Sony Oxford LE vs. Waves

[KrisNY]

Anyone have experience with both of these plug-ins? My friend has the Sony Oxfords and swears by them. I've worked with Waves in the past - very nice, but expensive and I also have some gripes with their policies... Discuss.

[Kryst]

Would your friend let you take a bit of time testing out the Oxfords? I've tried both, and I still use lots of Waves stuff. I hate Sony right now, for an unrelated issue... (DAMN DRM). But yea, if your friend swears by them, hopefully your friend would allow you to go to his/her place for say, an hour he/she isn't busy and let you fiddle with the plugins.

[bassntreble]

I swear by WaveArts plugs. they sound great, are reasonably priced and have excellent support. I've since replaced my entire waves gold bundle with their power suite.

[StudioRhythm]

The biggest improvement in my ProTools mixes (due to equipment) came when I got the Sony Oxford plugins and stopped using my Waves R-EQ. The Oxford EQ is way superior to my ear in every way; everything you put through the R-EQ gets colored way too much for me, and it's not a nice color IMO. The Oxford just does what you tell it to, and does it well. I like the dynamics a lot too, although I do also like the Waves R-Comp. Inflator and Transient Modulator can be useful, but I don't think they're must-haves. Check out the EQ and Dynamics, though, for sure. They're also some of the only LE plugins that use built-in dithering at the 24-bit level, which makes a big difference on the master fader, especially with low-level signals.

[JasonGough]

I tried installing a demo disk for the Oxford plugins that i got, but it said i needed a physical iLok just to install the demos!

Is that really the case? Are there any demo versions of the Oxford suit that just use a good old 14 day count down?

[davemc]

A lot of manafactures now do ilok demos.
I personally like Sony stuff over Waves for what Sony have out. If you buy the waves pack you get a lot of different plugins. A lot are not the best sounding plugins around now although useful, although you get a lot of them .

See if your mate will let you play.
There are a lot of plugins out now which have come a long way from the early ren eq/comp etc. Just try them and see what you like

[dmm]

The biggest improvement in my ProTools mixes (due to equipment) came when I got the Sony Oxford plugins and stopped using my Waves R-EQ. The Oxford EQ is way superior to my ear in every way

I did the Ilok demo and the Oxfrd EQ was great!

On the other hand the Waves SSL EQ was really good also. If you have the ILOK to do the demos do it. But the only downfall is that you may end up spending some serious $ for computer code.

[StudioRhythm]

I did the Ilok demo and the Oxfrd EQ was great!

On the other hand the Waves SSL EQ was really good also. If you have the ILOK to do the demos do it. But the only downfall is that you may end up spending some serious $ for computer code.

I haven't heard the Waves SSL myself, but I've been totally happy with the Oxford for the last few years, and the last thing I need right now is find more plugins I want to buy...! I'd better stay away from any more demos, although it'd be nice to find a saturation or tape emulation plugin I really liked.

[JFreak]

I personally like Sony stuff over Waves for what Sony have out.

Exactly. Sony Oxford beats Waves regarding products that Sony Oxford has to offer, but Waves has so much larger catalog than Sony Oxford, so I prefer having both.

I have Waves Platinum and all Oxford plugins except Restoration suite, and I can say that no Waves EQ can match the quality of Oxford EQ, but on the other hand, I find Waves Renaissance Compressor very useful even if I could throw in Oxford Dynamics any time. Waves is so much more DSP efficient than Oxford that it is almost crazy to compare. On the other hand, the Oxford Reverb for example, it is so much better reverb than anything Waves has to offer so I don't even care about the DSP power it takes. The best Waves reverb (IMO) is the Renaissance Reverb, which is dark and dense and one of the better plugin reverbs out there, but it doesn't always work for me and it is so nice to have the Oxford Reverb around.

The only thing I'm now keenly waiting for is the new HD rig that would enable me to use ReVibe and Impact