Steven Slate Plugins

Deijavoo

http://www.slatedigital.com/online-shop/

Heard these in actions at my mate's gaff tonight.  Seemed very, very good if you ask me what is good. 

octatonic

They are some of the best sounding plugins available right now. I've got the lot.

sweepy

I went for the subscription bundle, now with Scuffham S-Gear and automatic updates for all new products for the price of a pint a week, it's a pretty good deal

digitalscream

They seem good...but I refuse to encourage the iLok bullshit, so they don't get my money.

Cirrus

They seem good, but everyone and their dog uses them, there's vague whiffs of a cult of personality around the owner and they need iLock, and all those things put me off.

guitarfishbay

I've got a bunch of the stuff. VMR is a good deal and VTM can sound great. VCC is subtle as is VPC, so while they can be nice I'd get a lot of other things first. VBC grey is good but I never end up using the other models in it, though this is preference I guess.

SSD4/trigger shells are very recognisable in certain genres. I quite like the Terry Date/CLA packs though. Depends on what you want but personally I prefer to start with BFD3 these days.

I don't find trigger that useful for extracting to midi, I find logic's built in drum doubler more accurate (though I have to manually delete bleed hits). However from reading other people's experiences on the Sneap forum I think this is a very rare issue and I've no idea when it will be fixed.

Some support/fix/update issues have overrun by a long way, though it appears they're improving this now. I refused to buy any more for ages at one point a few years ago because of crashing, but everything I have is stable now (except trigger for midi).

Slate plugins excel at colour if that's what you want. If you want utility I rate Fabfilter very highly.

sweepy

Never had an issue with Ilok tbh and now with the service from Gobbler ( I kid you not ) you have backup if it all goes wrong

octatonic

guitarfishbay said:

I don't find trigger that useful for extracting to midi, I find logic's built in drum doubler more accurate (though I have to manually delete bleed hits). However from reading other people's experiences on the Sneap forum I think this is a very rare issue and I've no idea when it will be fixed.

Some support/fix/update issues have overrun by a long way, though it appears they're improving this now. I refused to buy any more for ages at one point a few years ago because of crashing, but everything I have is stable now (except trigger for midi).

Slate plugins excel at colour if that's what you want. If you want utility I rate Fabfilter very highly.

I use Trigger for sample replacement/augmentation of live drums- it is brilliant for that.

Agree with Fabfilter- their EQ plugin ins probably the cleanest native plugin.

digitalscream

sweepy said:

Never had an issue with Ilok tbh and now with the service from Gobbler ( I kid you not ) you have backup if it all goes wrong

Well, aside from the fact that inconveniencing all your paying customers to make life more difficult for a minority who'll pirate your stuff (who'd never pay for it in the first place, and for whom cracking software is relatively trivial anyway) is the kind of business model that gets right up my nose, I run all my studio software on Linux and iLok breaks any chance of compatibility (meanwhile, 99% of all other plugins work absolutely fine).

guitarfishbay

octatonic;1032506" said:

guitarfishbay said:

I don't find trigger that useful for extracting to midi, I find logic's built in drum doubler more accurate (though I have to manually delete bleed hits). However from reading other people's experiences on the Sneap forum I think this is a very rare issue and I've no idea when it will be fixed.



Some support/fix/update issues have overrun by a long way, though it appears they're improving this now. I refused to buy any more for ages at one point a few years ago because of crashing, but everything I have is stable now (except trigger for midi).



Slate plugins excel at colour if that's what you want. If you want utility I rate Fabfilter very highly.














I use Trigger for sample replacement/augmentation of live drums- it is brilliant for that.

Agree with Fabfilter- their EQ plugin ins probably the cleanest native plugin.

It is, and that is its main function. Midi also works for most people it seems, just it doesn't for me and a tiny handful of others. I like midi because I get fine control over velocities, and it's easier to work across multiple plugins for sounds etc. If you need to replace more so than augment then midi is my preference.

FabFilter Pro Q2 is my most used plugin.

Deijavoo

All good stuff, I've never really looked at them before. But some of the sounds he seemed to dial in really easily, sounded immense. What on earth actually is that FG Bomber too?

Seems like a pretty sweet deal for what you get but iLok does seem to put off an awful lot of people. 

I may well go the subscription route as you can stop/start the service at any time.

sweepy

Having Scuffham and every new plugin automatically added to the bundle does make it a good deal

digitalscream

Deijavoo said:

Seems like a pretty sweet deal for what you get but iLok does seem to put off an awful lot of people. 

I may well go the subscription route as you can stop/start the service at any time.

That's the irony - I'd quite happily pay for a subscription and he'd most likely have me as a customer for a very long time, if it wasn't for the pointless technological barrier he's put directly in my way; I know 100% that cracked versions of the Slate plugins would run quite happily on my Linux machine. The fact that I only want fully-legal, licensed software on my machine is the reason I'm not using the Slate plugins.

Danny1969

I love the Slate Trigger plugin, it is without doubt the best drum replacement , supplement plugin out there. The iLok thing isn't a big deal, you have to have an iLok to run Protools and loads of other plugs so Slate needing it isn't a big deal. I lIke the fact iLok enables you to use your plugins on other machines as well as in a live enviroment 

digitalscream

Danny1969 said:

I love the Slate Trigger plugin, it is without doubt the best drum replacement , supplement plugin out there. The iLok thing isn't a big deal, you have to have an iLok to run Protools and loads of other plugs so Slate needing it isn't a big deal. I lIke the fact iLok enables you to use your plugins on other machines as well as in a live enviroment 

I know this is a constant source of surprise to you, but not everybody uses Pro Tools

octatonic

I gave up bitching about iLok a few years ago- I agree with digitalscream but frankly I needed the plugins.

Most of the best plugins use it and it is less inconvenient than, say, UAD's hardware based DSP.

What annoys though is some of the Slate plugins gives you two authorisations, one for my laptop and one for the desktop.

Not all though- They do it with VBC but not with Trigger- so I have to take my master iLok with me when I do mobile recording stuff, or just drum editing in front of the TV.

equalsql

I had the full Slate subscription for a couple of months and loved the plugins, but was getting endless clicks and burps in Reaper especialy when tracking guitar through VMR. The CPU hits for each rack instance was small so it should have been OK.  In the end it appeared to be an issue with the iLok software.  

I removed all the Slate plugins, uninstalled the iLock software manager and then replaced the original VMR sends on my track's channels with Brainworx bx_console.. (which is more CPU intensive than VMR) and everything is now running fine.

Needless to say, I cancelled my subscription and will not use an iLok protected plugin again on my current system.

Danny1969

digitalscream said:

Danny1969 said:

I love the Slate Trigger plugin, it is without doubt the best drum replacement , supplement plugin out there. The iLok thing isn't a big deal, you have to have an iLok to run Protools and loads of other plugs so Slate needing it isn't a big deal. I lIke the fact iLok enables you to use your plugins on other machines as well as in a live enviroment 

I know this is a constant source of surprise to you, but not everybody uses Pro Tools

They do in the Pro recording world, that and Logic ....  mainly Tools though,  at least in my experience. There's plenty of good plugs need an iLok anyway so taking a stance against it will reduce what you can use ultimately

Nerine

I own all of Slates stuff. The VMR modules are basically the best analogue sounding plugins you can buy IMO*. They're priced very fairly, have good support, aren't CPU hungry, they sound fantastic, iLok isn't an issue for me as I run PT12HD, the updates are nice and frequent, etc etc. There isn't anything not to like about any of his products IMO. He has revolutionised audio mixing several times over in his company's career IMO.
VBC is excellent, VTM is excellent, all of the VMR modules are excellent, Trigger 2 is excellent, FG-X is good.

VBC is so good in fact that I am finally selling my hardware SSL bus compressor.

The tools aren't the limit any more. The gap between analogue and digital is minuscule. It's the ears and the skill of the engineer. No one can blame the tools for a poor mix nowadays.

*without going down the whole UAD route, as their stuff is equally as excellent.
I'd say both UAD and Slate are leading the way nowadays.

octatonic

Nerine said:

VBC is so good in fact that I am finally selling my hardware SSL bus compressor.

The tools aren't the limit any more. The gap between analogue and digital is minuscule. It's the ears and the skill of the engineer. No one can blame the tools for a poor mix nowadays.

Agree.

The only hardware comps I use these days are my Distressors that I use for tracking.

Everything else has been sold.

paul_xt

I love the Slate stuff. I use the VMR pretty much exclusively now on most of my tracks. For the price of the monthly bundle it's incredible.