$2,000 Vocal Chain vs Free Vocal Chain - Is There Really That Much of a Difference?

First comment, it's 5 am here lol

Such a cool and relevant upload!

4am in Cali ☕

Why the hell are softube plugins so expensive?

Melda is the "nicest" plugin manufacturer there is. They provide all the benchmark tools you could imagine. FL Studio should buy them out; or someone. Include the full package in a DAW and you're a winner. (Studio One???)

For the EQ, DeEsser & Dehonker, TDR Nova could perform all 3 functions 😊😊.

Although most paid plugins do sound a little better then their free counterparts (especially with a full mix chains as lots of small details can add up quickly to either improve/diminish sonic quality) for me a lot of the differences arent just about how they sound sonically. A lot of the developers of these "expensive" plugins are much better at providing a product that is more CPU efficient, has more stability, can support a wider variety of operating systems, have more frequent quality of life updates, often have better UI's, and overall are often more polished products - not to mention most paid plugins have features that you would have to combine more than 1 free plugin to achieve (as you stated in your video). Of course, this is the trade off of paying/downloading for free, but for most professional engineers or even semi-professional/amateur engineers, the cons of only using free plugins should really push those that are serious about their work to at least save/purchase some reliable and universal level plugins (such as Pro-Q or Rvox for example) - especially because free options often force you to sacrifice workflow and often some sonic quality that higher budget plugins may have helped you avoid. I understand that this video is to demonstrate that you can achieve a high quality sound for free - and you absolutely can - but I just thought I'd share my opinion as to why the sacrifices you have to make to ONLY use free plugins would probably outweigh the pros of only using free plugins, especially when you can build awesome digital vocal chains that'll last 10+ years for 700-800 bucks.

THere is a difference , noticeable ....but there are some nice free plugins.

The de-esser is probably the most noticeable difference. Great video

Free plugins for me win they sound crazy good

my opinion: get for 160€ the "Xvox Pro" Vocal Chain from Nuro Audio - it´s a vocalchain that gives at the same time great view to all !! relevant settings - try some of their great professional sounding presets in style of your music - make some small adjustments for your taste - and will be glad to have 1840,- Dollars/Euro to buy perhaps a new guitar oder keyboard - if you don´t believe: you can get download the unit in a free trial ......and believe me- you will see it ......

You should have added Nugens Paragon reverb at the end, only $599 😂Great, I love these comparisons. I've been using expensive plugins for ages, but recently tested Saturn 2 compared to Abletons saturator and heard no difference at all, also the compressor is pretty much the same as expensive ones. I'm going to use the DAWs effects much more now and not sweat over the latest plugin releases.

Oxford reverb is the most in depth ya say... MTurboReverb responds "Hold my beer", as the saying goes.

Great stuff, but ideally you'd replay the same song section for the comparison. Second section (played with free plugins) in itself is very different

I think it would've been great to include the "before" version of the vocal prior to A\B-ing every next step or go "A on - bypass - B on - bypass". Regardless, thanks for the video!

Can you do the same with FL Stock Plugins ?

soothe2 free alternative is the masker, free de-esser is TB deEsser v3 or more advanced TB Sibalance v3, way better than T-De-esser, also free autotune plugin is MAutoPitch, it has a lot of control

Excellent idea and easily can be made into a series!

Good job as usual. TDR Nova the free edition makes a great de esser. Use the threshold setting and you just simply find the frequency you want to dip. It includes an attack and release time. Much more flexible than T de esser

I preferred the paid versions most of the time except for the very overpriced ones, IMHO. As romethemaverick said, I would have liked to hear the "before" version. And then A/B'd twice. Thank you for the video.

It seems to me that slightly better free alternatives could've been used. TDR Nova for an EQ, TDR kotelnikov for a transparent compressor, LOADES by Analog Obsession for a de-esser and Supermassive Valhalla for a reverb.

I don't feel a $2000 difference…… maybe a $18.37 one

I feel like this comparison would've been much better and more "fair" towards the free/cheaper alternatives if we did the A/B with the same section of the vocal, or at least switching a few times during this loop. During this test, we always changed from $$$ to no-$$$ in the same spot, meaning that first off we are expecting to hear a difference in the exactly same spot so we're pre-biased already, but also that we never hear that high note through the €€€ chain.

these comparisons is totally pointless. The cost of plugins is not justified by the setup you achieve with them in ONE CASE (which can be replicated with another plugin), but rather by the infinite possibilities (and capabilities) that each one provides you. Comparing these two chains is very dishonest and even sounds like a scam. Newbies may not believe that mixing with free plugins is acceptable and/or that they can achieve good/competitive results with them.

Effect plug-ins are stupidly overpriced, as a listener I would not care about the difference because both sound great

Didn’t expect the Weiss eq to sound so much better

plugins are like spices

sometimes you want a specific brand's flavor profile (tone) and reach for the pre-made mixes like mccormick's lemon pepper, old bay fish seasoning, or jerk rub (1176 compressor, jst tones, valhalla reverb)
sometimes you prefer to build your own spice mix so you use standard ingredients (stock plugins) like garlic powder, cayenne, paprika, dried oregano (stock eq, compressor, waveshaper)

it's a matter of preference, and whether one engineer's plugin and its nuanced idiosyncracies are what you're looking for or if you want to have control over each and every single aspect of how the signal is manipulated

and even if you compare ingredients individually in quality, they could be expensive or cheap (high quality or low quality plugins that perform the same fundamental tasks with no helpful engineering or additive tone), what matters in the end is the product you present. better tools will help us more, but we still have to learn how to use whatever is in our toolbox

Now that I could watch it, it just made me be surer that it's not worth paying for an EQ. Saturators, compressors, special tools like Melodyne yes, but EQs... Are very overrated.

Always difficult to A/B when you aren't comparing the exact same phrase. I don't understand why you don't loop the exact same phrase for A as you do for B.

I think there's an obvious difference on the eq and de-esser. but 500+ for an eq is laughable.

2000 worth of plugins mean nothing if not in good hands.

Weiss deess is a must have for me

a huge differnece in eq sound and from there it pretty much doesn't matter

Here is the fundamental thing missing from any A/B review including this one...which by the way is really good and illuminating. The music listening public just hears the recording artist's output one way. They do NOT listen in A/B fashion. Most wouldn't even know what that means. What this video I think convincingly highlights is that if you are a financially struggling bedroom, all in one, singer-songwriter, recorder, mixer and mastering producer you have all the free tools you need to emulate or virtually replicate expensive physical and virtual gear. Just hone your craft, learn about the tools you have or can acquire for free, learn how they work together and interact together and then confidently go make something special and sounds like it was produced on much higher priced gear. Trust me....your listening audience will...not...know...you used high quality free plug-ins IF you know how to use them properly.

You could easily do most of the stuff in the video with TDR Nova GE, not the free one but the one for like $60. It has 6 bands instead of 4 and you get the "smart operations" which include dynamic multiband resonance suppression. I don't think that its better than soothe2 but since its fully parametric you can tweak everythink to your liking. Also De-Essing and Wideband-Compression is possible with Nova.

A/Bs should be 2-4 secs loop, otherwise it is very. very hard to make a comparison as the brain can not retain sound and memorize details in sound in longer period of times...so the comparisons would make way more sense ...here you are comparing 2 different section, thing that is not optimal at all

The Free chain was surprisingly a lot better by a landslide to my ears. 🧐