I own Vintage Warmer which is a great Program and performs compression, limiting and it's "Warmer" magic.
What benefit would it be to use MasterComp as well
and how would you use it in conjuntion with VW.

Thanks, Brian.

Exactly what I plan to do. MC for compression as needed, VW for final limiting...

They are completely different plug-ins with different sound capabilities and features. Their overall GUI layout is just similar to show that this is a plug-in from the high-end family of PSP plug-ins.

Regards,

They do play well together, I might add....

Sounds Great...
But, Before I invest in MasterComp-
I would still like to have an idea of
how they would both be utilized best together?
VW for individual tracks & MasterComp for Mix, Then back to VW for limiting? Etc.

A little more detail please...

Thanks Again, Brian.

It would be the best to try out the demo version which is now not limited in the way the pre release demo was.

The PSP MC was thought as bus compressor mainly. Please note that it uses a lot of resources and currently its usage is rather limited to 1-2 instances in the mix.

Regards,

I've spent a considerable amount of time in the last several days doing nothing but characterizing the plugin and I am very pleased with it. It's not just another compressor. It has a great sound and is very easy to dial in.

I'm presently mixing a project an it'll be in the Master Buss chain. The FAT option is excellent, but a real resource hog.

I've compared it to several other plugin compressors that I know well, trying to dial a similar sound and the MasterComp so far has sounded as good or better... that's what matters

For those of us who are not audio engineers, a best practices white-paper for your plug-in's would be very helpful. I recently purchased PSP MC because I like to support you guys, but I'm finding it hard to use. I usually rely on presets to start with but this plug-in has few.

Again, the white paper would help.

Thanks.

Mike

Mike, what exactly would you expect that is not included in the manual?

Regards,

Mateusz,

I work for a software company. We have a lot of technical documentation, which I would characterize your documentation as. But we also have "best practices" white papers that help our clients get started.

People who are experts in the audio field and are totally familar with the application domain, usually only need technical dcoumentation. However, people like myself, who are hobbyists and amateurs, need to gain the insight that we don't have. We rely on white papers to do this.

Mike

Does the MasterQ's manual meets these requrements?

By the way, even though we are trying to make out plug-ins simple to understand, I think that generally our mastering tools are for professionals who has skills and proper monitoring system. For instance setting up the PSP MC or PSP MQ without proper listenning room and speakers may not leed to proper results.

Regards,

No the MasterQ's manual does not meet these requirements. It is at best a reference manual.

If your market is only to professionals then you are not charging enough for your plug-ins :-) So assuming that your market does include home recording enthusiasts & amateurs like myself, a "best practices" manual would be very useful.

The closest thing I've seen that would qualify as a "best practices" white paper is that article "The Role of Equalizatino in Mixing" writen by Anderson from EQ Magazine, that you included in the MasterQ documentation. This is what I'm asking you for - more documentation like this but specific to your plug-ins.

Thanks.

Mike

I don't understand your point. Once you write that the MasterQ's manual is not doing what you are talking about and is a typical documentation while at the end of your post you wrote that Craig's article is closest to what you would expect. This article about EQing is an integral part of the manual!

The parametric equalizer is not a reverb or something - you cannot get any universal procedure to get good results, everything depends on the sources material and your expectations. What you really need in this case is training and reading the introduction article may help to understand EQing better.


Regards,

Actually there is nothing like "best practices" for comrpessors and equalizers. The best practice is to learn how to get what you expect from the sound which requires good monitoring system, training and comparison to other good recordings.
There is no way to find out what is your track sound like and what you expect from it after processing so there is no way to write a universal way to achieve the goal.
Yet again, processors like EQ or dynamic processors are not a kind of creative tool like WahWah, chorus, leslie, delay or reverb where results can be somehow described, prepared with presets etc. In the case of processors things are different and are closely referenced to the source material and expectations and this is an area where nano-details are so important.

I am sorry if my response disapoints you but I hope that it will be well understood.
Regards,

My bad - I meant the MasterComp manual, not the MasterQ (too many Masters).

I respectively disagree that there could not be a "best practices" for compressors and equalizers. Craig's article was indeed close to a "best practices" & I'm complimenting you on it!

But I think you are missing my point & you'll be greatly restricting your market if you don't come up with better documentation.

I know other's that were considering buying MasterComp but probably won't because they don't understand it or know how to use it.

It's fine if you want to target the high-end audio market, and I'm serious suggesting that you should charge more for your plug-ins. Of course, I won't buy them but you've clearly stated that you are not targeting me.

Mike

I am sorry if somebody don't understand it. This is the plug-in which has very common controls (unlike the VintageWarmer for instance) and doesn't require any extra knowledge other then when using another compressor. The main difference is in this case an expearience and expectations.
For instance no body excect true mastering engineers and some top mixing engineers would be Manley Vari-Mu because only those guys really know that this gear is worth its high price, they really understand what it does to the sound.
There is no way to describe practices for a compressor which is not tend to be a tool for begginers because without experiance it is really hard to expect and hear how it should really work.
Of course the idea to attach articles to manuals which would help in compression isn't a bad idea but it won't help you in any way to choose the MasterComp.
In other words it is possible to make an introduction on what the compressor is and what does every parameter but we cannot give guidelines how to get a good sound of it because its every setting can be good depending on individual situation.
But, hey, I just found an article on the net that you could read if it is really what you would expect:
http://www.pcmus.com/compressors.htm

Regards,

I understand that your goal is not to teach people to be mastering engineers, or how to use compressors. I also understand that each individual situation requires different settings.

All I'm suggesting is you provide alittle more documentation like the article in MasterQ. You could also provide more presets, which are useful in learning a new tool. I noticed that there were very few in MasterComp, as compared to your other plug-ins, and they were pretty cryptically named IMO.

Ozone did an excellent white paper on the mastering process, illustrating it's tools. I'm suggesting that you could do the same thing.

The idea is good and worth doing if we would find a good resource for it.
In this case - espeically in the PSP MC presets are very ilusoric, we could only prepare some starting points and actuall settings require tweeking.
Please note that every kind of processor of effect provides different possibilities to create any usefull presets. For instance PSP StereoAnalyser and PSP StereoController don't have presets at all while PSP Nitro has around houndred.
This doesn't meen that we don't want to provide a good tool but this means that the plug-in is just different.

Regards,

Mike - to successfully use a mastering compressor anyone would either need an internship in a studio or be prepared to take the ,amy many months it requires for the DIYer like myself. Craig Anderton (whom you've mentioned) has some mastering and mixing books available that explain how to use these devices as does Bob Katz. Both of these books (and many more) are essential for the hobbiest , DIYer, semi-pro, pro whichever you are.

PSP - my input is that your pricing is just fine the way it is! Am enjoying the Master Comp!

Thaks for your input Kylen.

Mike. Of course your points will be taken into account, we are still learning how to make things better - this also refers to our manuals.

Regards,

Of course, I don't want PSP to raise their prices. My point was that PSP's pricing does indicate that they are after my market, not just professional audio engineers.

Although I could not write such a doc, I envision a "best practices" white paper would be something that took an actual song through the various production processes using PSP plug-ins. It wouldn't answer all questions but it would show some basic things & teach some basic concepts. It would also clearly show how the "inventors" of these tools think about them and what their capabilities are.

What I hear you all saying is that I should go back and learn all about compressors, limiters, mastering, etc., etc., before I start using these plug-ins. I agree in an ideal world I should do that but this is not an ideal world. And if I needed to start from scratch, then the Ozone white paper would a waste but I found it very useful.

The thing is (again) that in the case of mastering tools there are no strict rules, there are even no rough rulse. What we could say about the MC in the contect of making a sing is that you can use it on buses or preferably during mastering.

Capabilities of this plug-in are described as features in the begining of the the manual, some other details are described in other parts of the manual.

This is no problem to visit a page with a link I put here few post ago and to learn some basics of compression and other process ann basically about mastering to know why there are no rules that could be described.

You can also visit Bob Katz page which provides some very informative papers about mastering and helps to understand this subject which is so wide and fuzzy that it is rather impossible to contain all those things within a single manual.

Finally we are always ready to answer exact practical question that happens to users with various level of processing understanding and expearience. Some of those questions then are put into the FAQ part of this forum.

I don't want to let you down in anyway, every of us has learn all the time to make their job better and probably you are more expearienced in processing then we where some years ago. I just want you to understand that the subject is so wide in this case and tutorials can be so missleading in the case of the MC that we don't want it to be done this way.
However if you had any questions refering to the PSP MC or our other plug-ins we are ready to make our best to help you.

Regards,

Regards

I think you've made my point - you expect users of your software to be experts. That's fine if that's your market.

My main point is that if we expected users of the software I build, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to be experts, then we'd go out of business, because our software is complicated & difficult to use. To use your example, we'd have to tell our clients to first learn to be Database Administrators, Cartographers, and Geographers. Then once they did that, they could begin to use our software. If we did that, we'd be out of business and our clients would go to our competitors. Instead, we provide extensive documentation and white papers.

So again, I'm going to respectively disagree with you on this one. IMO you could provide better documentation to help non-experts like myself use your software.

I am sorry but I think you missunderstood me. I menstioned several ways what you can do to understand better our mastering plug-ins, the knowledge is so wide that it is impossible to write tutorial containing even fraction of it hwoever moving your browser to find all those information or buy Bob's book isn't a big problem and would help you with a lot of things in your music expearience. I think that after reading few of those material you would start to understand our point.
I also mentioned that we help to solve various problems of our custers (on this forum or via email) and almost always our responses gain the plug-in's understanding.
All this means that our plug-ins are often used by not "perfect engineers" and we are glad that we can help to understand them better.
This is also good that you mentioned your GIS software because it shows how different it is. If I am not wrong GIS gives expected results and the difference between expert and non-expert user is that the other has to learn how to use it. In a case of mastering processors the non-expert don't understand that there are no rules, the plug-in is just a tool between others in a complex mastering process whcih is more to the art of hearing expearience than exact and predictable rules on paper.
What I mean please try to take a look at resources mentioned, this can help you a lot to understand how to choose a tool for a job and we are also open to any questions refering to our plug-ins and typically we solve missunderstanding and problems withing days.

Regards,

Mike I think their point is that there's so many different ways you can process the same type of sounds that it would be pointless. For instance, say you have an electric bass guitar track that you want to tame the dynamics on. Good attack, release and threshold settings are going to vary wildly based on what you're trying to do with that bass track, and what could work on that particular bass track, could suck for it on a different song or recording even if the program material is similar and recorded at a similar level. There's really no way to tell someone what's right in respect for this. You really just do have to learn how the plugs work, and then use your ears as to how they need to be applied on an individual basis. Look at drums, for another example, do you want to kill the transients, using a fast attack, or do you want to let them through and compress more of the body of the kit? Even then tempo and how much the drummer is playing will actually be a factor. Now we still haven't gotten to release settings or ratio controls which will dictate so much more. Then on top of it, you may want a super compressed drum sound, you may not. How can someone else tell you this?

Funkybot - I fully understand what Mateusz is saying & I agree to a certain extent. Have you read the Ozone mastering guide? There are a million ways you can master a song, yet that is a useful guide.

Mateusz - your characterization of GIS is not totally accurate. There are a million ways to make a map too & there are lots of questions you can ask using the software. Our documentation doesn't try to answer all the questions, or show all the possibilities.

The documentation I'm seeking would be similar to the Ozone guide, i.e., it wouldn't try to solve all problems but it would perhaps use a set of audio tracks & go through one process. It would specify the goals which would be very narrow & specific.

Following Mateusz's logic, I would argue that the Master Comp needs no documentation at all then. All users need to know is to find documentation on how a compressor works. In fact, my observation is that the documentaton on that plug-in is pretty sparse, which is why I started this discussion in the first place.

I have Katz's book & it's pretty complicated IMO.

I didn't mean for this thread to go on so long but I've felt it's been a good discussion.

Thanks.

Mike

Once again I disagree. Ozone is totally different - multieffect type - plug-in wth very complex, not common multi screen operation. It has completely different idea and is an all-in-all tool, it is also targeted to different customers then the PSP MC.
Which of course doesn't mean that the way Ozone's manual is prepared is wrong, it just shows that in the case of Ozone there is a different stress point than in the case of the PSP MC.
I also still cannot understand your point about the price which is very expensive compared to our other plug-ins. Do you mean that we should be sorry to sale it at 250$ instead of 1000$ for instance?

Regards,

By the way, did you take a look at the site I mentioned? It would help you a lot, you can also try the Craig Anderton book about mastering which is more basic comparet to Bob's one.

And once again, I don't get your point, I several times wrote that we are open to your questions and we can provide you some on-line content to help you understand the PSP MC and whatever we say you get back to the fact that we don't have a tutorial.

Regards,

Have you read the Ozone Mastering Guide? It's one of the "best" white papers on mastering that I've ever read. It achieves two goals: teaching you some basics about mastering & at the same time illustrating Ozone's tools. Brilliant marketing doc IMO.

I'm not trying to compare your plug-in's with Ozone's at all? However, if you are telling me that you doesn't understand how you could also write a white paper on EQ & mastering using your tools, then I say bull - of course, you could if you wanted to.

I think you missed my point with your price. I have no ideas what your market is, or the market for plug-ins in general - that would require a lot of research. My comment about price was in response to your claim that you build these tools for professionals. I was beeing alittle facetious. I don't think you are marketing your tools simply to professionals or you won't have created EasyVerb.

OK, so if you already read this tutorial you should have no problem at all getting most of the MasterComp :-)

I disagree that writing a tutorial for MasterQ and MasterComp is the same thing as doing it for Ozone, I also didn't say that it doesn't make sense, just have a different opinion about it.

I never read any guide that would really gain my knowledge about the process siriously. 99% of my education was my own investigation and hearing expearience and nothing written can exchange it.

I think that we are right by saying that our tools are created for proffesionals and real mastering engineers which of course doen't meen that they cannot be used by semi pros and hobbysts. We are actually proud that we have various user groups and that their job or hobby can benefit from our plug-ins. We are also glad to support them as good as we are able to and to help to understand our products and use them in a right way.

Regards,

Wow....Who would of thought my thread would of
become such a debate.

Sorry Mateusz, I have to agree with Mike on this one. I am an Independent Artist who likes to be able to Produce/Master my own Music.
I find your "Guides/Manuals/Applications" very confusing for someone who wants to spend most of there time composing VS tweaking.
Your vague response to my original question did not help me in the least. And instead of leaving with an understanding of how I could us VW with MC. You lost a Sale, as I left thinking that MC is just an Improved Expanded version of VW and you just didn't want to give the impression that perhaps both Plugs were'nt necessary. No offense, that's just how I took it, from the response.
Instead, I took my limited funds and purchased FL Studio (DAW) instead. There's a great example of a Affordable Product($149)with Outstanding Support and vision.
They have Video Tutorials, Written Tutorials, Forums, you name it at thier Site.
And Applications for that product far exceed what MC's are.
All's I'm looking for is mainly Common Example Applications, as Mike suggested (Which could be as simple as by Genre- Heavy Metal/Hip-Hop), or More Presets to use as a guideline.
On VW for example. I still don't fully understand it and have to invest many hours in making 3 or 4 Samples and "Hear" which sounds best.
If you just had MORE Presets to work from. Remember those of us who are only Technically Average.
(For mix Presets. Common Genres would help greatly. VOCAL Presets a must. Male/Female- Soft, Mid, Belting, Anything would help. More Instrument Presets- You only have a couple guitar ones).
I understand this is more work for someone.
But, this is also one of the Strongest selling points of Plugs. (You could open a Presets forum and let folks share them, etc. to get around that.)

I still hope to perhaps purchase MC down the line.
But for now it seems to be a product for Engineer Types who enjoy Playing around with new stuff.
My Goals are to make music and then make it sound it's best. Without scratching my head thru the whole process.

Your Products are Great...I just think you're missing out on a whole Market of the Likes of Me.
(As a side note...Accepting PAYPAL would help greatly also.)

Thanks for Listening, Brian.

Wow here too. Master comp is a perfectly normal (ok, with exeptionally transparent action and detailed sound) compressor. Do you guys expect white papers on how to drive when you buy a car?

I don't mean to be rude but I don't share this whitepaper point of view and I also think that you have made all points that can be made on an Internet forum long ago. No presets or whitepapers can make up for getting a good listening environment and ear training and last but not at all least spending time recording and processing your material.

In order to be more constructive in the original question: Master Comp is very nice to have on the master strip before Vintage Warmer. Here's a quick start: open the "Gentle Master" preset in Master Comp. Set the meter mode to "GR" so you can monitor the gain reduction. Adjust treshold to get 3-4 dB gain reducion on your material. Listen carefully and adjust attack and release to get a compression shape that make your ears happy. Then fire up Vintage Warmer (then you will not need the limiter in master comp). Use Gain reduction mode here too and see to that you don't get more than around 1 db gain reduction when you operate the gain control. Adjust speed and release in the same way as above. If your tracks are recorded somewhere in the normal level/energy area you should now have a pretty decent master compression and limiting. If analyzed, the average RMS sound pressure could be somewhere near -12 db witch is just fine. If you don't have a good tool for that you might be intrested in trying this .

Peacefully

Ouch....You gotta love Sarcasm.
Though I do recall going thru Classes- and Training- and a Test- before being able to drive a car.
Any Puttz with some cash and limited computer knowledge can purchase a Plug and attempt to use it. The secret is what extent to you want to go to make it accessible to the widest possible audience. (Remember...I'm part of the Fast & Large Growing Independent Artists out there who
Compose & Produce their Music from the Demo to Master- Who see's Mastering Studios VS DAWS/Plugs in the same light as Photo Labs and what Digital Photography has become.)
My feeling is PSP could go alot farther in capitalizing on this growing market.

I do appreciate your input BB54 on the original question. That is exactly the kind of info I was looking for and would of thought PSP Support could provide.

Thanks, Brian

I'm usually not into sarcasm at all but felt that the car reference made just the needed kind of point. You don't expect to be educated by the salesman in the use of perfectly normal products, you go to a school of your own choise.

Note that my quick start above is in no way intended for use with any special compressor or limiter product and is aimed towards minimizing the damage that compressors and limiters can have on audio material. There are tons of possibilities of getting this kind of info for free. One of them is a forum like this, just shoot and people will help!

Of course I think it's ok or sometimes even good to discuss and point out things like this but sometimes it does not get any better even if the discussion extends into eternity.

I also compose and produce my own material from demo to master, most of the time mainly to please myself.

OK, Thanks for interesting discussion to all of you.
We will try to prepare in the future some basic hints for products however I still beleive in my point of view and I will once again try to explain it.
1. I think that preparing presets directly called: Vocal, Drums, Perfect rock ballade etc, in the convence of mastering is a cheeting of our customers because the preset vocal can be a best choise some heavy metal while a Perfect rock ballade can be a greate choise for a hip-hop track. So, mainly, in the mastering a preset naming of this kind is very nice but actually useless in most of jobs.

2.Even if we could cover "all" settings in presets it woudn't exclude you from carefull listenning expearience to discover which preset is a best choise.

3. Generally we preper presets in mastering plug-ins as a help to speed up learning of those tools by rapid observation of changes that occurs through presets and how those sounds can be setup with controls.

4. If somebody don't know what the compressor (car - no sarcasm, just an example) is, how and what for use it (or drive a car - no sarcasm, just an example) why we should force one to buy one (compressor or a car)? Just to be glad of a rapid sales followed by long discussions with clients that bought something they don't understand and don't want at all?

5. From my expearience, tools like the MasterQ or a MasterComp are understood and intentionally chosen by people who, from their own listenning expearience, understand that standard processors included with most of DAWs are far from beeing a real tool for mastering. Then, when they really hear the difference, there is no price or CPU usage problem. They fully unrestand that the MasterComp and MasterQ are upgrade options, not tools for begginers.

6. A mastering plug-in will not gain your results automatically. It can, of course, make the same job with little distortion but it will not remove common mistakes in usage caused by inadequate monitors etc.

7. Finaly this is great that nowadays technically mastering can be done on the same system and by the same person that created, recorded and mixed it however this is often the worst case. Monitoring, expearience etc. Of course sending it to highly priced mastering house doesn't automatically mean that the results will be good eather but it is a different story.

All of this doesn't mean that we don't listen to your point of view and we will make more stress to better support intermediate users in our manuals and through support channels.
Once again - we are glad to have various customers and we are open to learn how to support them which, I hope, will mean better manuals in the future.

Best regards,

Very well said, Mateusz.

>Do you guys expect white papers on how to drive
>when you buy a car?
That's a terrible analogy and is wrong. I get an incredible white paper when I buy a car - it's called the owner's manual.

Mateusz had made my point - PSP tools are created for professionals, and that's why the documentation is so sparse. I still don't think Mateusz understands what a good white paper is. He thinks it has to cover all cases, but it doesn't and in fact, shouldn't.

I agree with B5 and PSP lost a sale because their doc/marketing points are weak. I bought MC and probably shouldn't have because I think VW does all the I want & have much of the same functionality as MC.

Mike

learning how to use a comp should be high on your learning list if you are goign to buy a comp... i dont think the company needs to provide the documentation in order to use one. i dont see anything out of the ordinary for someone who knows how to use one.

documentation? ever see manuals for pro outboard gear? who reads manuals anyway?

the car analogy does work IMO, to take it further, you might know how to drive a car but if given the chance, you think just knowing how to drive a car will enable you to win a F1 race? or even finish it?

Never saw a car owners manual give directions on how to use the car, but perhaps we don't drive the same brand.

Yikes! Alright already...
We get the point.
MasterComp is not for everyone.
And this thread proves the point that PSP is geared towards a select market. (Which is not your average Musician/Composer).
And no matter how many "Car Driving" references are thrown in...the fact is PSP needs better product support compared to it's competitors.
I own plenty of Plugs & Audio Applications-
And I can only conclude that PSP is on the bottom in this regard. Where the likes of Har-Bal & FL Studio are on top.

So lets put this baby to rest...
I think Mateusz answered this already.
MasterComp is not for your average Joe and they'll keep this in mind going forward.

So if you Mastering Guru's want to keep pounding the point that you know alot more of the Technical End than us "Ignorant Sound Engineer want a be's".
I think you made that point already.

Peace?
B5

Some Internet discussions seem to extend into eternity and sometimes it gets to the point where you may ask yourself if the other part can read and understand properly. At times like that, the gap between the disscussing parts often lies in the values and principles the parts choose to honor when taking their position in the discussion. If theese values and principles is not shared by the other discussing parts, the discussion will never end in an agreement. The only thing that remains to say is: OK, you see it that way, and I see it this way, and that's fine. As I understand you, B5 this is what you want to do. But you also add new gasoline to the fire by comparing the perfectly normal compressor we discuss here (with a basic functionality shared by every other compressor in the universe) with the very, very special and uniqe mastering tool Har-Bal. This comparison is not intellectually honest in any way.

Mike Cressey: If VW does all you want, then MC is redundant. But the MC functionality and sound is not included in VW. It's true that one can be used without the other but in fact they complete each other just fine and make a killer duo on your master out. Since you have MC already, dont miss to try it out.

If this discussion had been about VW it had been much easier for me to understand since VW is a very special plugin. I think that the best way to learn how to use a compressor (which is generic knowledge) is to get a hardware unit with knobs and spend time working with it and listening carefully. The use of compressors is probably one of the hardest things to understand and master in audio production since it can be used in so many ways and for so many purposes. It's a bit like dancing, everyone has a way of their own that makes them happy. From this point of view, you guys are a bit unfair to Mateusz - there is no way he or anyone else can be specific on how you should use a compressor on your audio material in order to be pleased with the result and it takes a lot of time to put together a publication that covers even only the most common usages of a compressor. Time that plugin buyers would have to pay for. Seems like a much better deal to leave PSP with plugin programming peace and get the generic knowledge elsewhere.

And yes, peace to all involved. I have for sure not written anything with the purpose to upset anyone nor to write myself into any kind of mastering guru context, I have no such claims.

Over and out,

Hopefully Mateusz is no longer wasting his time with this one. I think he answered fairly and pretty much stated they'd keep it in mind on future projects.
As far as- "But you also add new gasoline to the fire by comparing the perfectly normal compressor we discuss here (with a basic functionality shared by every other compressor in the universe) with the very, very special and uniqe mastering tool Har-Bal. This comparison is not intellectually honest in any way."
I was refering to Support and Instruction.
Har-Bal goes to great effort to help you understand the use of thier product- and even work out step by step instructions for using with other Mastering Apps, etc.
Those guys are the cream of the crop.

PSP has great products. Just wish they'd be a little more supportive of the Average Joe.

Thanks for the Replies......

B5

VW is much harder to wrap your head around but reading the manual did a great job of it for me.... although the saturation side can still be confusing with the ceiling on the front...

IMHO, PSP and HarBal should never be used in the same sentence when talking about mastering. They are leagues apart...

BTW, the owner's manual for any of the cars that I've ever owned never gave any instructions whatsoever about how to drive. That's what Driver's Ed. and a permit are for...

B5, if Har-bal did not provide good information about their tool no one would be able to use it properly since it's a totally new approach that not a single one of the presumptive users has any experience with. No generic knowledge to fall back on = great need for documentation.

I record original songs & I make CDs that I sell. I've been recording for many years but I still consider myself a hobbyist. I bought MC before I knew exactly what I was going to do with it, because I like PSP products & I like to support these guys.

>Mike Cressey: If VW does all you want, then MC
> is redundant. But the MC functionality and
>sound is not included in VW.
What attracted me to the thread was the same thing that B5 asked about in the first post, and it's not clearly answered for me. Isn't VW just a compressor/limiter? Isn't MC another one? What's the difference? When would you use one, when would you use another? Does MC replace VW? Hence I asked about a good white paper, and here were are again :-)

>They are completely different plug-ins with
>different sound capabilities and features.
This response even confused me more.

MC, I would put it like this:

Use MC for compression and VW as a coloring/warming limitier.

MC is single band and can do limiting but specializes in compression.

VW is multiband and can do compression but is more oriented towards limiting and warming (than MC).

When you want each of them is up to you and what you want to achieve. I described a good starting point for using them together on the master out strip above. This is probably one of the most common ways of using them. Sometimes I treat guitars, drums, keyboards and vocals with VW on track level to add more punch and even some compression. Listen to your tracks and decide what you want to do with them, try out a plug and see if it does what you want.

When you get new gear there is always a trial and error period, you go trough it and afterwards you know when you like to use the gear and how.

This is how you learn and - it is supposed to be fun. If you don't think it is, maybee you should consider having someone else to do it. I don't mean to sound patronising here, this is just the way I think most of us learn to use our audio tools.

I would add here that while VW was designed to add warmth (color), MC's goal is to be as transparent as possible. That's why MC is marketed toward Mastering engineers - we (usually) don't want to add color to a mix that has already been painstakingly perfected by the mix engineer. That being said, the VW does a great job of adding just a touch of "character" to sterile mixes while keeping max levels in check (limiter).

The point here is that when you need some compression but don't want it to be heard, you use MC. Even still, it takes time tweaking and carefully listening in order to find just the right settings to get the compression you need w/o audibly affecting the mix.

Hope this helps...