Has anyone purchased either of above. They appear to be absolutely brilliant. Any views Pulsarians ?
Thanks
TB
OptiMaster & PSY Q
-
kensuguro
- Posts: 4434
- Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2001 4:00 pm
- Location: BPM 60 to somewhere around 150
- Contact:
I just spent some time thoroughly experimenting with the PsyQ. (I'll do Optimaster sooner or later)
So the PsyQ is a bass enhancer, exciter, stereo enhancer, and a comp+saturator combo.
The bass enhancer section, I think, adds bass harmonics. It definitely has a sweet zone that needs to be touched for it to react. (probably around 100, 200 zone) Otherwise it seems to be a wide lobed low-end gain. (like when working with vocals) Works great with drums I think, but nothing you can't do with Celmo's subbass or careful tuning of self-oscillating filters.
I still don't have much of the exciter section figured out. There's 2 of them, one for mid/high, and another one dedicated to high. It seems the role of the mid/high changes when you turn on the one dedicated for high. On a two mix, or a final mix, it can work as a pin point high end enhancer. It is very precise. But this exciter can put so much harmonics in there, you can hurt your ears. Best be easy on these. Unless the recorded material is super bad, I think you can achieve similar results with careful eq-ing.
The stereo enhancer seems to be much more effective than the Propack one. Would recommend it on a final mix. But of course, you'd trade off some attack on the lower frequencies. They seem to go further behind in the mix. I personally like them upfront.
The comp+soft clip combo is so-so. You'd want to keep bass drums and other slow attack sounds away because this really tears off most of the body and leaves just a little (like 0.40 millisec) of attack. Soft clipping that won't help. I also wouldn't feed it any sort of material that's been treated with heavy dynamics. You'd probably end up with that door-knock sound. But if you're not very familiar with dynamics, (I had a very hard time learning it) and want something to start on, this'll do it. It'll give you a definite comp-ish feel to the sound. Its ratio seems pretty high. 4? 5? Or actually, I think I had the knob turned up too high. (duh!) But you get my piont.
So that's about it. I really couldn't feel the so-called "analysis" feature at work. Perhaps it adjusts the threshold of the comp? I'm not sure. I don't think it's affecting the exciter portion either.
If you've got bad material that you want to liven up, this is for you. (especially vocals and other live instruments) If you've got good material, need to brighten things up, but want to save a couple of bucks, study psychoacoustics. (lots of neat eq-ing tricks!) We'd all be better off knowing how the ear and brain works anyway. I looove cognitive science.
Anyone else care to check out this device? It'll be great to hear what different people find out about it.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2002-01-30 06:10 ]</font>
So the PsyQ is a bass enhancer, exciter, stereo enhancer, and a comp+saturator combo.
The bass enhancer section, I think, adds bass harmonics. It definitely has a sweet zone that needs to be touched for it to react. (probably around 100, 200 zone) Otherwise it seems to be a wide lobed low-end gain. (like when working with vocals) Works great with drums I think, but nothing you can't do with Celmo's subbass or careful tuning of self-oscillating filters.
I still don't have much of the exciter section figured out. There's 2 of them, one for mid/high, and another one dedicated to high. It seems the role of the mid/high changes when you turn on the one dedicated for high. On a two mix, or a final mix, it can work as a pin point high end enhancer. It is very precise. But this exciter can put so much harmonics in there, you can hurt your ears. Best be easy on these. Unless the recorded material is super bad, I think you can achieve similar results with careful eq-ing.
The stereo enhancer seems to be much more effective than the Propack one. Would recommend it on a final mix. But of course, you'd trade off some attack on the lower frequencies. They seem to go further behind in the mix. I personally like them upfront.
The comp+soft clip combo is so-so. You'd want to keep bass drums and other slow attack sounds away because this really tears off most of the body and leaves just a little (like 0.40 millisec) of attack. Soft clipping that won't help. I also wouldn't feed it any sort of material that's been treated with heavy dynamics. You'd probably end up with that door-knock sound. But if you're not very familiar with dynamics, (I had a very hard time learning it) and want something to start on, this'll do it. It'll give you a definite comp-ish feel to the sound. Its ratio seems pretty high. 4? 5? Or actually, I think I had the knob turned up too high. (duh!) But you get my piont.
So that's about it. I really couldn't feel the so-called "analysis" feature at work. Perhaps it adjusts the threshold of the comp? I'm not sure. I don't think it's affecting the exciter portion either.
If you've got bad material that you want to liven up, this is for you. (especially vocals and other live instruments) If you've got good material, need to brighten things up, but want to save a couple of bucks, study psychoacoustics. (lots of neat eq-ing tricks!) We'd all be better off knowing how the ear and brain works anyway. I looove cognitive science.
Anyone else care to check out this device? It'll be great to hear what different people find out about it.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2002-01-30 06:10 ]</font>
I use the psyQ since i tested it in a big studio with people who know what they are talking about. When i loaded it, the surface immediately recalled the aphex aural exciter as to the kind of controls.
We used it on voices : i began, not really knowing what i was doing, but it was easy (especially, they have very cool monitors) and it is pretty easy to use without destroying your sound. Then it is the engineers who manipulated it and the verdict was that it is a very fine device. Now we have recorded new vocal tracks using hi end gear (like super neuman mic, tube tech compressors, amek mixtable, recorded in Protools mix3) and i have to bring my setup back mainly for psyQ and Graph Eq that will be used to finalize the mix (in addition to other gear like finalizer etc...). They don't have any equivalent plugin in protools (may be it exists, it is not the problem). They have an aural exciter, but PsyQ was appreciated. it is different.
At home, I haven't yet tested a lot doing vocals, mainly because my work is for the studio, and i have less good monitors, so sound has to remain neutral and i do not do this kind of final treatments at home, or for specific reasons : for ex I am making a new drum bank of hammerhead with psyQ for STS (out in a few weeks) so you will be able to check, although i'm not sure PsyQ is dedicated to drums. it sounds pretty nice to me though. nice brillance and subtle bass enrichment.
For me it is one the best of the latest devices, but you must test it yourself, on vocals or on a final mix, on good monitors.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2002-02-06 14:50 ]</font>
We used it on voices : i began, not really knowing what i was doing, but it was easy (especially, they have very cool monitors) and it is pretty easy to use without destroying your sound. Then it is the engineers who manipulated it and the verdict was that it is a very fine device. Now we have recorded new vocal tracks using hi end gear (like super neuman mic, tube tech compressors, amek mixtable, recorded in Protools mix3) and i have to bring my setup back mainly for psyQ and Graph Eq that will be used to finalize the mix (in addition to other gear like finalizer etc...). They don't have any equivalent plugin in protools (may be it exists, it is not the problem). They have an aural exciter, but PsyQ was appreciated. it is different.
At home, I haven't yet tested a lot doing vocals, mainly because my work is for the studio, and i have less good monitors, so sound has to remain neutral and i do not do this kind of final treatments at home, or for specific reasons : for ex I am making a new drum bank of hammerhead with psyQ for STS (out in a few weeks) so you will be able to check, although i'm not sure PsyQ is dedicated to drums. it sounds pretty nice to me though. nice brillance and subtle bass enrichment.
For me it is one the best of the latest devices, but you must test it yourself, on vocals or on a final mix, on good monitors.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2002-02-06 14:50 ]</font>