u/RaidenJames99

With very much effort to avoid the ongoing preamp wars and the gentleman who sparked them, I wanted to ask about a parallel piece of gear and the authenticity of its plugin recreation.

NoiseAsh has for a few years created lots of Neve emulations, and every plugin company that tries to make their own Neve emulation seems to fall short. However, I recently have been doing some research in order to tamp down my workflow by using a channel strip for initial saturation, EQ, and channel control (L/R, M/S balancing) stages, all of which were included in NoiseAsh's take on the 31102.

The NEED 31102 came up pretty late in this search, but the demos sounded closer to what I generally want and so I tested the demo myself. Especially enticing were some of the extra features like the extra mid band and channel controls. I already have the Scheps OmniChannel, which is powerful and versatile in its own right but has a particular character between the preamps and (colored) compressors which I think suit Alan's style, workflow, and clients more than my current projects.

Now I want to know: does the NEED 31102 hold up compared to the original Neve 31102 channel strip, and would you use this as a basic channel strip like we would in a desk workflow?

Testing the demo on a 100 Hz around -12dB input some wave and an instrumental track by the Hoops McCann Band, I was able to find some basic behaviors such as the harmonic saturation pattern and the general EQ curves.

Harmonic distortion is always engaged, no true bypass for the plugin. With the plugin engaged and the preamp off there is subtle added movement across the spectrum with a bump below 100 Hz. Then, of course factoring gain staging still, the preamp engages and adds subtle odd order harmonics which gain with subtle movement underneath until about +40. After this point, a new saturation stage kicks in in addition to the odd order harmonics. With the fundamental at 100 Hz, those standalone harmonics end at 4k and a block of higher frequencies enter and hit the ceiling, but in a way that doesn't crackle or hurt the ears. This upper bloc of preamp harmonics featured dips at 5.2k, 5.4k, and 6.2k, rolling off above 6.2 kHz with minor imperfections.

To my ears this sounds great and the preamp section features an auto gain button which reduced gain dramatically to within 0.3 dB. I just don't know how faithful it sounds and I was curious. Kudos the NoiseAsh. I would only ask that the preamp on/off doesn't pop every time I hit it.

Now onto the EQ. Obviously there is an extra band with an extra hi-q button, and the labelled frequencies are correect. I do not know whether the EQ curves in either are old-school style (proportional/gain-dependent Q), nor if the frequencies and hi-q settings are correctly centered on the labelled frequencies on either software or hardware. I would have to assume the Neve unit has proportional Q but maybe the plugin doesn't?

With a 20dB range on each of the four bands this is a pleasant and powerful EQ for tastefully shaping signals. Previously there were complaints about harshness in the 50+ pre range and/or when boosting hard above 7k or so (LOL of course). I found during testing that all the gain knobs do a lot of nice subtle shaping below +5 and kick in progressively until maybe +8.5, giving lots of smooth gradation with just enough extra to push any band to the limit without hurting your ears at all.

The channel faders are clean, the VUs center on about -16 instead of -18dB iirc, and the channel control section includes a nice button scheme and mid/side balance knob. Bonus points to NoiseAsh for adding effectively an entire second EQ section for the side image when M/S is engaged. Of course this is all new stuff and it's not meant to be faithful but to add onto the original.

The "dirt" switch did absolutely nothing on either source, and it seemed to ignore me.

It seems like no one has analyzed this plugin and compared it to a real 31102, but if it's faithful to the original EQ frequencies and curves and the distortion can pass a smell test, I will gladly pay to run everything through it. It sounds pretty good to me whether or not, but let me know what you think. Does NEED 31102 sound bad to you? Does it nail or fail the hardware sound/functions or add upon them gracefully? Do you love it and wish it had a compressor like the Voosteq Model N? Have you owned the real deal and tested them? Drop a comment.

TL;DR: Is the NoiseAsh NEED 31102 really an improved yet faithful recreation of the 31102 channel strip, or is it snake oil for $60?

Hello support team!

Reaper keeps freezing whenever I do... basically anything. I push play and it takes 15-20 seconds to start or stop or to simply check boxes in the menu.

Reaper has not ever done this until I turned on MIDI control via Mackie Control Emulator (MCE) to pair with my Presonus Series III mixer. Now the mixer is disabled with all other applications closed but the occurrence persists.

Additionally, more recently, Reaper has begun loading my default session halfway, without the default session template, without any tracks loaded in, and with the entire project overlayed in grey (master fader is 50% opacity or so, and only working actions before crashing are adding also-partially-opaque tracks and moving theixsr window around). It has never done this on any computer with any project template and I didn't change anything on the PC for the last week before it began.

Thank you for any possible help.

Hey JB, I made sure to let you know the outcome of my experiment using a Presonus 32SC mixer via Mackie Control.

I've been using Reaper for a number of years and the integration with the Mackie software is definitely lacking. In lieu of this, here are a few compatibility feature requests and bugs that might be workable on Tape 16's end:

1. When using the built in scrub knob in the MCE transport section, the tape automatically goes infinitely forwards/backwards at the slightest move in the given direction – this is frustrating when trying to scrub small increments, and using Tape 16's MIDI learn to try and replace the scrubbing does nothing.

2. Tape 16 links to the first 16 tracks of the physical mixer, but after that the faders repeat (yes I checked that the main and extensions were routed correctly). The board's master fader correctly controls Tape 16's master fader. It would be nice to have the bus tracks on faders 17-18 and then the rest of the mixer is just disabled like when I have 18 tracks on Reaper and the rest on the physical mixer are blank.

3. I mentioned this on YouTube before but damn it, I'll say it again: we've got to have the track names come up on the physical mixer window when using Tape 16 with MCE. This would be tremendous along with corresponding track color and 1-to-1 track numbering (perhaps you'll leave the numeration to the modders and theme creators, that's cool)

4. A per track pan knob assignment would save a lot of hassle for us MCE users; currently each of the six knobs on the physical mixer cannot be unrouted from the first six track pan pots, which is a massive pain. If I could simply select a track and MIDI learn or something to the "pan" knob on the mixer for every currently selected track, that would already be better than the Reaper incompatibility mess.

5. A general gripe: for the sake of workflow please add drag/drop track reordering, unless you're annoyed by this post.

6. Theme creation is bitchin. One bug I found was the transport (via EITHER mouse or physical transport play button) with community themes enabled would not play, nor spin the reels. But "play" button would be clearly active despite remaining at 0:00:00. Also: It would be super helpful to have a clear list or chart of which assets are named what, where they go in the UI, and pixel dimensions for each asset for theme makers to make it easier to design themes. I'm yapping now about shit you could just leave to the community, sure, but whatever. Here's something I'd love to see in the theme editor though – the ability to change those rinky-dink fader shape/size. Would be pretty cool to have the ability to squeeze an entire (16 track) REDD or Neve console into the tape machine. And maybe, if I'm really trying to push it, a customizable pan fader + choice of pan fader or pot.

Yeah, I'm loving the free trial and helping to test this use case, and I know a lot of people haven't been able to interface their Presonus mixers with less conventional DAWs such as Reaper, so I'm really pushing for it given that these mixers cost a boat load and are made for 90% proprietary use. CPU usage was pretty high still at full screen 60fps, no inputs enabled and no audio loaded in.

Okay I'm done yapping, thanks.