Winter NAMM 2010!
- Thread starter AdamWathan
- Start date
Kazrog
Kazrog, Inc.
My thoughts too, it looks cool in the gray finish for sure. I think the reason for all the brightness is because Devin tunes his 7 string as low as an 8 string, so perhaps it's to compensate. In a way, it will be voiced like a Fender Jazz Bass, which is alder with single coil and sounds great.
Also, if the protoype pic of DT with the guitar is any indication, that bridge pickup looks pretty far up from the bridge, almost in a center position if it were a 3 p/up axe...Having that bridge pickup that far away is going to give a sweeter, more mellow tone. Perhaps that, too, will tame potential brightness...Although I don't think maple and 81's would necessarily make for a bright guitar.
Zack Uidl
Member
Wait...there's a typo in here, right? Maple is one of the brightest tone woods commonly used dude (check this list out), and I love the 81, but it can definitely get shrill in the wrong guitar!
Of course, despite all this, the guitar could sound awesome - we shall see! I think Devin's always been an 81 guy (he used 'em in that Planet Waves gear demo vid from like '06), and I'd say maple is pretty much the most common neck wood, so I guess he just went with his old faithfuls when spec'ing it out (I still have very little experience with alder-bodied guitars, kinda curious about 'em, I can't deny)
JeffTD
Senhor Testiculo
Honestly, I don't buy the hype about the maple+ebony/alder guitars + 81's being overly bright. My M-1 NTB has that wood combo, and I went with an 81 in the bridge over an 85 and 89 because it's too full in the low mids to facilitate either of those pickups.
Also, that distance from the bridge looks fine for a 28" scale IMO.
Also, that distance from the bridge looks fine for a 28" scale IMO.
P-E
Munchkin
M-1 NTB's are where it's at when you need it simple stupid.
I was amazed at the time I played one, really, bright but really full sounding at the same time, I guess the building quality speaks for itself.I was really hoping for something big from Digi. I even tried to avoid googling any news on product announcements. The booth looked like it consisted of little more than a display case with a few 003 consoles and 003+ racks in it. Although I use Logic 90% of the time I was really looking at a reason to get excited about Pro Tools, but alas there wasn't anything. It looks like they extended their Up Your Level campaign or whatever it's called for a few months though, so maybe they just weren't ready with the new HD systems that people speculated would drop at NAMM. Or maybe they are just trying to get people in so that they can profit off of the inflated TDM plugin price.
I saw a ton of people with Waves bags and didn't have time to get over to their booth. I really wonder what was in those. Knowing NAMM vendor giveaways it was more than likely just a bag with a brochure in it.
I saw a ton of people with Waves bags and didn't have time to get over to their booth. I really wonder what was in those. Knowing NAMM vendor giveaways it was more than likely just a bag with a brochure in it.
JeffTD
Senhor Testiculo
M-1 NTB's are where it's at when you need it simple stupid.
Yeah it's amazing how full it is in the low-midrange! Mine's not so simple anymore, though...
P-E
Munchkin
Yeah it's amazing how full it is in the low-midrange! Mine's not so simple anymore, though...
Quite similar to my DIY project I'm soon gonna be started then.
Mine's gonna be EMG 60 (N) and EMG 81 (B), 1 vol 1 tone, with a red flame maple top though.
But fingerboard is ebony and should be really slick (I'm getting the neck built and building the body).
Playing that ESP I fell in love with the Gotoh TOM.
EDIT : I even get P-E as a 12th fret inlay.
Aaron Smith
Envisage Audio
So I watched Slate's whole presentation today...cool stuff:
The FG-X mastering plug looks and sounds very cool. He compared an identical RMS level setting on it (I think he was hitting like -10dB if I remember correctly) to a printed track of a peak limiter (almost certainly an L2), and there was a definite difference in quality with his plug, most obviously the preservation of transients. As for other differences, it was nearly impossible to tell, being that a loud trade show floor is not a very good place to judge potentially subtle differences in audio fidelity, but from what I could tell it sounded very good and had a lot of cool, practical, effective parameters to adjust!
The TRIGGER plug also seemed very cool in operation. He didn't really touch at all on the operation of it in terms of threshold and sensitivity, but he did show a fairly elaborate snare drum fill being caught nicely by the plug. Also, a lot of layers of samples can be triggered simultaneously from one instance of the plug (close mic, room mic, etc) which is also very cool. From what I could tell, it looks a whole lot better than apTrigga. I haven't tried Drumagog much to compare it to...
Steven also revealed two more plugs, which I don't think he had announced prior to the show. They're called the "VIRTUAL CONSOLE COLLECTION". Basically there's a "CLASSIC MIX BUS" and a "CLASSIC CHANNEL" plug- both offer six different console styles, the characteristics of which Steven explained had been very meticulously and thoroughly modeled. IPA (API), Tri (Trident), 9k (SSL 9000), 4k (SSL 4000), Neo (can't remember this one), Tubey (can't remember this either), and Rup (Neve I believe). You choose the console flavor, and then adjust the drive setting from -6dB to +6dB. There's also a hiss on/bypass switch. It's pretty cool, since with the individual channels you can vary console flavors depending on which individual track you're using, and then choose the most appropriate console flavor to send the whole mix through!
I didn't ask him about pricing on any of the plugs, but he mentioned several times that they should be released within two to three weeks
The other new thing Slate unveiled is "Slate Pro Audio", which at this point is basically a mono compressor called "DRAGON". I don't want to type every last detail of the unit right now, but part of the sheet I picked up reads...
There are also some switches which can drastically alter the sound of the unit, some saturation settings, and an adjustable hi-pass filter. He ran a mix through it, as well as some drums, basically showing off some of the different sounds the unit is capable of. Very good sounding. I asked him about a street price, and he said it would be $2000... I don't doubt the quality of the unit- it seemed completely legit and very desirable, but being that it's a mono unit and you'd need two of them to use it on the mix bus, $4000 seems a bit steep. Like I said, I'd love to post every single detail of the unit, but I don't have time at this point, and I'm sure he'll be posting it online soon enough anyway!
ALSO, it looked like he had an analog Slate Pro Audio mastering EQ in the rack too (similar to a Massenburg kind of 4 rackspace thing), but he didn't even mention it during the presentation I saw.
As for CLA, I watched him talk for about 45 minutes at the Waves booth, and got to shake his hand and chat for a moment afterward. Super funny guy who was very entertaining and equally interesting to watch. He basically had some Green Day tracks loaded up, and compared his classic compressors on the vocal track and explained some of the subtle differences between them. The most interesting thing about it all, was how much he was slamming the vocals. He even said himself, that he's more the type who doesn't even look at the controls, and rather just turns knobs until it sounds good, but the gain reduction meter was really just slammed at -20dB (as far as it could go), and wasn't really relenting more than 3dB in the softer vocal parts. And of course, it sounded great...
He also went through three other signature plugs that Waves is working on for him (there will be six total), which seemed kind of cool, but to be honest, seem like super lazy "I don't want to learn how to mix" kind of plugs. The "CLA Guitars" plug has a reamping section (amp sim), with three different tones to choose from, which Chris said he chose simply because they are extremely usable to his ears and can be called up instantly, without having to dig through tons of crappy tones that just aren't very good. There was also a "Mid", "Treble", "Compress", "Reverb", "Delay", and "Pitch" fader, which basically are meant to be mindless short cuts to easy tone enhancements. Don't get me wrong- the plug-in sounded good, but would have much more appeal to a person who doesn't want to take the time to really work at something or just doesn't have any knowledge. There also will be "CLA Vocals", "CLA Bass", "CLA Effects", "CLA Drums", and "CLA Unplugged" plug-ins, all of which look nearly identical (a line of faders, each fader also has three different styles to choose from) with the same basic adjustments, meant to be short cuts to a usable sound. Again, I don't mean to bash on the product, although what I saw with the Guitar and Vocals plugs didn't really excite me or make me want to own them. It seemed to just be embracing the idea that with little to no work, these plugs will make you sound like CLA... I suppose there will be situations where the seasoned engineer just wants to call up a good sound very quickly, but I don't think that's the crowd the plug-ins were created for.
Anyway, that's all for tonight. If I learn some more cool stuff tomorrow, I'll report back! He's got two more demos to do (Saturday), but it will probably just be the same thing over again. I may drop in anyway...
The FG-X mastering plug looks and sounds very cool. He compared an identical RMS level setting on it (I think he was hitting like -10dB if I remember correctly) to a printed track of a peak limiter (almost certainly an L2), and there was a definite difference in quality with his plug, most obviously the preservation of transients. As for other differences, it was nearly impossible to tell, being that a loud trade show floor is not a very good place to judge potentially subtle differences in audio fidelity, but from what I could tell it sounded very good and had a lot of cool, practical, effective parameters to adjust!
The TRIGGER plug also seemed very cool in operation. He didn't really touch at all on the operation of it in terms of threshold and sensitivity, but he did show a fairly elaborate snare drum fill being caught nicely by the plug. Also, a lot of layers of samples can be triggered simultaneously from one instance of the plug (close mic, room mic, etc) which is also very cool. From what I could tell, it looks a whole lot better than apTrigga. I haven't tried Drumagog much to compare it to...
Steven also revealed two more plugs, which I don't think he had announced prior to the show. They're called the "VIRTUAL CONSOLE COLLECTION". Basically there's a "CLASSIC MIX BUS" and a "CLASSIC CHANNEL" plug- both offer six different console styles, the characteristics of which Steven explained had been very meticulously and thoroughly modeled. IPA (API), Tri (Trident), 9k (SSL 9000), 4k (SSL 4000), Neo (can't remember this one), Tubey (can't remember this either), and Rup (Neve I believe). You choose the console flavor, and then adjust the drive setting from -6dB to +6dB. There's also a hiss on/bypass switch. It's pretty cool, since with the individual channels you can vary console flavors depending on which individual track you're using, and then choose the most appropriate console flavor to send the whole mix through!
I didn't ask him about pricing on any of the plugs, but he mentioned several times that they should be released within two to three weeks
The other new thing Slate unveiled is "Slate Pro Audio", which at this point is basically a mono compressor called "DRAGON". I don't want to type every last detail of the unit right now, but part of the sheet I picked up reads...
There are also some switches which can drastically alter the sound of the unit, some saturation settings, and an adjustable hi-pass filter. He ran a mix through it, as well as some drums, basically showing off some of the different sounds the unit is capable of. Very good sounding. I asked him about a street price, and he said it would be $2000... I don't doubt the quality of the unit- it seemed completely legit and very desirable, but being that it's a mono unit and you'd need two of them to use it on the mix bus, $4000 seems a bit steep. Like I said, I'd love to post every single detail of the unit, but I don't have time at this point, and I'm sure he'll be posting it online soon enough anyway!
ALSO, it looked like he had an analog Slate Pro Audio mastering EQ in the rack too (similar to a Massenburg kind of 4 rackspace thing), but he didn't even mention it during the presentation I saw.
As for CLA, I watched him talk for about 45 minutes at the Waves booth, and got to shake his hand and chat for a moment afterward. Super funny guy who was very entertaining and equally interesting to watch. He basically had some Green Day tracks loaded up, and compared his classic compressors on the vocal track and explained some of the subtle differences between them. The most interesting thing about it all, was how much he was slamming the vocals. He even said himself, that he's more the type who doesn't even look at the controls, and rather just turns knobs until it sounds good, but the gain reduction meter was really just slammed at -20dB (as far as it could go), and wasn't really relenting more than 3dB in the softer vocal parts. And of course, it sounded great...
He also went through three other signature plugs that Waves is working on for him (there will be six total), which seemed kind of cool, but to be honest, seem like super lazy "I don't want to learn how to mix" kind of plugs. The "CLA Guitars" plug has a reamping section (amp sim), with three different tones to choose from, which Chris said he chose simply because they are extremely usable to his ears and can be called up instantly, without having to dig through tons of crappy tones that just aren't very good. There was also a "Mid", "Treble", "Compress", "Reverb", "Delay", and "Pitch" fader, which basically are meant to be mindless short cuts to easy tone enhancements. Don't get me wrong- the plug-in sounded good, but would have much more appeal to a person who doesn't want to take the time to really work at something or just doesn't have any knowledge. There also will be "CLA Vocals", "CLA Bass", "CLA Effects", "CLA Drums", and "CLA Unplugged" plug-ins, all of which look nearly identical (a line of faders, each fader also has three different styles to choose from) with the same basic adjustments, meant to be short cuts to a usable sound. Again, I don't mean to bash on the product, although what I saw with the Guitar and Vocals plugs didn't really excite me or make me want to own them. It seemed to just be embracing the idea that with little to no work, these plugs will make you sound like CLA... I suppose there will be situations where the seasoned engineer just wants to call up a good sound very quickly, but I don't think that's the crowd the plug-ins were created for.
Anyway, that's all for tonight. If I learn some more cool stuff tomorrow, I'll report back! He's got two more demos to do (Saturday), but it will probably just be the same thing over again. I may drop in anyway...
Aaron Smith
Envisage Audio
gabriel g.
Member
So I watched Slate's whole presentation today...cool stuff:
The FG-X mastering plug looks and sounds very cool. He compared an identical RMS level setting on it (I think he was hitting like -10dB if I remember correctly) to a printed track of a peak limiter (almost certainly an L2), and there was a definite difference in quality with his plug, most obviously the preservation of transients. As for other differences, it was nearly impossible to tell, being that a loud trade show floor is not a very good place to judge potentially subtle differences in audio fidelity, but from what I could tell it sounded very good and had a lot of cool, practical, effective parameters to adjust!
The TRIGGER plug also seemed very cool in operation. He didn't really touch at all on the operation of it in terms of threshold and sensitivity, but he did show a fairly elaborate snare drum fill being caught nicely by the plug. Also, a lot of layers of samples can be triggered simultaneously from one instance of the plug (close mic, room mic, etc) which is also very cool. From what I could tell, it looks a whole lot better than apTrigga. I haven't tried Drumagog much to compare it to...
Steven also revealed two more plugs, which I don't think he had announced prior to the show. They're called the "VIRTUAL CONSOLE COLLECTION". Basically there's a "CLASSIC MIX BUS" and a "CLASSIC CHANNEL" plug- both offer six different console styles, the characteristics of which Steven explained had been very meticulously and thoroughly modeled. IPA (API), Tri (Trident), 9k (SSL 9000), 4k (SSL 4000), Neo (can't remember this one), Tubey (can't remember this either), and Rup (Neve I believe). You choose the console flavor, and then adjust the drive setting from -6dB to +6dB. There's also a hiss on/bypass switch. It's pretty cool, since with the individual channels you can vary console flavors depending on which individual track you're using, and then choose the most appropriate console flavor to send the whole mix through!
I didn't ask him about pricing on any of the plugs, but he mentioned several times that they should be released within two to three weeks
The other new thing Slate unveiled is "Slate Pro Audio", which at this point is basically a mono compressor called "DRAGON". I don't want to type every last detail of the unit right now, but part of the sheet I picked up reads...
There are also some switches which can drastically alter the sound of the unit, some saturation settings, and an adjustable hi-pass filter. He ran a mix through it, as well as some drums, basically showing off some of the different sounds the unit is capable of. Very good sounding. I asked him about a street price, and he said it would be $2000... I don't doubt the quality of the unit- it seemed completely legit and very desirable, but being that it's a mono unit and you'd need two of them to use it on the mix bus, $4000 seems a bit steep. Like I said, I'd love to post every single detail of the unit, but I don't have time at this point, and I'm sure he'll be posting it online soon enough anyway!
ALSO, it looked like he had an analog Slate Pro Audio mastering EQ in the rack too (similar to a Massenburg kind of 4 rackspace thing), but he didn't even mention it during the presentation I saw.
As for CLA, I watched him talk for about 45 minutes at the Waves booth, and got to shake his hand and chat for a moment afterward. Super funny guy who was very entertaining and equally interesting to watch. He basically had some Green Day tracks loaded up, and compared his classic compressors on the vocal track and explained some of the subtle differences between them. The most interesting thing about it all, was how much he was slamming the vocals. He even said himself, that he's more the type who doesn't even look at the controls, and rather just turns knobs until it sounds good, but the gain reduction meter was really just slammed at -20dB (as far as it could go), and wasn't really relenting more than 3dB in the softer vocal parts. And of course, it sounded great...
He also went through three other signature plugs that Waves is working on for him (there will be six total), which seemed kind of cool, but to be honest, seem like super lazy "I don't want to learn how to mix" kind of plugs. The "CLA Guitars" plug has a reamping section (amp sim), with three different tones to choose from, which Chris said he chose simply because they are extremely usable to his ears and can be called up instantly, without having to dig through tons of crappy tones that just aren't very good. There was also a "Mid", "Treble", "Compress", "Reverb", "Delay", and "Pitch" fader, which basically are meant to be mindless short cuts to easy tone enhancements. Don't get me wrong- the plug-in sounded good, but would have much more appeal to a person who doesn't want to take the time to really work at something or just doesn't have any knowledge. There also will be "CLA Vocals", "CLA Bass", "CLA Effects", "CLA Drums", and "CLA Unplugged" plug-ins, all of which look nearly identical (a line of faders, each fader also has three different styles to choose from) with the same basic adjustments, meant to be short cuts to a usable sound. Again, I don't mean to bash on the product, although what I saw with the Guitar and Vocals plugs didn't really excite me or make me want to own them. It seemed to just be embracing the idea that with little to no work, these plugs will make you sound like CLA... I suppose there will be situations where the seasoned engineer just wants to call up a good sound very quickly, but I don't think that's the crowd the plug-ins were created for.
Anyway, that's all for tonight. If I learn some more cool stuff tomorrow, I'll report back! He's got two more demos to do (Saturday), but it will probably just be the same thing over again. I may drop in anyway...
Very cool review!!!!
Not thrilled about the cla-signatures (also I´m not interested in the Tony signatures nore the Eddy signatures)
The slate mastering and triggering software sounds great.
Also I would have loved if Steven pushed the mix to -8RMS or something like that, because limiter like the L2 realy destroy the sound at that high volumes...
kev
Im guybrush threepwood
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
About time they decided to compete with everyone else.
$150 for a drum package is where it's at.
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
I hate to be a tool, but hearing evil drums through BFD lead me to conclude they were not worth the money. Either that or the e-kit used was shit.
Or either that or BFD 2 blows. The high hats was REALLY computer tastic.
Mikaël-ange
Member
- Nov 7, 2008
- 2,368
- 1
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iekobrid
Authorized XSr Dealer
Jet City wooooooo-maaaaaan
¤ Soldano-designed 100w head (the one I thought was supposed to come out last year)
¤ THD-designed 5w head
¤ "silent" speaker enclosure
¤ Soldano-designed 100w head (the one I thought was supposed to come out last year)
¤ THD-designed 5w head
¤ "silent" speaker enclosure
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