Posts Tagged ‘plugins’

Xenium Audio – X-tube (Review)

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

x-tube

To be honest, I’ve never heard of Xenium audio before. Do that means that I was skeptical about this product ? Yes. Do that means it is a bad product ? Absolutely not ! Fortunately, I gave it a try and nowaday, I’m very happy to have this secret weapon in my vst rack !

Overview

It’s a 12AX7 tube emulation, 64 bit floating point internal processing, with possibility of oversampling up to 16 times at zero latency. It can be used to warm your stuff up a bit. The plugin is available both in 32 and 64 bit versions.

Hands on

I tested it on a master, nothing less ! Since I’m one of those who try to avoid A/D conversion when I can, if I can do everything in the box, I’ll do it. I tried the plugin while I was already running at 96kHz with the oversampling set to 4 times and it sounded really natural. I could have closed my eyes and it would have been difficult to tell if I was processing in the analog domain or not.  At such high sampling rate, the difference between digital and high end analog is difficult to differentiate.

Now, the result depends on the quality of the transfer function that has been used to model the original equipment. Personally, I’ve been using an Altec 436C (What a classic !) for about 10 years and this technology uses 12ax7 tubes. I’ve been able to recognize the similarities in the sound, but at the same time, the plugin seemed to sound clearer to me. I have to admit that my old 436C needs maintenance and is becoming very noisy. However, the fact that I found myself using it on many project is a good sign. That means that my subconscious mind found it efficient enough to use it has a go to “warmer”.

Unfortunately, for the moment, at least, no freeware plugin is perfect. On this one, a major drawback overcomes the advantages of using it. I might like it a lot, but this plugin crashes a lot too. It also make sense since it runs at 16 times oversampled without latency, but still, this is not an excuse. Also, it happened that I could not reload the plugin properly when I was opening a previous file. Other uncertainty, the plugin has sometimes weird effect in the stereo field.

In conclusion, this is a very nice sounding plugin that, unfortunately, still has bugs. However, the fact that you can oversample ridiculously make it sounds very analog and natural, especially when your base sampling rate is 96kHz. (Overall rating: 4.1/5)

PLUS:

  • Crazy oversampling
  • No latency
  • Smooth natural sounding
  • A lot of parameters tunable for a simple plugin
  • Very useful, simply…
MINUS:
  • Crashes sometimes
  • No Mac versions
  • Sometimes, weird effects happen in the stereo field.

 

Resources:

Download link on xenium audio website:

http://www.xeniumaudio.com/downloads.php#XTube

 

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Posted in Freeware Plugin Review, Mastering, Plugin Development | 2 Comments »

Variety Of Sound – Baxter EQ (Review)

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

In the small world of mastering, « do no harm » is the golden rule. That said, Bootsie (VOF) should not be surprised to hear about mastering engineers being skeptical about the potential of his BaxterEq as a mastering equalizer.

I’m no different of the others; I am very picky about the tools I add to my rack. Until now, very few free plug-ins have made their way through my signal path, especially on the master bus. However, I am glad that few good developers are bold enough to accept the challenge.

On a technical side, Baxter is a 64bit floating point internal processor. More interesting fact, it supports the mid-side treatment. Also, Baxter is ergonomic; it gives easy access to useful controls that help us working the frequency balance in few knob tweaks. Plus, it makes cut filtering very easy; I’ve been able to find the right balance of numerous songs almost instantaneously, thanks to bootsie smart design. Even if it is not able to do perform surgical notches, BaxterEQ has found itself very handy when it comes to finding a right tonal balance.

Unfortunately, free plugins still all have their drawbacks. One huge important detail is missing; a proper mastering equalizer must have a linear phase mode. Low latency mode can be interesting during the mixing process, but it is not a necessity for the mastering process. Like Bob Katz said, when we’ve tried a linear phase equalizer, it’s hard to go back to ordinary one. The good news is that I am still using BaxterEQ after few months, especially for personal projects. However, for external projects, I find myself switching to a more musical (expensive) equalizer once I found the tonal balance I was looking for.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that Bootsie is one of the best free plugin programmers, if not the best, and I encourage him to continue in this way. However, despite its incredible efficiency, the actual version of BaxterEq is not my to-go equalizer for mastering jobs since its phase shifting problem tends to irritate me. Though, I found Baxter very useful for vocal mixing applications. If a linear phase version of BaxterEq comes out one day, you can be sure that this one would be on the top of all my mastering templates. (Overall Rating: 4/5.)

Plus:

  • Ergonomic, practical and useful;
  • Mid-Side treatment;
  • 64bit internal processing;
  • Smooth sound;
  • Low CPU usage and latency.

Minus:

  • Linear phase mode missing;
  • Some bugs related to link channel

 

Resources:

Download link for preset bank from Quantum-Music:

http://www.quantum-music.ca/download/chrisdion-baxter-Preset-bank.rar

Link to Variety of Sound’s blog:

http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/downloads/

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Posted in Freeware Plugin Review, Mastering, Mixing, Plugin Development | 3 Comments »