Yesterday, The Setup kindly published a short interview with me, detailing the gear I use in my daily musical exploits. It’s a frank run-down of my minimal setup, what I love and loathe about the various software and equipment I use, plus some wish-list musings. Be sure to check out some of their other interviews, as there are quite a few big-hitters of the geek world on there too.

There’s been a spate of plugins that have impressed me recently, and I’ve been demoing some of these to see if they’d replace any of my current software workhorses.

Softube's emulation of the Tube-Tech CL 1B

Now we’re seeing more officially sanctioned and licensed VST recreations of classic analogue gear—the analogue hardware fetish has spread to the virtual realm, enticing us with perfect photo-realistic renderings of the expensive hardware. In the case of the CL-1B VST, few of the usual advantages of software are present, apart from total recall and multiple instances. As far as I can tell, you can’t specify variables directly via keyboard input (as I like to do—I don’t especially like turning knobs with the mouse), there’s little feedback as to what value you’re dialling in, and of course the meter is a faithful, slow VU approximation of what’s really going on. It’s purely ears-only, and acts just like the hardware, or so I’m told. I don’t have a hardware CL-1B, which I’m sure will probably also be the case for 99% of buyers, so I have no idea how faithful the plugin sounds or behaves.

As for the sound, it’s not dissimilar to the UAD-1 LA-2A I already have, albeit more flexible, having control over the individual compression parameters (the release characteristics are a bit different though, dependent upon the different optical GR circuits between them). As a track compressor the CL-1B works superbly on similar material that suits the LA-2A. As a bus or mastering compressor I’ve had less success with it (again, like the LA-2A), preferring the PSP oldTimer for achieving results quickly (which can also sound quite similar at certain settings). Even with the fastest attack (.5ms), the CL-1B will let through a considerable amount of transients, meaning drums and program material will probably gain dynamic range using this compressor, whether you like it or not. Lacking a switchable high-pass sidechain filter, it also clamps down on bass frequencies too, which can take some of the weight out of kick drums. When attempting to be 100% faithful to the original, you’ll naturally have to also accurately model its shortcomings.

But the plugin does feature a separate sidechain input, meaning it is possible to set this up via a host supporting multiple inputs, such as Cubase, but as it’s not a VST3 plugin, you can’t simply send another filtered track to the sidechain. Instead you need to set up a four-channel group, sending the source channels to the first two of the group, and the sidechain channels to the last two of the group, and put your EQ of choice on the sidechain channel (I’ve tried using the Cambridge filters from 100-300Hz with variable HP slopes). In short, it’s a bit of a faff, especially when VST3 was created with multiple addressable I/O, to negate such needless faffing around. But it does sound brilliant, imparting a nice heft to the material, and means that in this state the CL-1B VST becomes much more useful for bus and mastering compression duties.

I’ll probably pass on buying the CL-1B for now, at least until the time comes to unshackle my UAD-1 cards, and the Magma case accommodating them, from my PC. But it’s definitely a first-rate VST compressor, that for me is only let down by the lack of internal sidechain filtering, as the manual workarounds mean I can’t use sidechaining in a host such as Wavelab (my mastering DAW of choice). Still, at the present rate of big hardware players entering the virtual market, it shouldn’t be too long before I go totally native (there’s even talk of an Elysia mPressor VST in the works!). Exciting times.

I don’t think I’ve really spent much time discussing equipment, so I thought since I’m currently unable to write music within my usual surroundings, I’d publicly fantasise about some of the things I hope to purchase at some point. Starting with Waldorf’s barely-released software synth: Largo. Now, any of you who have used Waldorf’s Attack VSTi will probably have cottoned-on to the fact that I’m a huge fan of its sounds, and have used it in practically every piece of music I’ve written. What may not be obvious, is that I’m also a heavy user of Waldorf’s hardware too—I’m a proud user of their Micro Q synth, which can most recently be heard at the start of Circadies and Whispers (the FM modulation kind of gives it away—it’s one of the many unique features I seldom come across in other virtual analogue synths).

Largo takes the Q feature set and synth engine and recreates it as a software VSTi, and although I can’t yet vouch for its accuracy in reproducing Micro Q sounds, I’m hoping it’ll be nigh-on identical (doesn’t look like we can import Q sounds directly, though—yet). I’m happy Waldorf have resisted the temptation to cut-down the feature set for their software, as it seems most hardware manufacturers are reticent to potentially cannibalise their own hardware sales (or at least they’ll tether a hardware interface/DSP onto it, a la Virus TI). I’d love to see more manufacturers with the experience of building hardware instruments enter the software market with fully-featured synths, as while there are plenty of innovative software VST companies around, the instruments often lack some very handy performance-oriented options (such as different legato fingering or envelope retriggering options—essential aspects hardware synths wouldn’t think of omitting).

Hopefully the interface won’t be too fiddly in use, as Largo definitely looks to have packed the Micro Q features and controls into a multi-page interface, but as Attack still works well, despite its age, I’m not too worried (though it would be nice to be able to type parameter values in—quite a few soft synths seem to snub this handy feature). So that’s one for the wish-list. In the mean time, I’ll be vicariously experiencing the synth through user reports on KVR.