I already know I’m going to be hated by more than one person after this article but I somehow need to write it.

I’m more a synth slut than a dynamic processor one so for some people my judgement might sound obvious for someone else might sound stupid and hopefully for some others, will sound interesting (I’m in this category).

Today after a long time I took a small break from productions and sound design, all the remixes and singles I had to finish are done signed and in the hands of the various labels so I’m enjoying a bit of free time doing tests.

I recently put my hands on a new product from a new software house called Cytomic, the product is called “The Glue”, a really nice sounding compressor that has similarities with the well known SSL 4000 G master Buss Compressor.

I’m not lucky (and rich) enough to have the original hardware, but I decided to give a try to another well known and very promoted emulation of this compressor, the Waves SSL Comp.

Downloaded the demo of this last mentioned on my computer I started A/B comparing both emulations and surprisingly I found more difference on the price rather then the quality itself, the waves costs over 800$ the Cytomic 99$.

Here comes part of the trick, I have no shame admitting that more than once I have been victim of the “More expensive = Better” a bit due to my ignorance a bit from reading the forums. I ve always trusted this price rule while I was buying new plugins, only now I m realizing how a cheap product can be twice as good in comparison to an expensive one.

That said, I’d like to put a note and saying that :

its always a matter of taste  and, each plugin sounds different compared to others that emulates the same hardware, but what I’m trying to say here is, can we tell the difference?

back to this 2 plugs, I did some tests with both compressors working on the same audio file with same settings (Actually same compression actions as they have a slightly different threshold setting), the result is a ridiculously similar result.

Not happy I decided to do the phase inver test, for those of you who are not familiar with that, the concept is pretty easy and exactly the same that happens in math when we have -1 + 1 = 0.

So when we have a sound layered with the exact same sound at the exact same position but with inverse phase the result is silence (try it its fun and useful sometimes especially to grab sounds).

Anyway, following the concept written above, I layered a drum loop using the 2 different compressors and inverting the phase of the second layer, I didn’t expect silence, because as I said each plugin is coded differently and they are modeled on hardwares, and each analog hardware has a different type of sound, can be even just slightly different but still unique from others from the same model.

The sound as I expected didn’t go completely silent but is quite close, the main difference is more on the bottom end (low freq)but I was expecting this since “The Glue” has a High Pass filter that allows the user to select at which frequencies the compressor starts to react, the waves compressor doesn’t but as far as I remember in this compressor there is a built-in high pass that doesn’t let the compressor reacting below 50hz (but I repeat I m totally not sure about that).

Well to end the SSL emulation part is that what came to light is : A/B comparing is almost imperceptible, or it is but for a very trained person and still over 70% of these  trained people won’t be able to tell which is which (doing a test on a forum of audio geek right now).

The spectrum analyzer represent a small difference on the mid range (see picture) but apart from that, the spectrum is incredibly similar.

Below I posted a link of the same files I used for the test the way that everyone can do the same test, of course I won’t tell which is which as your brain might trick you and your response would be conditioned.

you can get the files here :

http://7skies.dancenode.com/WavesGlue.zip

And the test is pretty simple, there are 3 files, 2 are drum loop and the other file is a vocal part each file have both compressors “The Glue” by Cytomic and “SSL Comp” by Waves working in the same file so for both the drum files (Slap.wav & StereoBus.wav)we have : 8 beats with the loop compressed by compressor 1 that drops instantly in compressor 2 for other 8 beats, so back again to compressor 1 for 8 beats and again 8 beats of compressor 2, after this session of loop there is a few sec silence and then the phase invert test where you can hear the actual difference between the compressor.

For the vocal file we have : the clean voice with no compression, when the voice restarts we have compressor 1 active, when it starts again compressor 2 active, and the last part is once again the phase inversion test.

So to close this long post what I’m trying to say is, do not judge plugins from their price or their brand, no one said that great coders only work for the best companies, sometimes they do but at the same time they find a little spare time to work on their own products and sometimes these products are as good or even better than the “professional standard” plugins.

That said, I hope the meaning of this post won’t be misunderstood, I love and I (legally) own various waves products I think they have been making great stuff for years, but I also think that if the price of the plugins would be proportioned at its value and not at its brand, people would enjoy buying original softwares a bit more than getting the pirate version.

David | 7 Skies