A Sneak Peak At VCC 2.0

[Rosco1969]

A Sneak Peak At VCC 2.0

(image attached)

Dear VCC Customer,

Welcome to your sneak peak at the Virtual Console Collection 2.0, which will be available as a FREE update soon. Let me tell you about what's new!

The 'Brit 4k' is a model of a late 80's British mixing console. It's been a customer favorite and is perfect for adding that little bit of extra glue, punch, and width to the DAW's digital mixer. Well, after we released VCC back in 2010, we started to hear rumors around Los Angeles of a small early 80's "E" series British Console that was supposedly the most amazing sounding mixing desk in town. After some research and some good tips from a few friends, we found this famous little desk and I ran about five mixes through it and compared it to the DAW summed mixes. Wow is all I can say. This desk was incredible. It has a beautiful low end punch, but also really brought the lows together with a very unique glue. The low mids became thicker without sounding muddy. The midrange was more pronounced and transients were clearer and more articulate. Everything in the mix had more of its own space. The width increased and the mix became more exciting. And you can push into the mixbuss to get a beautiful aggression. So this is the new model on the VCC 2.0, called the 'Brit 4k E'! I can't wait for you all to experience it. Overall, it's got a bit more color and vibe than the current Brit 4k, but it is not as overwhelmingly colorful as some of the other models like the Brit N. I think you guys are going to love it. It's become my new go-to VCC model on my mixes.

Next, you'll notice that the GUI's have changed quite a lot! Everything is now available on the front panel. There are no submenus, and the grouping system is much easier and straightforward. You have an input and output trim, and a link switch. By pushing the input and attenuating the output, you'll achieve new types of saturation sounds that will have a different effect than the DRIVE parameter. Now, about that DRIVE parameter, it actually has an increased range so you can get even more color if you so desire!

Your'e going to notice a difference in the US-A Discrete model too. A friend wrote me saying "I have the hardware console and yours matches almost perfectly, except mine has a slightly bigger bottom". So we analyzed this particular desk and I really did like how the bottom was slightly thicker and a tad punchier, so after some thorough testing, we updated our US-A Discrete Algo and I think you'll really enjoy the result. It's a fairly subtle change, but one that I believe is for the better.

The RC-Tube has always been one of my favorite emulations and I use it on a lot of individual tracks for the unique effect that it creates. However, the condition of the original hardware reference, the RCA BC6B, was in fairly poor condition. Well, since the RC-Tube was first released, we were able to examine a mint condition unit, and I thought it had some subtle discrepancies which I really liked. So we applied some of these updates to the RC-Tube model, and you'll notice that it has a slightly warmer and richer low mid and low end. You're gonna love what it does to vocals, bass, and even on the mixbuss.

Because the VCC has been completely rewritten in our new framework, you're gonna see some serious reduction in CPU! While I can't give exact numbers yet, it's pretty significant! You'll also notice that we have a noise reduction button right on the front panel.

In conclusion, we're fixing last minute bugs so we can get this into beta, and then into your studios. Thanks so much for the patience and support. We've learned a lot over the past few years and I will always aim to improve, and you'll see a lot of those improvements executed in 2015. Happy Mixing! And please say hi to me at NAMM 2015, booth 6921!

Cheers,
Steven Slate

[Righty27]

... and this is Steven's follow up.

As one of many patient VCC users who voiced a preference for a standalone plugin (as acquired originally), who appreciates the development efficiency of sharing a code framework (this would apply to all plugin developers ... but imagine if we ended up with Slate, T-Racks, Waves, Soundtoys, etc. racks exclusively - no standalone plugins!) but doesn't like racks, and who has got used to working with PT11 without VCC (in fact, so much time has passed that a number here are considering a future with Cubase or Logic so could use the original VCC!), I would have accepted even a few more months.

********

Hi folks. So the response to the Sneak "Peak" (did anyone get the pun?) at VCC 2.0 was overwhelmingly positive and it's brought a great sense of motivation to us as we prepare it for beta (and NAMM).
So there have been a few questions about VCC 2.0 that I want to address. Let's start.

Q: Will the VCC 2.0 be back compatible with old projects?
A: No, it will not. As I've said in many emails, the original VCC code was just pretty hopeless. It was written with complexities that made it hard to fix bugs, hard to add new consoles, and hard on the CPU. There was absolutely nothing we could do to save the backwards compatibility if you wanted new consoles (with more coming in the future), better features, cleaner, code, and less CPU. But fear not, your current VCC 1.x will not be affected. If you have old projects with those plugins in them, they will work as they do now.

Q: Will VCC 2.0 modules be standalone or modules for VMR?
A: Let me first start this by saying that the new VCC 2.0 workflow will be the EXACT SAME WORKFLOW as you have now if you choose it to be. But yes, the modules will work in the FREE Virtual Mix Rack. Now don't jump to conclusions, let me explain.
If you load VCC 2.0 in VMR and save it as default, you essentially have the SAME workflow as now. You go into your plugin list, you choose VMR, it loads instantly with VCC 2.0 on your screen, and you proceed in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as you do now. No extra steps or problems, no monsters jumping out of the screen, all is the same, and you'll have some sweet analog console tone again! If your plan is to just use VCC (since you are under absolutely positively NO obligation to get any other VMR modules), then just pretend that it is now listed as 'VMR' in your plugin menu. That's it.
Now, if you DO have VMR modules, this is gonna be a huge advantage for you. For me, I have several preset "dream channels" saved that I can easily pull up on tracks. For instance, the new Brit 4k E to the FG-S EQ to the FG-401 Compressor followed by some polish from Revival Sonic Enhancer is my go to channel for close drum mics. Heavy guitars are now US-A Discrete to FG-N EQ to FG-S EQ to FG-401. The cool thing about having VCC on your monitor with the entire signal chain is that you can really adjust its settings and gain staging in a much more intuitive way with the rest of your channel processing. You can experiment with pushing the output harder into the EQ to get more input saturation from the transformer, etc.
But again, you don't want to get VMR modules, no problem. Save VCC as your default module so it always pops up when initiated, and you're all good.
So why did we do this? Do we secretly want to get you to buy new VMR modules? Well, of course we want you get VMR modules, because they're awesome and we love them. But no that's not the reason we did this. We made the VCC modules for the VMR platform because if we didn't, you WOULD NOT be using VCC 2.0 for another few months. I'll explain.
Pretend you just built a house. The house is all done, but it's empty. Let's imagine that this empty house is the VMR framework. So now let's imagine that the furniture that goes in the house is DSP code, like VCC modules. To make VCC 2.0 for VMR, we simply put the furniture in the house and spend a bit of time placing it just right. But to make VCC 2.0 standalone… we have to build another entire house! Yes we'd have to create another framework, put all our new framework code into it, put all our graphic and CPU optimization into it, put our grouping network into it, and then test it for a month or two to ensure it all works well, then get the VCC code in, test more, etc. It would have been a major delay. Whereas the VMR framework has already gone through this vigorous testing for almost a year and has proven to be extremely stable.
So I really hope that this explains the VCC 2.0 situation, and you find comfort in knowing that if you want nearly the exact same workflow as you have now, you can have it. And I hope you understand that these decisions were made so that we can provide this update to you faster, which was very important to us.
I look forward to seeing many of you at NAMM booth 6921 next week, and I once again thank for your support, patience, and understanding. I am grateful to have you in the Slate Digital family and promise to keep delivering great tools to help you make music.
Cheers,
Steven Slate

[profdraper]

So that’d be a ‘clean slate’, eh?

Nice. re. the so-called ‘free Virtual Mix Rack’. The text here seems to be saying 1) that it is a *requirement* that VCC2 must run in a VMR shell (ie, is not standalone, the ‘house’ analogy etc; and 2) one assumes then, to access this one must download the presently free Revival plug to get the wrapper, and which (presently) turns out to be a full VMR installer, then to customise that installation by removing the other VMR modules?

A little more clarity on that would be helpful (vs. the virtues of the VMR environment). Or perhaps VCC2 will simply ship with an empty VMR hosting shell. That would seem far more obvious & present less double handling.

Cheers. The strip UI looks good.

[ronwasserman]

Oh no. Here we go again. You'd think he'd of learned by now....but no.

[Rosco1969]

Steven, I understand your point that VCC will only be able to work in VMR. And to just save it as default so when you open VMR it will open with just VCC inside it. Great, so, when we then open more instances of VMR with, say, FG116 or FGN. Or both. Basically any other module, or modules. People do it differently but me... I like to maybe have an EQ in the first insert, then possibly a compressor... Then could be any other plugin.... And then I like to have VCC as the LAST insert this could mean one could have dozens of instances of VMR throughout a session. Could get quite confusing trying differentiate between so many insert slots that just say VMR. Is there maybe a way to incorporate some kind of renaming them? I understand that this may be a Protools issue. (Being that you can rename sends, I'm not sure why you can't rename inserts, like you can in Reaper for example) just wondered if there was a way you could make it a feature in VMR. Maybe as an update?

[mesaone]

So there's no track group list anymore, and VCC requires the VMR shell. This is going to make it more difficult to navigate sessions.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by mesaone

This is going to make it more difficult to navigate sessions.

Sure will...... unless you're a Raven user. Can't fault Slate for catering to THEIR core users that embrace their core concept.

That's not me but oh well, gotta live with it I suppose.

[JCBigler]

Maybe he can make the plugin slot name appear as either something like VMR: whatever plugin is first in the chain. That way if you are only using VCC, then you see it right away. Or, if you have y our own preset built, then it will say whatever name you saved the preset as. Like, Bob's Drum channel, or Cool Vocals, etc...

[Anthony Jr.]

I'm not really opposed to the VMR housing. Hopefully it will actually enable Slate to implement bug fixes, optimizations, and feature updates A LOT more frequently. I'd like to also see it go the way of VBC at some point, with each VMR module having a plug-in that can be separated.

... And let's be honest - we all knew VCC2 was going to be a part of VMR after months in the rumor mill.

[Seafoam_Green]

Originally Posted by Drew Mazurek

Sure will...... unless you're a Raven user. Can't fault Slate for catering to THEIR core users that embrace their core concept.

That's not me but oh well, gotta live with it I suppose.

In what way Drew , do you think Raven users will benefit ?