Plugins on "factory reset" change sound???

[lynx lynx]

How is it poosible that plugins (Q10, PT7band, Waves Deesser) change the sound even though everything is reset to zero? I can hear that the sound is degraded a bit in the highs, and it sounds a bit different alltogether! I toggle bypass and it sounds different. I have PT 7.3 with DV toolkit 2. I am moving to a dubbing stage next week, they have PT8 TDM and an AMS NEVE DFCII. Should I use plugins at all? Is it about RTAS version or what? Tnx for any help or similar experience!

Martin.

[jasonthurley]

It has almost always been the case that sending the audio into a plug will decrease the volume slightly.... I know it seems strange but it happens with all my plugins... I believe it has something to do with going from session bit rate to Pro Tools engine rate to Pro Tools processing rate to 64 bit plug in engine and then back again....

Maybe some of the other guys are more informed on this process and why exactly this happens...

[lynx lynx]

Tnx a lot for this. That is what i thought, it must be similar to analog stuff, it goes trough some digital algorithms which changes sound. I dont't want the mathematics, I just want plugs to sound good. Do you know if I can change from RTAS to TDM without loosing automation, and if TDM sounds better?

[JFreak]

Two reasons;

1) not all plugins are bit transparent. this means that nothing is done to the signal unless moving a knob from its initial position. it might be desired features or a design flaw but there you go.

2) it is always the case that when you insert a plugin it changes processing in the mixer. even if you added 0 to the signal that is still a calculation, and with floating point engine there will always be slight rounding errors, or differences, even if you add zero.

Therefore, the vanilla mixer always sounds most open, and any plugin you insert, or any routing you make, slightly degrades the sound. Very slightly and usually inaudibly, but still, theoretically what I just said is true.

Which brings us to the conclusion that less plugins is more sound. The reason why channelstrips are golden

[lynx lynx]

Tnx a lot for this, now some of my "internal" philosophies and thinking about digital sound make more sense. I'm sure for the internal architecture of PT11 programers and engineers thought a lot about this

[mattpete]

The original post in this thread mentions "PT7band" as a plug-in that changes sound in the factory reset position. I'm going to guess that the EQ III 7-band plug-in is the plug-in in question.

EQ III should not alter the sound in a factory reset condition. This is very simple to test by doing phase cancellation.

There are many other plug-ins that do change the sound just by being instantiated. These are usually "analog" style plug-ins that attempt to simulate the behavior of analog devices.