Would be great if you could someday upgrade the NLS Non-Linear Summer by adding an emulation of the API Summing Console. Having the choice between 4 legendary summing consoles inside the same project and so leveraging their unique characters all blended together with your subtile noise and saturation: Spike for its incredible dynamic, weight and punch; Mike for its “Magic” stereo imaging, depth and controlled low end; Nevo for it’s warm and organic sonority, width and depth; and maybe API for its 3-dimensional sound while instantly adding punch, smoothness and clarity.
This is a great idea. I love your marketing copy, by the way, lol!
My first thought is this would be especially good since Waves already offers the API suite of EQs and the 2500…
But Waves wouldn’t necessarily have to use the API name in this product. It could be off-label like Spike(SSL)/Mike(EMI)/Nevo(Neve)…
And just like the others, it would be best if they found an old “very used” API console to model the imperfections. Other companies have console emulations (including the API), but only Waves has actually modeled so many channels with unique imperfections and that’s what makes it so great.
Even the other company’s “TMT” is just a randomization, whereas Waves modeled actual channels specifically.
They actually tested and measured all the variations and tolerances of various components with in the circuit. From that they can derive a range of tolerances for these components and provide randomisations with in that.
After all, the tolerance variations in the real deal would be just as unpredictable.
But they can’t just use a random number as each channel would be different every time we open the session. They require some kind of “seed” number, to make sure these random variations are fixed from channel to channel and so that they would so0nd the same if someone else were to open the project.
My guess is its the actual channel number that provides the seed for the randomisation and would explain why it sounds different from channel to channel, but reliably consistent when choosing the same channel.
Whereas Waves may have modelled NLS off three very specific desks in a very specific time in their life, TMT gives you a hypothetical desk based on very real observations and measurements. Close enough it could be the real thing.
Neither method is superior in my opinion as they both do the job they were designed to do and they do it well.
Good points. I didn’t mean to sound critical of TMT, and like you said – it’s ‘tolerance modeling’ and approximates variation you’d get with real components.
But in my experience, TMT never ends up as “extreme” as a few of the more ‘broken’ channels in NLS. I’d have to go through again to figure out which ones I had such a strong opinion about, but I think they were on the EMI mixer. Mike.
And I could see how they wouldn’t WANT that kind of extremity with TMT, but it’s just something I noted as a difference with NLS. Something I really appreciate about it.
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PS. I’ve heard a few famous mix engineers shrug off NLS style individual channel processing. They say, “That’s exactly why we moved away from consoles and into the box! Why would I want to have to remember ‘Oh yeah this channel is good for X and this one over here is good for Y.’”
I understand that opinion, too… But man, when it comes to setting up chains of plugins to introduce imperfections and variation. I love that. And I do like the personality/quirks hardware had, so I enjoy it in digital too. But this is just a hobby for me, so I can afford messing around with this stuff. I don’t have to always be at peak efficiency, etc.
Yeah I guess TMT was reigned into “acceptable” tolerances that go into making music devices.
Whereas NLS was an outright model of there actual desks and all their imperfections. That EMI is a really old piece of tech, its understandable what some of those channels might be more run down than others. That will work for some people not others.
When CLA was approached to do his channel strip he was given the option to model is desk imperfections but he didn’t want that. I wanted something consistent that he could always rely on. I can understand that. I also understand that we tend to over-romanticise this whole analogue modelling thing. But all this is very subjective.
Sometimes we would want something pristine we can run an orchestra through, but on the other hand, sometimes we want to inject a little chaos back into the mix which would suit other genres. So really the best choice would be to have both options, which is really what TMT offers. NLS does too in the sense that if you want a bit of saturation and a bit of chaos just simply use the plugin.