I mainly bought it for workflow. I wanted to try a "totally integrated system" and see if I would be able to force myself to not be so nit-picky and just get mixes into a good rough shape in a few hours instead of obsessing over details too much. So far it's worked really well! My average time getting mixes into basic shape is between 90 to 180 minutes, depending on project size (average projects so far have been around 40 to 60 tracks.. but I did mix a 120+ track session too with it!).How do you find the Console 1 channel strips in general regarding compression and saturation? Is it purely a workflow choice or do you enjoy the sonics of the Softube processors? I sold my mk1 hardware a few years back because it was never well integrated back then with my choice of DAW but I am a little tempted
Slate VSX + Console 1 MK3, just forcing myself to listen and twist knobs until it sounds good seems to work really well. I've been doing this hectic "go go go!" mixing style for the past few years in the live music environment (mainly jazz clubs and etno music festivals as I don't do rock or any kind of loud music genres any more!) and I wanted to translate that work experience into the studio.
However, once I've done the "rough mix" I render all tracks to audio, including all the console 1 plugin instances and all the levels I set. I then start the actual "real" mixing process where I automate things, add the final touches of effects and carefully curated bus processing. I haven't been able to integrate that part into the complete workflow yet and I still feel like 60% of the final sound coherence and polish is done at this stage.
I do like the Softube plugins quite a lot but they have some drawbacks. For instance the new clipper discussed in this very thread, has almost none of it's controls exposed within Console 1!! Which is absolutely bizarre. There are other plugins too like the Germanium Compressor which is missing half of it's more unique features within Console 1, so I end up just loading the plugin itself instead. Softube is a bit of a weird company. They don't put all that much effort nor thought into what actually makes some of their plugins unique and good sounding and seem to not realize how they could easily implement it all within Console 1.
I also dislike their oversampling that they use in everything.. but at least within Console 1 it seems like they are only upsampling and downsampling once per console 1 plugin instance, so that way you can freely combine a bunch of softube plugins within one "wrapper".
Due to the good deal I made on the controller I feel like I've already got my money's worth from it and I've only had it for about 3 months now. It's been rock solid and very stable, not crashing ever. I have found a few bugs but the ones I reported got fixed in updates and none of them were that serious.
EDIT: I'm in my "practice mixing" stage again so if anybody wants cheap mixes while I am at this stage (haven't done any commercial mixes for over a decade! Hence the "intro price") let me know. I don't work for free out of principle but I ain't expensive at all until I get my bearings.. then it's standard rates again (probably end of this year).
Statistics: Posted by bmanic — Tue Apr 02, 2024 10:05 pm