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Why does it seem like in-box DAW effects are never as good as plugin effects?


SoundwaveLove

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Sound quality wise I think Logic's effects are great for the most part. The channel EQ and Space Designer come to mind. I think generally speaking they are more simplistic than 3rd party plug-ins but sometimes that is better suited for the task at hand. They are also are usually better optimized on the host system.

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Sound
quality
wise I think Logic's effects are great for the most part. The channel EQ and Space Designer come to mind. I think generally speaking they are more simplistic than 3rd party plug-ins but sometimes that is better suited for the task at hand. They are also are usually better optimized on the host system.

 

 

The guys from Mercenary told me to screw buying plugins (and no, I haven't bought anything from them... I'm Canadian). They just said to get used to the ones in Logic because they're as good as anything they've worked with (they have a UAD card, and plenty of high-end toys). An engineer I worked with also said the same thing... the only plugins he'll touch besides Logic's are UADs stuff.

 

Those two sources are enough for me...

 

Daft Punk, who are also big outboard gear users, claim to love some of Ableton's built in plugins. They say they prefer their stuff over 3rd parties...

 

So I guess, to each his/her own.

 

EDIT: One of Mercenary's employees said Logic's plugins are quite good... Not as good as high-end hardware level, but as good as any other plugins on the market.

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Sonar's built in effects are incredible, especially from 6.2 onward.

 

Logic's are pretty dang nice as well. It's been years since I used cubase, but I seem to remember that the built in effects stank a bit, however, I suspect they have improved.

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It's strange, like live and logic have pretty good effects, but those ohm force effects just seem to blow them away. Am I crazy? Why don't DAW's effects match up to the third party plugins?

 

 

I can't comment on Logic, but that does seem to be true for many others I've used (Ableton, FL-Studio, Reaper). But, as others have mentioned, it's a matter of resource allocation. Sometimes the built-in FX are nice enough, they usually are small and resource-friendly.

 

Still, third party effects exist for a reason. For example, I've been eyeing Aether. I don't think *any* DAW comes with a reverb as good as this one, at least for the ethereal stuff Aether seems to excel at.

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ReaComp on everything, it's great. ReaPitch is no slouch when some pitch correction is needed. ReaDelay is very configurable, can sound good. ReaEQ... I see no need for any other EQ, this one has n bands... while stuff like Waves need several versions of the same plugin but with different number of bands. In ReaFX I just click "Add Band" and that's it. "Delete Band" and it's gone, never taking up any CPU.

 

There are also many goodies in JS effects section :)

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ReaComp on everything, it's great. ReaPitch is no slouch when some pitch correction is needed. ReaDelay is very configurable, can sound good. ReaEQ... I see no need for any other EQ, this one has n bands... while stuff like Waves need several versions of the same plugin but with different number of bands. In ReaFX I just click "Add Band" and that's it. "Delete Band" and it's gone, never taking up any CPU.

 

Ah, cool. ReaEQ is actually pretty cool, you're right, but EQ isn't exactly complicated (the way ReaEQ does it is nice, though). Since each track's pitch can be adjusted in the track's properties, I haven't found a need for ReaPitch, yet. :) Googling, it looks like the big advantage of ReaPitch is track automation. That'll be cool. I'll have to keep that in mind.

 

I'll need to try ReaComp whenever I feel with experimenting with a multiband. (So far I've been using single-band comp anywhere I've used one... I like to keep it simple then. :) )

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ReaPitch - Autotune, basically.

Multiband is ReaXComp. ReaComp is your ordinary channel compressor.

 

My bad. I don't know why I was confusing the two. :facepalm:

 

You know, I should start looking more at these things. I've been using Waves C1 as a default for my ordinary compressor, even though Waves kind of sucks these days. :facepalm:

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maybe it's your DAW- one of the reasons I use the unduly derided FL studio is because many of it's effect plug-ins are second to none- I have been using their compression a lot lately because it often sounds better than my beloved voxengo plugs

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maybe it's your DAW- one of the reasons I use the unduly derided FL studio is because many of it's effect plug-ins are second to none- I have been using their compression a lot lately because it often sounds better than my beloved voxengo plugs

 

 

Eh. FL-Studio's FX are... okay. At least they have a better reverb than Reaper, fairly usable. But seriously, the distortion sucks compared to Ohm Force's Ohmicide, to bring the OP up. The compressor might be pretty good, since I use FL-Studio as a scratch or rhythm loop constructor I don't tend to compress there.

 

One thing I noticed about Reaper -- the reverb is horrid IMHO, probably the reason why I rated Reaper's FX so low. Incidently, re-looking at Reaper's delay, I think I'll continue to use Kjaerhus's Classic Delay more (or, for the complicated trippy delay stuff, Camel Audio's CamelSpace). Both FL-Studio and Reaper definitely have very usable delays, but the other two seemed better for my purposes.

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