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> Nomad Factory Analog Signature Pack Vs. Psp Vintage Warmer, Please--unbiased views from those who have used both
DISFrontman
post Mar 20 2007, 08:28 AM
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Hey Don'tCrackers,

I am posting the same thread here that I have on the PSP forum site:

I am ready to make a purchase and I have narrowed the choices down to these two:

PSP Vintage Warmer

or

Nomad Factory's Analog Signature Pack

(including Limiting Amplifier LM-662, Program Equalizer EQP-4, and Studio Channel SC-226)


I know this is a biased forum, so I'll factor that in. I have seen that while some reviewers consider them comparable, overall I see a clear tilt in the direction of PSP by working engineers, at least the original version of VW. There have been complaints about the UB version of VW, but over time people are realizing how to get their old tones back on the new plug--and as I am new to it, I do not have a backlog of projects that used the old one.

Does anyone here have experience with both plugs and can offer a reasonably unbased comparison/recommendation? Keep in mind that I am not a professional studio engineer--I am a DIY recording artist. I only need the technology that will make my OWN stuff sound good, not sounds for every recording scenario.

My sound is an updated version of that fat, fat, fat old-school classic rock sound, like the album Spilt Milk by Jellyfish, or vintage Queen, DSOTM Floyd, Hemispheres/Permanent Waves Rush, and Allan Holdsworth I.O.U., which are among my favorites.

I welcome any insights. Have any of you A/B'ed these against VW2?

Thanks,
Bart of DIS
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thebends
post Mar 20 2007, 03:52 PM
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Look, I would say both but the truth is that Nomad stuff is actually AMAZING. I have been using it now for months.. I have all of them and they are more important to me now thatn the WAVES stuff! I mean it!

The PSP stuff is good... I have a LOT of their plug ins... BUT... the things you can do with the nomad plugins are truly like no other. AND IT SOUNDS WARM!
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DISFrontman
post Mar 21 2007, 12:16 PM
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QUOTE (thebends @ Mar 20 2007, 03:52 AM) *
Look, I would say both but the truth is that Nomad stuff is actually AMAZING. I have been using it now for months.. I have all of them and they are more important to me now thatn the WAVES stuff! I mean it!

The PSP stuff is good... I have a LOT of their plug ins... BUT... the things you can do with the nomad plugins are truly like no other. AND IT SOUNDS WARM!


Thanks for your input.

I thought the GUI for the Nomad stuff seemed a lot more straightforward, compared to the PSP VW (with settings on the back, etc.). But you don't really buy a plug-in for its interface--you buy it for the sound.

I think I will have to demo both when I get some time off and make a decision. I don't know if enough people have worked the Nomad stuff into their workflow to give me the right kind of comparison feedback to help me decide. I am an artist and a musician, not an engineer. I don't have the bat ears that they have. That is why I am soliciting opinions online.

Anyone else out there that can give me knowlegeable feedback regarding the PSP/Nomad head to head?

This post has been edited by DISFrontman: Mar 21 2007, 12:17 PM
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DISFrontman
post Mar 23 2007, 08:16 AM
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Well, I have spent a few hours demoing PSP Vintage Warmer and the Nomad Factory Analog Signature Pack. Here are my first impressions:

1) The Nomad interfaces do actually make more sense to me. I still have not figured out how to get to the back panel of the PSP VW yet, although I didn’t really “research” the issue much.

2) I found that the Nomad’s analog overdriven distortion sounded very realistic. I liked the EQs, both the stand-alone and the channel strip versions. I had a goofy drum machine patch that I looped and tried these plugs on, and the EQ found life and realism in the patch that I did not think was even there.

Having said all that, I was even more impressed with the PSP Vintage Warmer:

3) The presets were 100x better. In fact, on the drum loop I was demoing with, EVERY preset sounded good, and better than the Nomad presets, even the clearly inappropriate ones!

4) Instead of modeling the buzziness of overdriven tubes, the PSP seems to do better at replicating the richer and more subtle warmth of tape saturation.

5) The PSP VW seemed to have a LOT more headroom and a LOT more depth. Things got analog fat in a hurry without tons of overdrive distortion break-up. I quickly tried it on other things, like vocals, rock guitars, B3, and bass, and found it to be extremely well-mannered, no matter what the input signal.

I can see how most fans of Vintage Warmer claim they use it on every track. You absolutely can’t screw the thing up, even if you have no real expertise in final mixing and mastering (like me), and if you actually DO have the knowledge and bat-ears to tweak this plug, I’m sure it delivers even more.

I still have more testing to do. My verdict is certainly not a final one, but right now my money (literally) might be on the PSP Vintage Warmer. I am using Logic, and the included EQ is great—I don’t need another, less “tweakable” one, even if it looks “vintage cool.” What I do need, however, is a plug that subtly saturates and warms the signal so that it sounds like I loaded a 2” tape 24-track Studer in a big-time expensive studio and tracked there. PSP’s Vintage Warmer nails that. With more study and experience, I might even be able to master with it, something I doubt could be done with the Analog Signature Pack.

Please give me you opinions and feel free to smack mine down, so long as your contentions are instructive and well-informed. Thanks!

Bart of DIS
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PHLENDO
post Apr 15 2007, 01:16 AM
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Hey there,

Yea, I have both the Vintage Warmer and the Analog Sig. Pack. Both are excellent and "must haves" in the arsenal of FX. All of the music I create has that retro/vintage rock thing going on. The sound I need is very particular, and would be very expensive to recreate using hardware.

That being said, I've been using the VW for about 2+ years, and the Sig. Pack only a few days. Here's the lowdown:

The VW does an excellent job of recreating all the warmth, and saturation of the hardware units it was based on (Fairchild limiters, etc..). The presets are amazing, and ideally, I would use the VW on every track as well as the master chain to get "that" sound. Unfortuately, it's a CPU HOG, and I'm running a very fast machine- P4, with 3 gigs of RAM. The VW just makes my machine crawl if I apply more than 4 or 5 instances of it. So lately I've been just using it as a tape saturation simulator in my master chain. Also worth mentioning is the Cakewalk Tape Saturator plugin. It's in their FX2 package for about $100.

The Analog Sig. Pack is absolutely UNBELIEVABLE!

(BTW, I don't work for Nomad Factory or this website, so I have nothing to lose or gain by applauding this piece of software).

The LM-662 is fantastic, the Pultec-like EQ-4 is great too. I'm still on the fence about the 226 strip. The thing that I like about these is that not only do I have more control over the sound I get, but they are so light on the CPU that I can literally run all three plugins on every single track of audio, plus the master chain without so much as a hiccup (and I'm talking about 15 tracks of audio with full drums, guitars, vocals, etc.)!

However... the sound you get from the Analog Signature PRESETS are just AWFUL. I mean really, really bad. So bad in fact, that it's worth it to Init your own, start with a default and dial in your sound from there. The controls are so well laid out that you can't fail to find something that will satisfy your ears. Also the dials respond better than the VW dials, and the GUI is just gorgeus and stable.

You also might want to check out the VST plugins made by Antress, as well as Kajearhus' Classic plugins. They are all freeware, and lend a helping hand in providing good vintage compression, etc..

Oh yea, two more things:

1. Buy the RTB book. It's called Recording the Beatles, and at 549 pages (and $100) I guarantee you will walk away with your head chock full of new and interesting ways to record your tracks.

2. Chandler is a company that makes the EMI Abbey Road TG12345 mixing desk plug in. FYI that's the desk used to record Dark Side of the Moon, and Abbey Road, and those albums still sound better than 99.9% of the garbage that's being passed off as music nowadays.

So there you have it. I hope that helps.

This post has been edited by PHLENDO: Apr 15 2007, 01:28 AM
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Guest_devils.master_*
post Jan 17 2008, 07:02 AM
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Well, I could not spend much time on viewing all this stuff. But whatever i've seen is wonderful.You r doing good job.

This post has been edited by devils.master: Jan 17 2008, 07:03 AM
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PHLENDO
post Jul 20 2009, 01:32 PM
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QUOTE (walls @ Jul 20 2009, 06:11 AM) *
I know this is a biased forum, so I'll factor that in. I have seen that while some reviewers consider them comparable, overall I see a clear tilt in the direction of PSP by working engineers, at least the original version of VW. There have been complaints about the UB version of VW, but over time people are realizing how to get their old tones back on the new plug--and as I am new to it, I do not have a backlog of projects that used the old one.



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I'll start by sayingt this: I am not biased towards any one particular brand of plug-in. I use a wide variety of plugs to create my music. I stopped using the PSP VW altogether because I discovered a plug from URS that meets my compression needs without being a CPU hog, which is exactly what the VW is. If PSP were to ever re-write the code so that VW can sit easily in a chain with 8-10 other plugs, I'd switch back (BTW, I've got 4 gigs of RAM, and VW is still a burden).

Also, I have found that I can finesse the highs, mids and lows better with separate plug ins made to handle only EQ.

The Nomad Factory plugs will always be a part of my toolkit. They are easy to use, color the sound in a pleasing way, and don't tax my system. A lot of industry types (especially on the KVR forum) tend to put them down, but I swear by them. They work well for my music, and that's all that matters.
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sheasty09
post Dec 14 2009, 01:05 AM
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I am sorry, I dont know how to delete the flyer, I got a message from NMRA stating that I couldnt post a flyer, which is perfectly understandable. But I am unsure how to delete the flyer. Is there anyone else that can help me?
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DISFrontman
post Dec 10 2011, 03:30 PM
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QUOTE (PHLENDO @ Apr 14 2007, 02:16 PM) *
Hey there,

Yea, I have both the Vintage Warmer and the Analog Sig. Pack. Both are excellent and "must haves" in the arsenal of FX. All of the music I create has that retro/vintage rock thing going on. The sound I need is very particular, and would be very expensive to recreate using hardware.

That being said, I've been using the VW for about 2+ years, and the Sig. Pack only a few days. Here's the lowdown:

The VW does an excellent job of recreating all the warmth, and saturation of the hardware units it was based on (Fairchild limiters, etc..). The presets are amazing, and ideally, I would use the VW on every track as well as the master chain to get "that" sound. Unfortuately, it's a CPU HOG, and I'm running a very fast machine- P4, with 3 gigs of RAM. The VW just makes my machine crawl if I apply more than 4 or 5 instances of it. So lately I've been just using it as a tape saturation simulator in my master chain. Also worth mentioning is the Cakewalk Tape Saturator plugin. It's in their FX2 package for about $100.

The Analog Sig. Pack is absolutely UNBELIEVABLE!

(BTW, I don't work for Nomad Factory or this website, so I have nothing to lose or gain by applauding this piece of software).

The LM-662 is fantastic, the Pultec-like EQ-4 is great too. I'm still on the fence about the 226 strip. The thing that I like about these is that not only do I have more control over the sound I get, but they are so light on the CPU that I can literally run all three plugins on every single track of audio, plus the master chain without so much as a hiccup (and I'm talking about 15 tracks of audio with full drums, guitars, vocals, etc.)!

However... the sound you get from the Analog Signature PRESETS are just AWFUL. I mean really, really bad. So bad in fact, that it's worth it to Init your own, start with a default and dial in your sound from there. The controls are so well laid out that you can't fail to find something that will satisfy your ears. Also the dials respond better than the VW dials, and the GUI is just gorgeus and stable.

You also might want to check out the VST plugins made by Antress, as well as Kajearhus' Classic plugins. They are all freeware, and lend a helping hand in providing good vintage compression, etc..

Oh yea, two more things:

1. Buy the RTB book. It's called Recording the Beatles, and at 549 pages (and $100) I guarantee you will walk away with your head chock full of new and interesting ways to record your tracks.

2. Chandler is a company that makes the EMI Abbey Road TG12345 mixing desk plug in. FYI that's the desk used to record Dark Side of the Moon, and Abbey Road, and those albums still sound better than 99.9% of the garbage that's being passed off as music nowadays.

So there you have it. I hope that helps.


I know this is a major thread resurrection, but I thought I'd mention that I just bought the entire Integrated Studio Pack from NF, and so now I have the entire NF line in addition to PSP's Vintage Warmer 2. I got it all for $119 on special, which is less than the Analog Signature Pack was alone. IPS includes the recently released Echoes and Magnetic II, both of which are really decent plug-ins.

Also, I did end up buying the Recording The Beatles book, which was/is a phenomenal resource.

Chandler' plug-in bundle is over US$600, which is just too pricey, but between the Channel Strip EQ in Logic, all the NF eqs I now own (Analog Series, Blue, Retrology, Liquid, etc.) and the global eqs in the comp/lim/tape sims VW2 and Magnetic II, I should have no excuse for bad tone on my classic rock/prog mixes.

Thanks for the advice!!

This post has been edited by DISFrontman: Dec 10 2011, 03:45 PM
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