So, wazzup with Sony Oxford dynamics

[Mark Haliday]

What do you think of Oxford Dynamics ?

I have been using it for two weeks and I have yet to tame the beast !

Gate : ahhhh, first tests with it blows away the (scarce) competition. Does better than Drawmer (IMO the best one until now, apart from the brilliant amp farm gate which unfortunatly is unusable without the amp effect).
Compressor : powerful, but too little presets.
The problem with dynamics processors is that it takes a while to get a feel for how parameters translate into sonic effect, and that is where presets come in as starting points.
For the moment, I haven't yet found any *exciting* settings.
Attempts to replace in finished mixes Waves RenCompressor and McDSP compressor bank, haven't really succeded when doing A/B comparison
As far as the sonic quality of the digital processing, I feel Oxford is better or equivalent to waves RenComp, but one notch better than MCDsp Compressor Bank. However, I prefer CB flexibility , emulation possibilities and well, I just like it ! (I like to start with the L2A, 1176 and avalon emulations and work from there.)

First impressions hints that Oxford compressor limiter and expander is THE tool for transparent dynamic control, something which I feel could only be said of L2 and on certain settings RenComp.

Limiter same as above only that it can get mean when pushed hard

Warmth habit forming on the mix bus... it is really the effect of the inflator in a much simpler user interface. Gives an extra uumph to mixes, but at the cost of a less *refined* sound. It really depends on the material.

De-ess Haven't tried this yet with the side chain processing.

Gate/comp for drum processing (snare, tom etc)
Haven't got there yet !

I would love to hear other opinions !

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[ca4]

I tried it first and was *very* enthusiastic. It does sound somewhat more transparent than McDSP.

But in the real-world I am still using McDSP which is much quicker and easier to use (McDSP wins big on usability). My thought was to replace CB later in the process with Oxford Dynamics but so far this part of the plan has not worked out that well. But I have not given this one up yet ;=)

I am using mostly electronic sources (analog synths, some digital samplers and yamaha fm) plus software generated klangs (supercollider etc.) and maybe the warm fuzzy feeling of the McDSP stuff complements those better. But I have not had time to analyze this yet.

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I had similar experience as those posted above, but stay with it, I found magic as I use it more and more... Waves and McDSP are great (and easy, cuz we're used to them), but the Oxford is incredible once you've used it for awhile.

I had it in beta form and just plugged it in on tracks and never found the magic, until I re-read and studied the manual (instead of glancing over it - thinking I already knew how to use it), and the spending several hours only working on the various sections and parameters (not in a hurry to finish a mix, but rather tweaking the plugin to learn how it works) and repeated this on many tracks.

Now I know what to do to get the magic out of it, and seldom go back to waves or McDSP.... I do think it takes time to learn how to use it correctly..

[Jules]

Never read the manual but I dig it mucho - I'm using it on an album and the singer imeadiatly commented on his vocal sound as being "much better" so I assume that was the Auto Tuning work we did on it + the Sony Dynamics & EQ .After he left I tried takeing the plug ins off (Sony damics with 'warming' followed by Sony EQ) - its sounded way worse, so that was cool..

I'm sticking with it. I'm not a 'pre set' person myself...so i dont miss those

I think it is quite a deep plug in, I look forward to learning the finer points of tweaking it and a good read of that manual sometime soon..

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