Sony 'Oxford' EQ plug in REVITALIZES Pro Tools! AMAZIN

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2001 3:58 pm

Great post!"the Neve / SSL crowd get bummed trying to get a DAW mixer to sound good. "Well that's me BTW... I call it - "tearing my hair out'. Or - "It's driving me nutz"!!!!Lot's of us, including Fletcher (if I may be so bold) are appoaching mixing in DAW's with the positive attitue, - I'm gonna lick this sucker! Smile

Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2001 8:37 pm

Buick, PERFECT POST
Jules,
Can you give my a instances per mix farm as opposed to a per chip. (which raises the question, which type of chip?)I have a mix 3 system and need to know how many I can get up per farm before I would buy it.
Cant afford another mix farm AND the sony plug!ed

Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2001 3:17 am

I came to pro tools from logic audio and a mackie mixer etc. It's great! For me it's a major improvment and I love it. When I read posts saying how crap it sounds I think two things...1. Lets not get back to the digital analogue debate....We'll be here all day angrily agreeing with each other.2. The price difference between a mix plus system a load of plugs and a procontrol, is not even in the same ball park as an ssl console etc etc etc.I, as a big fan of pro tools dont have any problems with the way it sounds. If others are used to the cream of the desk crop, maybe they will. BUT That doesn't change the fact that I am happy with the sound. In short, it's always a good thing to re-evaluate the way you listen. If someone can hear a certain something, identify it so that you are aware of it....but if you like something, someone elses observations about it are just that...THEIR observations.Jack

Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2001 6:26 am

I pretty much agree with Buick all the way but would like to comment on the fourth point since I started out working in tube studios.The thing that made them great was not the "tube sound" that solid state's apologists invented as their means of defending new solid state products that offered manufacturers unprecedented profit margins.In the 1950s, every stage of a professional tube console typically clipped at around +35 into a 150 Ohm load. (a lot of common outboard gear did not have this kind of dynamic range, just the consoles.) Mike preamps had fixed gain and occasionally there were some 10 or 20 dB. mike pads in the patch bay. If you measure the dynamic range between noise and 3 percent distortion as opposed to 1 percent distortion, a tube console could have as much as 20 dB. more dynamic range. On top of that you were operating internally at levels well above thermal noise, RFI and crosstalk.This meant the sweet spot was immense and it hardly mattered where you trimmed the gain in the chain to keep the meters from pinning. It was not uncommon to leave a console set up and for everybody to just walk in and start recording without doing any sound checks at all outside of maybe making sure all the mikes were working before the musicians arrived. Most studios had one or two channels of limiting, a couple Pultecs and maybe a graphic equalizer. (I remember being wowed by four 1176s being available at Wally Heider's in 1971!)I've never used a solid state product that offered this window of "ease." We evolved into an unimaginable number of bells and whistles combined with unprecedented amounts of studio time being used for the typical recording project so studio businesses didn't feel much pain. Low-end consoles and mixers were even worse. The move from analog recording to 16 bit digital closed off another major portion of the "ease" window.Potentially 24 bit recording could finally turn the tide of the shrinking sweet spot IF we have people creating applications who really understand the importance of gain structure and headroom. I shudder every time I read about analog "modeling" and "warmth" when the real issue all along has been internal dynamic range and headroom.

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2001 11:55 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Potentially 24 bit recording could finally turn the tide of the shrinking sweet spot IF we have people creating applications who really understand the importance of gain structure and headroom. I shudder every time I read about analog "modeling" and "warmth" when the real issue all along has been internal dynamic range and headroom.<hr></blockquote>Aren't we already there with this digital/DAW stuff? At least with 32-bit floating point processing, and it's 1500db of internal dynamic range, we should be pretty close, right?I was exploring this the other day with my system (not Pro Tools). I put a 16-bit, 0dbfs tone at unity gain across 192 channels, lowered the master fader about 43db, summed them together to 16-bit (with dither on the mix output), and looked at the result. Virtually identical to the source - no distortion artifacts, just a slight increase in the noise floor.Does this tell me anything meaningful about the system under test, or am I barking up the wrong tree?BTW, Sony is sending out promotional emails that reference this thread, and others like it. I guess they're pretty happy with Julian's asessment of the Oxford eq plug. Smile

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2001 7:25 am

RE GMLFrom Sony.."The Q is reversed as the 8200 controls work the
other way round to the R3. Basically the bandpass sections of the GML8200 are exactly the same as the Oxford in type1 selection except that the freq ranges are different and crucially the HF section control can go up to 26KHz. The shelves ARE completely different from the Oxford in that they are much much gentler - as you can see on the graph."26k!!!!!! Smile

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2001 6:38 pm

I'm not a PT user, so I was just wondering . . how much is the Oxford console going for these days? Very Happy

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2001 7:52 pm

I believe Ang was messing with one last week, let's ask him.ANGELO!

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2001 4:26 am

Hi Jules,<< Basically the bandpass sections of the GML8200 are exactly the same as the Oxford in type1 selection except that the freq ranges are different and crucially the HF section control can go up to 26KHz. >>I wonder what this is all about? I presume that Sony is talking about shaping the HF curve as if the peak were at 26K. My reason for this presumption is that it is impossible for a 44.1 or 48k session to contain frequencies as high as 26kHz, at least as far as Nyquist is concerned.Greg

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2001 9:06 pm

96k ready or what?!!!!! Smile

Jules

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2001 11:04 am

From what I understand they double the sample-rate, process and then convert back to the original rate. I've heard of doing this in dynamics plug-ins but never before in an eq.

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2001 9:38 am

<< From what I understand they double the sample-rate, process and then convert back to the original rate. I've heard of doing this in dynamics plug-ins but never before in an eq. >>Bob are you sure about this? Surely if you've got a 44.1k file there is nothing above 22kHz. Doubling the sample rate surely can't introduce frequencies above 22kHz that weren't in the original file?Greg

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2001 7:12 am

good news for all "natives" (at least those vst-comp.)!http://www.harmony-central.com/News/2001/Sony-TC-Works-Collab.html

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2001 2:23 am

Well I just finished a restoration project and the SonyOxfordFilters kicked ass! Super smooth and simple. Turn it on (HPF LPF) choose the what db curve you need and done. Love it! Very Happy

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2001 6:17 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Greg Malcangi:
<< From what I understand they double the sample-rate, process and then convert back to the original rate. I've heard of doing this in dynamics plug-ins but never before in an eq. >>Bob are you sure about this? Surely if you've got a 44.1k file there is nothing above 22kHz. Doubling the sample rate surely can't introduce frequencies above 22kHz that weren't in the original file?Greg<hr></blockquote>Doubling the sampling rate is used for reducing midband distortion, and spreading the errors over a wider bandwidth. Result is cleaner than processing @ lower sample rates.Peace,Zooot.

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