Liquid Mix?

[bulls hit]

Anyone mixed liquidly?

I had a listen to the samples on the focusright site, and their fairchild sounded pretty damn good.

Has anyone taken one of these for a spin?

 

[tamasdragon]

I've read at the mastering forum that lm has some nasty aliasing which is audible on certain instruments.

Tamas Dragon

 

[lhama]

I'm a noob at this, but my humble oppinion is that it is a very good companion to the UAD plugs.
The uad plugs has a certain sweetness that the LM only gets when pushed, but its very good for the basic. I'¨ve only had it a couple of weeks, but it is great fun.
The controller is good, though you have to get used to it. The Eqs are not as precise or \"Big'n'sweet\" sounding as the Neve or Pultec, but that might be the Uad Gui Placebo effect :lol:

Overall It's great and works without any problems in Cubase 4.

 

[neil wilkes]

I've read at the mastering forum that lm has some nasty aliasing which is audible on certain instruments.

Tamas Dragon

NOt spotted this myself.
I wonder if they were using it on non compensated workstations, like the ghastly PooTools?
My PC version works really well here - but it's an addition to my UAD-1 cards, not a replacement.
For the money you cannot go wrong.

 

[tamasdragon]

Maybe not fair to ask this in this forum. But quality wise which is a better go? Uad or lm? I'm asking this because I plan to purchase some dsp in a year, but my main goal is strictly quality.

Tamas Dragon

 

[dusty]

Guys,

i've been playing around with the liquid mix for sometime and i can attest that most of the emulations sound pretty damn good! Also the LM is an ideal companion for the UAD card. The only downside is that is easy to get \"carried away\"while auditioning all the emulations.. Focusrite as an ace on his sleeve this time, though I'm still waiting for the promised extra emulations..

 

[dusty]

I've read at the mastering forum that lm has some nasty aliasing which is audible on certain instruments.

Tamas Dragon

This ain't true!

 

[bulls hit]

Guys,

i've been playing around with the liquid mix for sometime and i can attest that most of the emulations sound pretty damn good! Also the LM is an ideal companion for the UAD card. The only downside is that is easy to get "carried away"while auditioning all the emulations.. Focusrite as an ace on his sleeve this time, though I'm still waiting for the promised extra emulations..

So can you run the LM and UAD plugs at the same time?

I read a LM review which said latency was 2056 samples. Will delay compensation let them all work nicely together?

 

[lhama]

...I think LM has a limit buffersize of 512, but I'm not sure about that one...But I have no problems working with LM and two Uad cards in Cubase 4, which compensate for the latency....

 

[dusty]

Yeah, the LM will run flawlessly with most of the dsp cards and most of the host software as long as you don't max out the FW buss.

 

[bulls hit]

So....

I can invest $700 for a hands on piece of kit that will give me 32 instances of Pultec/Neve/Fairchild/1176 equivalents

or

I can spend $700 on a Flexi pak, then pony up another $100 for the Neve bundle, which will struggle to run together on the hardware.

What's wrong with this picture? Must be something wrong here

 

[neil wilkes]

...I think LM has a limit buffersize of 512, but I'm not sure about that one...But I have no problems working with LM and two Uad cards in Cubase 4, which compensate for the latency....

I'm running at 1024 here with no problems at all with 2 UAD-1 cards installed.
IMHO, the UAD emulations sound better, but the LM is not meant as a replacement for UAD - I think it works well as a complimentary device.
UAD use serious modelling to produce the emulations, LiquidMix is dynamic convolution - IE snapshots of the original gear that have been impulsed to Waveforms. It's a completely different approach that is meant to impart the character of the modelled gear onto your audio rather than be a plugin version of the hardware,. like the UA plugs are. (I hope this makes sense - I know what I mean, but I am crap at writing so this may not read well. Apologies if this is the case).

To give an example.
There is much comparing of the Neve count with UAD & LM.
The UAD full versions are precise replications of the original, right down to all the non linear distortions introduced by transformers etc.
They are heavy DSP hits. No other DSP card could even come close to loading these.
There are also the SE versions, with a much higher instance count. However, they are not the same as the full versions.
Then we have the LM versions, which are a series of samples taken from passing audio through the original unit, and deconvolving it to give an impulse response of the original character.
Comparing the 2 is like adding up Apples & Oranges & giving the answer in bananas.

 

[lhama]

You are absolutely right. It's 1024 and not 512. ...:

http://www.focusrite.com/product/liquid_mix/spec/

 

[dusty]

You should really try the LM for a couple of days in your studio, side by side with some hi end plug ins. If you don't like it you can always return it and get the flexi pack. Earlier I've forgot to mention what i really like about the LM:
No \"funky fresh\" GUI.. So you'll judge the sound by ear, not by eyes!

 

[Andrew 108]

Well said Neil. I agree fully with what you say and that's why after lots of research I'm buying them both.

 

[deadpoet]

So....

I can invest $700 for a hands on piece of kit that will give me 32 instances of Pultec/Neve/Fairchild/1176 equivalents

or

I can spend $700 on a Flexi pak, then pony up another $100 for the Neve bundle, which will struggle to run together on the hardware.

What's wrong with this picture? Must be something wrong here

Quantity vs Quality ?

I don't know the LiquidMix, and I'm sure it's a great piece of equip, but if I observe myself from both the musician's and the engineering sides of me I find myself reducing the number of tools I have to get better tools.

I only have one Mackie UAD and haven't purchased any other plugs (yet) Pultec, LA2A en 1176 made my mixes THAT much better.

Herwig

 

[Tony Ostinato]

Thats a flawed comparison because the neve bundle of which he complains upsamples to 192k, which LM never attains!

 

[Spacey]

Thats a flawed comparison because the neve bundle of which he complains upsamples to 192k, which LM never attains!

The good thing about well recorded convolutions is that you do not have to run them at really high sample rates like 192khz to get a satisfactor sound. Normal plugins benefit from upsampling a lot, but I do not think that convolutions sound any different at higher sampling rates than they were initially recorded with.

 

[imdrecordings]

Thats a flawed comparison because the neve bundle of which he complains upsamples to 192k, which LM never attains!

The good thing about well recorded convolutions is that you do not have to run them at really high sample rates like 192khz to get a satisfactor sound. Normal plugins benefit from upsampling a lot, but I do not think that convolutions sound any different at higher sampling rates than they were initially recorded with.

I don't know about that Spacey..... :?
Waves IR1, w/any Reverb preset, sounds much better used on a session at 96 or 88.2 than 44.1khz. Maybe the samples I'm using were recorded at 96 and when used in a 44.1 project, don't sound so hot. They still sound good, mind you, but just not as spacious or clear.

 

[bulls hit]

Good points all, well made.

deadpoet asks quality vs quantity?

Where I'm at now quantity is actually assuming more importance. I'm prepared to sactifice some quality to obtain a quantity of reasonable quality plugs.

I'm not a pro, I do this purely for my own amusement. I love what the uad plugs do to my mixes. I have the Precision bundle, LA2A, Plate 140, Pultec Pro. But the plug I use the most is the humble 1176SE. I can slap it onto around a dozen tracks before I start having issues.

Conversly, the PMB will only work if I disable it, press play, then enable. This is on a Core duo 6600 with 2GB ram. So I already experience stability issues, and I want to run more plugs.

One option is to buy another card. I'm not interested in another PCI card, becaue it will go the way of the ISA bus within 3 years. So my only option is PCIe. What sort of result can I expect sharing plugs across two cards? I see reports of load balancing problems. And then there's the extra cost of PCIe. OK it comes with vouchers. Thing is I don't need any more plugs. I'd just like to run more of the ones I've got.

I can understand UA's preference for PCIe over firewire because of its superior bandwidth. I don't understand why they continue to sell hardware that will run only one instance of a plug. I haven't even demo'd the Neve plugs. I'm sure they sound fantastic, but what's the point? They're utterly impractical in my situation.

I'm going to give the LM a go. What I like about it is it's firewire so I can use it on the laptop as well. And if I can get 32 counts of compression emulation approaching the 1176SE that I can drop onto a bunch of drum tracks, and leave the uad plugs free for the 'important' stuff, then it might work out rather well

:lol: