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I know a lot of plugin designers have to keep the CPU usage on their plugins to a minimum, but I wonder how much better the plugs could be if they just went ballz-out with as much CPU usage as is necessary to make the best possible sound. The main thing I am looking for is EQ and bus compressor. I guess maybe the Pultec Pro might come close to fitting the bill, but I don't know about a good bus compression plug.
Or are there diminishing returns once you make a plugin with a certain degree of complexity?

Anyone wanna make me some Monster plugs? :)

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anonymous Wed, 04/06/2005 - 18:46

I don't know that you need CPU intensive plug-ins to do the job. I have been using the Ultrafunk (I think they are only bundled with Cakewalk stuff now) plug-ins for some time and they have really made my recordings sound good if not amazing. They have a multi-band compressor that is fast and uses little CPU time. There is also a standard compressor with some good features. The EQ is nice, too. I think it is a 6-10 band parametric.

If you are looking for some CPU hogs look at the Izotope plug-ins. They sound nice, but can bring your system to its knees. I am not sure what you are using, but I have a P4 3.2ghz that can be overloaded by using too many instances of the Izotope plug-ins. Also check out some of the Native Instrument stuff. I tested some of their plug-ins and they too are hogs. I did find that windows 2000 was less buggy than XP. I am thinking of going back, but some plug-ins will only work under XP. If you are a MAC user I don't have any advice.

Reggie Wed, 04/06/2005 - 21:34

Thanks for your ideas. Right now I have a P4 2.7 Ghz 1.3GB RAM, UAD Studio Pak, Precision Limiter, TC Powercore.

I'm a little wary of Izotope Ozone as I'm not sure it would be useful to me. The other Izotope plugs look a little goofy to me; more for making weird sounds than for regular use.
Native Instruments stuff looks like a bunch of samplers and synths and modelers and stuff, which isn't really what I am looking for.
I think it would be cool if someone came out with a compressor plug that was advanced enough to handle compressing a full mix and do it with style. It seems like most plugs are kind of meant for single instruments or less complex buses; or else they are MultibandcompressormultimaximizerbrickwallLoudnessmaximizers.

Anyone else think the market is lacking a high-quality singleband compressor plug designed for a complex mix?

anonymous Thu, 09/27/2007 - 14:35

Looking for CPU hogs I think is the wrong idea. A good programmer will know how to keep CPU use to a minimum in most cases. CPU hogging is a design flaw.

Sound quality can often be achieved without a huge CPU load.

There are dozens of VST instruments and effects that are CPU efficient (not necessarily perfect, but not hogs)