Buying Waves Mercury for Post.

[yazoo]

Hi!

We are about to spend some money on plugins and is thinking about buying Waves Mercury.

Whats your opinion?

a smaller bundle from waves combined with McDsp?

regards
benny

[GW]

For that kind of money I wouldn´t overlook TC's MD3 and such...

[elicious]

if you're gonna jump,
do it within about 10 days
as they'll be raising prices again.

'bout the same time though, they'll releasing (and including in merc)
the jjp bundle as well as the pye comp
with the cla bundle close behind
(about 2 weeks more)

b.o.l.
e

[mgoorevich]

I live for 5 years without ANY Waves plugins and am very happy.
Buy McDSP plugs, MDW EQ, Sonnox Elite bundle, Altiverb, some TC stuff, some NR like Sonic NoNoise and iZotope maybe even Waves, WNS.... and Waves 360 surround too. But you still will not hit(even close) the waves Mercury eBay price - 10K!
McDSP Emerald - 2K
Sonnox Elite TDM - 2K
Waves 360 TDM -2.5 K
Altiverb - $500
iZotop + MDW - $500

You are still at 7.5 K and with very powerful arcenal!

From other hand I know many studios live only with Waves - no other plugs.
So perharps if compatability with other post studios is #1 , I would suggest to buy waves.
If your #1 priority is quality and versatality, spand your money wiser.

[mr.armadillo]

For post, I don't really see the benefit of Mercury compared to Diamond. For music, it's another story.

[Bob Olhsson]

Compatibility is a huge deal. All it takes is somebody screwing up a last minute picture edit to turn the lack of being able to expand the audio editing crew into a train wreck. That's why Pro Tools replaced the high-end DAWs in the first place.

[D'Animation]

First of all, let me say that buying the Mercury bundle isn't really within our budget so while I've used waves stuff, i don't own them (but of course thats not to say I haven't looked at it!).

Having said that, I would tend to agree with a few others here and go with the smaller bundles - I get along fine with the Soundtoys TDM, GRM Tools Classic, Massey CT4/L2007, Sonalkis Multidynamics, One or 2 Flux plugs, Audioease Speakerphone plus Digi reverbs (Revibe/TL Space). The Waves plugs I do have my eye on are the 360 bundle and maybe their Renaissance or Gold one only (mainly for compressors and bass enhancers which are 2 expensive to buy individually). Apart from a stand-out EQ/master comp (your Massenburg or McDSP) and good noise reduction, it pretty much does all my sound design and mix needs.

Maybe I'm way off but I think Waves has had a reputation as the best plugs around going back many a year - nowadays there's better and cheaper stuff by smaller (Massey) and not so small (Audioease/McDSP) companies. Couldn't care less about JJP or CLA's latest creations - just give me transparent, functional with good quick results
My 2 cents
D

[soundthinker]

I upgraded from Diamond to Mercury during last month's sale mostly for the WNS which I'm loving. The Waves plugs I use all the time for post are:

C1
C4
Q10
RenCompressor and EQ
WNS

I think Gold + WNS would cover quite a bit of ground.

We've started using the MCDSP ML4000 as our master limiter instead of the L1/2.

/jim

[hummerZ]

Similar thoughts here... Waves Gold + Sonnox + McDSP + iZotope.

A la carte is the way to go.

[mgoorevich]

Originally Posted by soundthinker

I upgraded from Diamond to Mercury during last month's sale mostly for the WNS which I'm loving. The Waves plugs I use all the time for post are:

C1
C4
Q10
RenCompressor and EQ
WNS

I think Gold + WNS would cover quite a bit of ground.

We've started using the MCDSP ML4000 as our master limiter instead of the L1/2.

/jim

I agree that waves has these 3 plugins which are as good as it gets - C1, C4 and Q10.
But Renaisance??? For post??? If I need this grainy inconsistant saturation for some reason, or need to color my sound, I can use more controlable plugins. Like Digi's tape saturation, Crane Song Phoenix.
To fill up harmonics - Sonnox inflator. Also Sonnox Dynamics HD with their warmth function makes Renaisance compressors rediculous. BTW I would choose Sonnox dynamics over C1 if I'd need transparent super clean compressor.
Waves limiters are trash. Better ones are Massey L2007, TC MD3, MCDSP ML4000, Sonnox Limiter.
Waves Multiband C4 can be replaced with McDSP MC2000 with better results.
Waves has no quality reverbs at all. No one is phase coherent.
No quality pitch shift like Serato Pitch'n Time.

All these new plug-ins, named after big guys engineers, are just the combination of eq, compression and saturation in one.

WNS? Yes I want it.
SSL 4000 - is good... but for post? I don't know.