HEAT on stereo bus as well as tracks

[Picture Start]

I'm wondering how we are liking, or disliking HEAT on the stereo bus. And of course I mean recording it from a stereo track to another because you cannot have HEAT on auxes and master faders. I have noticed a big change in sound just on one stereo mix track, but I don't know if it is overdoing the effect. Looking for comments.

also, has anyone compared HEAT with Slate's VCC?

[dtmprod]

Been using VCC RC-Tube along with Heat, I like. Also using Dave's Phoenix tape and RA. Dave designed all 3 to work in conjunction with each other. And check out Kush's new UBK-1 plugin, sounds awesome on master & busses, especially since they don't have Heat.

[Rubicon]

I use heat in the console mode, 2 o'clock and 2 o'clock. Then run Kramer tape on the master.

Truly amazing sound.

Rubicon

PS To my ears, Heat sounds best when the input does not go beyond green.

[Picture Start]

Thanks for the info and suggestions.

[Rich Breen]

Originally Posted by Picture Start

...
also, has anyone compared HEAT with Slate's VCC?

Yes, I've been using them both, and like them both. For such a simple interface, Heat manages to be more versatile; doing saturation modeling very well - it goes from very subtle to not at all subtle with a lot of different colors available, and to my ear is generally preferable, though the VCC Tube console and Brit are nice to have in the palate, and Heat can't really do that particular thing (the big bottom end that the brit mode has). The VCC interface can be frustrating and is buggy, but it's in general a nice product.

Hope that helps,
rich

[Drew Mazurek]

And with the current promotion (which ends today) it can be had for $99 if you bought the $49 RC Tube plugin. I too prefer HEAT but will get VCC today in case I go with HD Native in the coming months.

[Bushpig]

Picture,

A bit like Rubicon, I'm using both. HEAT always on doing something and VCC only on the mix buss to give me something to thicken the whole mix (Neve & Trident settings mainly, still waiting to try the Tube setting).

Haven't tried VCC on channels at all (what with all the grouping malarkey, which looks way to complicated for my taste), but mainly because putting it on every channel just seems like a royal PITA and CPU hog compared to HEAT built into the mixer (I'm a TDM HD3 users).

Cheers

Steve Bush
www.music180.com/pros/5887

[Bushpig]

PS,

I've started to use audio tracks for my virtual instruments and rewire tracks now (instead of aux's), to take advantage of HEAT on these. Every time I've tried it on a bus group or especially a master output bus, it seems to saturate too much for me. With only a single set of controls over the whole mixer, it's not possible to tweek just the bus masters down and still maintain the real advantage of cranking it a bit with all channels individually adding it in.

SB

[Rich Breen]

Originally Posted by Bushpig

Picture,

...Haven't tried VCC on channels at all (what with all the grouping malarkey, which looks way to complicated for my taste)...

Yes, complicated, and doesn't follow standard ProTools grouping and GUI rules; parameters don't obey shift-opt-click defaults, nor will they obey ProTools parameter grouping, so you have to set the VCC group 'on' for each instance one at a time; really silly and time consuming...

best,
rich

[Bushpig]

Rich,

Yes, complicated, and doesn't follow standard ProTools grouping and GUI rules.................

Thanks for that info. I kinda suspected this was the case, so I've never gone near it. Not enough hours in the day.

At first when HEAT appeared and had only one set of controls for the whole "plug", I thought.....eh?!!! But now I really like it that way. Kinda old school in terms of not too much to have to choose from. Lord knows we all spend too much time doing what I call "ant-fxxking" when we have too much choice ie: fannying around convincing ourselves we're making a big difference when really we're just splitting hairs. Not that this isn't part of the craft at times, but like Tchad Blake always said, "if it takes me more than two or three listens to hear the difference between two choices, I lose interest in that difference" (paraphrased).

Cheers

Steve Bush
www.music180.com/pros/5887