Can you clarify this WAVES QCLONE feature for me?

I've been reading about this VST plugin by WAVES called QCLONE.

The online blurb says:

There

But what's the deal about "capturing your hardware"? What do you suppose this means, and how exactly would one go about implementing this capability? What advantages might this technique have?

I remember when this plugin first came out and there was a lot of discussion about it. I wont pretend to understand the technology behind it but it appears to be somewhat similar to convolution reverb technology in the sense that you can sample your hardware unit and load the results into a plugin. To do that, you need to have a hardware EQ(in this case), and you need to hook that up in a loop(input/output) through your audio interface's extra inputs/outputs(if you have extra). Some DAW hosts like Sonar/Logic/Cubase/Nuendo and others have what they call a hardware plugin. This lets you use your hardware as a plugin in your DAW by choosing the input/output loop in your audio interface that your hardware is hooked up to. In the case of Q-Clone, you can now EQ your track with your hardware EQ and capture that EQ setting in Q-Clone as a preset. The advantage? You can now EQ all of the tracks in your mix with one hardware EQ with the advantage of multiple instances of a plugin. I know this sounds complicated and hopefully Craig or someone can explain it in simpler terms.

But what's the deal about "capturing your hardware"? What do you suppose this means, and how exactly would one go about implementing this capability? What advantages might this technique have?

Just watch this video. Basically it's so you can have multiple instances of hardware EQs even if you only have 1 unit:

It's now $48. Any opinions from people using it?

Dang it's now $48?

I don't have any hardware eqs to take advantage .

Presets are good as well. You can try it, too.

Plus if you look around there are plenty of 3rd party presets floating around the net.

I downloaded presets this morning, but could not run the demo. I get a message saying that my trial has expired. I contacted Waves, but have not heard from them yet. I know it's early morning for them now, so hopefully I'll get a response soon.

I'm kinda curious about this too. Especially if you can clone a Massive Passive.

Acustica Nebula is more advanced and there's even a free version. The technology is similar to Sintefex/Focusrite.

But Nebula does not work on PPC Macs and apparently works poorly on Intel Macs.

You could use any convolver to do the same thing; of course you would need a separate impulse for each possible setting... recording all those & cataloging the files would be a pretty daunting task.

I'm probably speaking just for myself, but I'm just smart enough to do that. I'd plunk down my $48 and call it good.

Exactly, and you'd have to do the same thing for any of your own hardware on Waves Q-Clone as well. For those unaware, there is no real time adjustments in Q-Clone either making it time consuming and cumbersome. Unlike Q-Clone, Nebula is real time and captures motion. Nebula is head and shoulders above convolution and whatever snapshot tech. Waves was using at the time of Q-Clone.

Can you explain what you mean by "there is no real time adjustments in Q-Clone either making it time consuming and cumbersome"?

Thanks.

In order to change EQ settings of a single model in Q-Clone you have to change presets. There are no adjustments, knobs etc.