Silver Bullet Mk2 FINALLY On Sale!

[@blackswanstudios6632]

Long comment coming up.... Yes, the Purple MC77 is perhaps the very best 1176 in the box (outside Nebula Land, since there's nothing that beats Tim P's U76. You can literally use that in place of the actual hardware and be happy). I have a session in Reaper where I compare all the 1176 plugins against several versions of the real hardware, and unlike the run of the mill youtube shoot-outs I painstakingly level match using meters every step of the way. This test includes the 3 UAD 1176s, which you can get a very good deal on in a compressor bundle at the moment. But the UAD ones are simply okay. There is no reason to use them. They are pretty boring. They lack the color and life of the hardware when compared directly. Whereas the MC77 actually has the punch and the satuation to compete with the hardware, it just grabs a little more and a little sooner, but as long as you don't smash it, it's a punchy, musical, grabby compression with a very nice tone. Super useful and those properties encapsulate why you'd typically reach for an 1176 style compression. So if you have the MC77, there's absolutely no reason to buy the UAD 1176 compressors in my view, even at 50 bucks. No sonic reason anyway. At least not if you are going for the hardware sound as the ideal. Of course all the modelled compressors (or algos if you will), including the MC77, struggle when it comes to handling the low end compared to the hardware, but this is an absolute given. Again, the only one that retains a beefy low end similar to hardware is the TimP U76. But the downside is you have to invest in the full Nebula for that, which is not cheap. And there's a CPU cost as well, although not terrible. I like the work you do, and I think you deserve more views. But I have to push back on one thing in this video. Your praise for the Arturia Comp FET 76. In my opinion it is the very worst 1176 I've tried, and it completely fails to act like the hardware. It's actually a broken plugin, by design as crazy as that sounds. But here's the reason: Arturia decided that it was a great idea to roll off the high end on ANYTHING that passes through the Arturia Comp FET 76. And we're not just talking about a tiny bit, or just the super highs. It starts rolling off frequencies at 4k. And you're losing 3 dB by the time we get to the super high frequencies. You can test this for yourself with Bertom. And there is NO way to remedy it in the plugin. They included fancy settings in the 'advanced' panel where you can trigger the detection circuit with different EQ and so on, but the overall dull EQ of the plugin you can't change! I wondered why the FET 76 sounded so bad and lifeless compared to the others. It really is without life ONCE you level match it. And that's why. It rolls where it shouldn't. The ironic thing is that all the plugins, when you peak match with the hardware struggle a little to have the same lively high end as the hardware. You have to use some oversampling tricks to nudge them close to the hardware in most cases. So it's amazing that Arturia would make this choice of statically removing the life of the signal like that. But my theory is that they count on people to turn up the volume to compensate, and then maybe assume that it's a great compressor because it sounds beefier once turned up due to the lack of high mids and highs. But in that case it's simply louder and taking up a lot more headroom than it should, hence not serving one of the main purposes of the compressor. So just be aware that the Arturia Comp FET 76 rolls of the highs in a way none of the hardware AND none of the other plugins do. And once level matched it loses every single time and even gets beaten by the also poor VC76.

[@RealHomeRecording]

The 1176 is a very important piece of audio equipment and I appreciate the lengthy post! The reason I like the arturia is back when I reviewed it, it gave me a 3D sound that was very reminiscent of using real 1176 hardware. I also really like that you can limit the amount of gain reduction in the advanced panel. So I'm surprised to read that it has these technical flaws. You just gave me even more reason now to try out the Purple MC and compare it to the Arturia. Again thank you for this in-depth post it gave me a lot to think about! For the record I have never tried out the nebula Tim P libraries but have heard great things about them over the years including the excellent L Bus and LA-3A sampling.

[@blackswanstudios6632]

@@RealHomeRecording Yeah that's the thing, the Arturia is actually very good when it comes to the compression action. But because the tone is so off compared to the actual hardware, that makes it even more frustrating to me. And the tone of the 1176 is one of its selling points. There is a workaround, which I've saved as an fx chain in Reaper called Fet76EQCompensated, to get it to match the hardware closely: I inserted Bertom, and used a surgical non cramping EQ (CraveEQ) before the Arturia for some curves that correct the cuts in the high mids and highs of the Arturia. In other words a mix of high self and boost until Bertom shows the right more flat EQ curve when you pass the Bertom signal through it, without compression of course. My point is that when people buy an analog emulation, it shouldn't be nessasary to mess around with Bertom and additional EQs to fix the fact that they made it sound like a broken unit...that's why I have pretty harsh words for it. But once you fix the tone it is indeed a very nice emulation. a lot better than Waves CLA76, VC76 and others once the tone issue is fixed. If you ever do shootouts, I would recommend using something like a drum loop where you can hear some hi hat as well as mid range and punch of a snare. Then make sure that the compressors have the same output loudness by using something like the YouLean meter, looking at int LUFS. And you have to be very, very exact in this area - make sure that there isn't even a 0.5 difference to fool the ears. And remember, the internal meters of these plugins are often not correct, and they differ. So the test as it relates to plugins vs hardware is, how good can you make it sound (punchy, clear, while retaining highs, retaining the lows) resulting in the the same LUFS at the end. If the drum loops sounds better than the hardware but it peaks above the hardware its a fail....you have to stay at or under that ceiling at all times. It's just crazy to me how many youtubers declare "This sounds amazing" and we're looking at a 5 dB boost in volume compared to the dry signal.

[@vadimmartynyuk]

Thanks for very useful info

[@waynebaker2452]

There is a Fet 76 or 77 compressor in Reaper that will rip your head off. Not at my computer right now but might be a JS component or one of the other free ones.

[@RealHomeRecording]

@@waynebaker2452 rip my head off...in a good way? Is it 1175 Stillwell.

[@duguy182]

Hidden gem. Can't wait for the upgrade with adjustable noise.

[@justletmesigninokthx]

I like the neold 'big al' - bit expensive but nice

[@digitalmarketinghumans]

Silver Bullet is actually REALLY good for a saturation plugin. That and Black Box are my favorites.

[@RealHomeRecording]

Yes indeed! Ever since the first time I tried the hardware version that is on access analog I fell in love with the silver bullet. It's a great substitute for slate vcc and the equalizer is an added bonus. The Mark II adds in Solid state logic flavoring,. which isn't in the original hardware. The silver bullet also acts as a compressor of sorts! I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here but the message is more for people who are not familiar with why I'm excited that this thing finally went on sale.

[@waynebaker2452]

This bundle was a lot cheaper last month. And I believe the Silver Bullet was one of them.

[@RealHomeRecording]

Darn, I missed it. How much?

[@waynebaker2452]

@@RealHomeRecording Looked at the Silver Bullet but I got Kiive Audio XTComp, Brainworx bx_console AMEK 200 and SPL TwinTube as a package for 3 for 59.99 in March. I believe it went through April.