that part of the spectrum but VCC's Brit4k (based on a SSL 4k, just like SatSon), is just great for clarity, punch and difinition in the rest of the spectrum.

I'd definitely puchase VCC and SatSon, seriously, they work together just fine and complements each other in a nice way. I also beta tested StripBus but I couldn't really test it properly because it doesn't sound good at 96kHz, which is the sample rate I use for mixing and recording. The sound at 44.1kHz was good, though. Waves NLS is a no go for me, I don't like it at all (the Nevo emulation is nice but, to my taste, VCC's Brit N and Nebula's VBC sounds like 10 times better).

This NLS plug-in is a tool for coloration, in my opinion; it doesn't really add that "cohesivness" and "homogeinity" I can get with VCC, SatSon or Nebula, it just distorts too much and I found myself fighting against it than having a great time (yes, all my stuff is below 0dBVU so no, it's not me hitting it hard with crazy levels). The Spikey emulation is a joke in my opinion and I have a lot of respect for Waves plug-ins audio quality. That emualtion literally chews the high-end of your tracks and makes it sound really bad as far as I could hear. It also adds some muddiness I couldn't stand (maybe because it distorts the low end in a weird way which makes low mids sound that bad).

In short, if I had to choose one console emulation I'd buy VCC. It saves time, helps and doesn't get in the way (and it's also the most versatile/feature-packed of all three... with 5 and two more consoles on their way). Just like Nebula but maybe a couple of steps down the ladder. In my opinion, this and SatSon are the best console emulations, in algorithms, so far.
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