Considering the Waves SSL Bundle. Any owners?

Get the RTAS version and with the rest of the money buy a Mackie big knob or a presonus monitor section. Bypassing the desk all together. Thats what i would do. But as far as the sound of the plugs, they are great, channel strip is used on most channels. Very hard sounding eq, brittle and icy in the top but great for my taste. The comp is also great for things like bass, not just good on the 2 buss

I do have a Big Knob actually. I have all Mogami cabling in my wall snakes which come into the control room straight into my Mackie 24:8. From there, the control room outputs are routed to my Big Knob which is more near my workstation so I don't have to roll 15 feet every time I need to switch monitor selections or talkback during overdubs. I don't quite understand how I could utilize my Big Knob to increase the potential of the plugins though... The channel still needs to come in from the snake, get mixed at the mixer and head out to my digi192.

I own a few nice preamps, my favorite being my Avalon 737sp, but i try not to use that on EVERYTHING so I don't have one single color to the sound of my studio/projects. I have to imagine that the plugins will add their character no matter what they come in through (as someone said here they use it alongside their Firepod, so there ya go...) I just want to make sure that for the money, I'm making a wise investment.

Glad to hear they aren't necessarily CPU hungry, I'll lean more towards the RTAS versions in that case. I prefer RTAS to TDM actually anyway because when I run RTAS and TDM in one session I always get delay compensation complications which are not completely corrected by changing my playback engine. If everything was TDM, I'd just use that but since I usually mix and match it screws up my delays. Better just to keep with RTAS and let it bog down I suppose.

I've heard a lot of people talking up that API 2500 so I'm going to put some serious consideration into that as well as some UAD plugins. I just got a mix back from Casey Bates of some Craig Owens stuff I did last month and the UAD compression he put on the voice just sounded glorious. Man oh man, all my money is goin' out the window! haha :)

thanks for the advice so far!
 
When you realize you need an update after 5 years you only pay max of 250$ for one bundle. (and then you are WUPed the full year)

I'm sorry but no one gets 5 years out of a plugin, especially with Waves and Pro Tools.
If you install a Waveshell V6 plug, it uninstalls all the V5 plugs.

You had to pay for compatibility with PT7, then 7.4 then again with 8. That was not 5 years.
 
While I love the compressor on the Channelstrip, I do find it a bummer that there is only a slow and fast setting and that it automatically does the make up gain. The problem is on the slow attack(which seems about 10ms-15ms) your definitely letting some of the transient go through, which is great for smack, but with the automatic make up gain it sometimes gives you a little more make up than you needed and your constantly turning down the master fader.

The real thing does that too..it's part of the "sound" I guess. The attack settings on E/G series consoles are roughly 3ms for fast and 30 ms for slow.

If anyone wants to do a test, I have access to a 4056 G series. Pick some audio and send me a picture of your settings on the plugin (as I don't have them) and I'll match as close as I can on the console. I'll also do a few different strips to ee if there's any difference between the channels.
 
With Waves SSL you are pretty much getting the buss comp. There really isn't anything you can do with that EQ that you can't with Digi's stock EQ. For a lot less money you can build a GSSL.

I dunno...the GUI is cool to look at...but when buying a plugin EQ you are only buying the GUI. According to Bob Katz there is very little difference between plugin EQs, and after many blind A/B tests I was a little mad about the money I spent on some EQ plugs.
 
TRA:"There really isn't anything you can do with that EQ that you can't with Digi's stock EQ."

wrong wrong wrong:)

there is a hugh difference between colorfull eq and transparent!!!
The waves Api/V/ssl eq´s sound totaly Different!!!!
There is no way I can do the same things with the logic 8 eq I do with the ssl eq....
 
If anyone wants to do a test, I have access to a 4056 G series. Pick some audio and send me a picture of your settings on the plugin (as I don't have them) and I'll match as close as I can on the console. I'll also do a few different strips to ee if there's any difference between the channels.

Yeah lets do that. I will record a full length in august, so I wil upload some takes (30sec)
 
TRA:"There really isn't anything you can do with that EQ that you can't with Digi's stock EQ."

wrong wrong wrong:)

there is a hugh difference between colorfull eq and transparent!!!
The waves Api/V/ssl eq´s sound totaly Different!!!!
There is no way I can do the same things with the logic 8 eq I do with the ssl eq....


I'm not pulling this out of my butt. Test it yourself. See if you can get an audio track to completely null trying to match EQ settings using two different plugin EQs.

If they null then what makes them different? The GUI.
 
coloring eq´s arent phase linear. thats the point. They all have a different character.
Also the vintage emulations(UAD, Waves...) are emulating not only the phase difference they emulate the different harmonic distortion of the original unit.
So there is no way you can match the V-eq with a phase linear stock eq...
 
When I boost the highs at 10k I hear a hugh difference between my waves api/v/ssl eq´s.
The boost with the waves phase linear eq/logic 8 phase linear eq sounds totaly different.
 
The real thing does that too..it's part of the "sound" I guess. The attack settings on E/G series consoles are roughly 3ms for fast and 30 ms for slow.

If anyone wants to do a test, I have access to a 4056 G series. Pick some audio and send me a picture of your settings on the plugin (as I don't have them) and I'll match as close as I can on the console. I'll also do a few different strips to ee if there's any difference between the channels.

The Waves E-Series Strip has an attack of 1ms when set to fast attack and a variable attack when set to slow. Essentially it becomes program-dependent. It's slow enough to use on drums. I used to find it a massive drawback, but once I started mixing with it regularly I don't miss finer attack settings at all. For drums and most things it's fine. Vocals might get more royal treatment though.
 
I have a UAD2 Solo, and although I'm far from a master mixer by any stretch, there are some INSANE plugs available for the UAD system. The Plate140 is simlpy the best reverb unit that I've ever touched - I'm completely addicted to it. UAD is worth it's price for this plugin alone. The precision mastering series is pretty amazing too, (come to think of it - so is the Neve channel strip)....

Bobby