Product: Digidesign ProTools LE 7 PLUS bundle RTAS PC
Price Paid: US $99
Submitted
04/06/2006
at
05:35pm
by
Area 8
Reviewer Background
:
Been making music since the early 70s, personally play mostly guitar and bass, eclectic styles, some "smooth jazz", funk, pop, even some classical, have been recording myself and others since the mid-70s and have just recently made the transition off of tape and now all DAW (well, actually I also use the excellent Alesis HD24xr dedicated recorder for safeties, since I've had a few computer glitches while tracking). Been using ProTools and Cubase for several years. The deal for the LE7 PLUS bundle looked great, for basically $100 you get to pick two out of a basket of 5 pretty decent RTAS (and TDM) plugins:
Smack! LE
Slightly Rude Compressor
Synchronic
Pultec Bundle (3 really useful, good-sounding EQ plugins)
DINR LE (excellent noise reduction, good with those old tube pres)
to go with your upgrade... maybe. I first saw this upgrade offered in January on Digidesign's web site, and quickly bought, or so I thought. Turns out they say they ended the offer in December, and they won't give me the plugins, even after lots of email back & forth with their service folk. I had to buy the upgrade all over again at Musicians Friend in order to get two plugins, and Digi still refuses to give me the plugs I bought. So, I had to pay twice to get the bundle once. I'd call this bait & switch, and I suspect the FTC would also. Anyway, the plugins are great, LE7 is a significant upgrade with some nice new features, particularly the new MIDI instrument tracks that save time over the "old" way with two tracks. Some reorg of the menus that make sense, too. Overall, a great deal, if you buy from a reseller, and not from Digi.
I found LE 7 and the plugins to be stable and they don't overtax the CPU (on a Pentium 4 3.4Mhz). I use a variety of monitors, including Event nearfields, other modified Event midfields, and custom Altec horn/JBL woofs mains. My studio now uses 3 separate PCs, and my workflow has separate tools for tracking, mixing, and monitoring. Currently experimenting with mixing "in the box" only, and not using my analog mixer... so far, not bad... and way too easy with all automation possibilities. Still haven't weaned myself off of all the outboard gear yet, even though the plugin compressors and verbs and EQ have come a long way. I also have plugins from WAVES (the Ren collection - great tools), and use the FXpansion VST->RTAS wrapper to get a ton of other non-RTAS plugins (used with Cubase) to work in my ProTools environment. One of these days I'll probably have just a laptop, but can't imagine selling all the rack gear I've collected over the years, since I'm a real gearhead uber-geek engineer as well as a musician.
Can't comment on the other 3 plugins, but DINR and the Pultec plugs are working great for me. Don't forget to buy from a reputable reseller, though, not directly from Digidesign.
Ease of Use
:
8
The (BF) Pultec bundle consists of three separate plugins, EQM1,2 and MEQ-5. These are software emulations of simple hardware EQ, two "program equalizers" and "midrange equalizer". These have slightly different interfaces, but all quite basic with frequency selectors, boost and attentuation, no variable Q. Not exactly surgical with the rather broad Q, but sounds quite good... I like to do EQ by sweeping through the frequencies while listening by ear to either take away something annoying or to add something sweet... these aren't the best at doing that, but the results are very satisfying, and aren't quite unlike the Pultec units I've used in the past (none here to directly compare with now, though). Bottom line: simple, sounds good.
DINR is a broadband noise reduction plugin and has quite a few more levers to push & pull than the Pultec plugs. Without changing much of anything, though, it did an excellent job of removing hiss and crud from some tracks I've recorded through some of my older, noisier tube mic pres... the noise floor was greatly lowered while retaining the quality of the music, and no noticeable artifacts, as in some other software I've tried for this in the past. I haven't yet tried in on pops & crackles, as from old vinyl, but look forward to trying it out soon. With the preview you don't have to commit before printing it, and the bypass button lets you quickly hear the obvious difference in quality before & after. Haven't yet read about all the features (fit, super fit, auto fit...) but it works without knowing anything, like me. No paper manuals, but enough info online to learn what you need, if you actually RTFM (unlike my modus operandi).
Sounds/Sound Quality
:
8
As I said above, the bottom line is: very simple, and sounds good. Actually really good; much better than I expected for the meager money I paid for these. I'd recommend the Pultec EQ sound... like the real thing, it imparts a certain magic by just having it in the path, and (unlike most cheap EQ) doesn't suck when you take something away or add something in... whether or not it is true to the actual hardware isn't something I've tested, but it doesn't matter; still sounds good. Maybe not Massenburg quality or surgical in precision, but you'll get good results, and that's the bottom line.
DINR also has excellent sound quality... actually improves your sound quality if you need what it does. I'm impressed that it doesn't leave ugly artifacts while taking away the noise. Run a couple of old nasty tracks through it, and you'll be impressed with the improvement. Tweak knobs and sliders if you want to, but I got good results without knowing much about it.
Overall Rating
:
No Opinion
At $99, this whole bundle is only $9 less than the cost of a two-day rental of just the Pultec Bundle, or $66 less than the cost of a two-day rental for both the Pultec Bundle and DINR ($90 & $75) together, which makes this package deal with the LE 7 upgrade quite a steal. Of course, you'll note that I had to purchase it twice to get the plugins once, due to Digi's sleazy advertising practices, but still not much more than the cost of a two-day rental.
Pultec is kind to the CPU, but I used DINR only as an Audiosuite (non-realtime) processor. So far quite stable, nothing unusual happens.
If there was anything I'd change, it would be to combine the 3 Pultec EQs into just one multiband plugin.
