CALF plugins?

[Michael Willis]

As an opposite, I'm working on the alternative implementations of plugins available in Calf tools. The recent one is the Flanger tool which allows to do much more than Calf's one allows. I don't aim to copy-paste the things, I always aim to improve the things that already exist.

Thanks, Vladimir. You are doing great work. Every time you announce a new release of LSP, I am astonished at how much you develop in such a short time.

[GMaq]

but in my experience I can't get the exact same effect as the Bass Enhancer from an EQ, even the excellent Pultec PEQ emulators from Mike at ACMT/overtoneDSP, in fact to get a final result I need the harmonic boost of the Calf at around 80Hz and the Pultec inverted bass curve at 20 or 30Hz to complete the recipe.

That's just because Calf Bass Enhancer, Calf Saturator and Calf Exciter are based on the same distortion module which generates additional harmonics which are then mixed to the original track. You can't do anything similar with a digital equalizer which just does the frequency tuning and does not distort the signal.

The Pultes PEQ is also the 'coloring' equalizer which also adds some kind of distortion to the signal, and that's the key why it sounds different.

Great info! Thanks!!

[juki]

Doesn't BASSUP from EQ10Q do the same kind of things than the CALF Bass Enhancer ?

[GMaq]

Doesn't BASSUP from EQ10Q do the same kind of things than the CALF Bass Enhancer ?

It may be similar, I've never found it to sound as good, also another GTK-based set of Plugins left undeveloped, same issue as Calf..

[funkmuscle]

Doesn't BASSUP from EQ10Q do the same kind of things than the CALF Bass Enhancer ?

It may be similar, I've never found it to sound as good, also another GTK-based set of Plugins left undeveloped, same issue as Calf..

EQ10Q, I'm just wrapping up tonight and I just had to use that, well the compressor. I saw a while ago a few producers on YouTube use compressors instead of noise gates to remove bleeding in the drum kit and I went through almost every compressor available on Linux But none did the cleaning up like that. I've been emailing the developer at he used to answer years ago but all of a sudden he stops so I think that plug in suite reached its point too with the developer.

They've got a great set there and I've never had an issue with any of the plugins and even Robin mentioned it in that thread someone shared here. I think they are very good plugins and maybe somebody may try to revive them or I should say keep them going. That's just a little shameless beg there

[sunrat]

I used EQ10Q a bit in the past. Quite decent plugins. Quite similar to LSP PEQ. However the GUI is not resizable which is suboptimal on UHD screen. No action on their Github for 4 years although the last version is available from KX repos and works fine.
LSP GUI is more readable on UHD so I use that these days.

Out of curiosity, I just installed and tested CALF plugins 0.90.3 from KX (on Debian Bullseye) and tried the 5 band EQ. While it works to adjust EQ, the graphs and analyzer do not appear. That's a deinstall from me.

[Daniele71]

For bass there are Bassdrive and BassKit from Airwindows. I still use eq10q a lot; clean gui, easy to use and mid-side support.

From Calf, I only use vintage delay. I try to avoid them as much as possible.

[Daniele71]

One of the easiest ways to make Calf alive, is just to port them to LSP Toolkit or make as a part of LSP Plugins collection.
But this is too straightforward. As an opposite, I'm working on the alternative implementations of plugins available in Calf tools. The recent one is the Flanger tool which allows to do much more than Calf's one allows. I don't aim to copy-paste the things, I always aim to improve the things that already exist.

Great ! Please keep the gui clean and easy as the original plugins. Your plugins are great but sometimes the gui is scary with too many controls and keep some users away...

[peter.zenk]

Yes, LSP plugins are brilliant and offer so many possibilities, that I do not fully understand, especially when it comes to filter types and when to use what.
Maybe a reasonable bag of presets could help out.

[RyanH]

Yes, LSP plugins are brilliant and offer so many possibilities, that I do not fully understand, especially when it comes to filter types and when to use what.
Maybe a reasonable bag of presets could help out.

Same for me. I can't say anything bad about options, except that it can become too much to wrap my mind around. Calf offers a good variety of parameters but not so much that I don't know how to use them.

[sunrat]

With LSP I think the default options are usually the logical choice, with others for more niche cases.

[marcellendi]

Yes, LSP plugins are brilliant and offer so many possibilities, that I do not fully understand, especially when it comes to filter types and when to use what.
Maybe a reasonable bag of presets could help out.

Same for me. I can't say anything bad about options, except that it can become too much to wrap my mind around. Calf offers a good variety of parameters but not so much that I don't know how to use them.

It would be great if there was a button Advanced/Easy in the LSP plugins for us lesser Gods. I think that is the attraction of Calf plugins, easy to understand and beautiful skin.

[kamiluni]

A good plugin should be designed to provide ease of use along with the ability to really emphasize what are the important things for that given plugin.
Airwindows plugins, are at the opposite extreme, they do very little, but they do it very well (maybe a few more aids for setting parameters would help).
I give an example to better explain what I think should be kept in mind when designing the interface of a plugin: when you use a parametric equalizer, instead of having a thousand graphs, it would be better to have a button to listen to exactly the single band you are setting ... Seeing helps, but listening much more. Also the "see" should show what you really need to set the parameters and nothing else.
Calf in his MultiBand compressor does that, in a really straightforward way that even a dummy understands: it combines seeing and listening for what you are doing.

I use and appreciate LSP. However, when I open an LSP plugin, in addition to being amazed both by the graphical interface, which I like but also by the great complexity, I wonder if all that stuff is really necessary for making music. In fact, I often take it out and go back to the Calf plugins .

[dan_flash]

A good plugin should be designed to provide ease of use
Airwindows plugins, are at the opposite extreme, they do very little, but they do it very well (maybe a few more aids for setting parameters would help).

Good points and good insight I'd politely disagree on this though.

In my humble opinion, the really beautiful thing about Airwindows plugins is the elegant simplicity. Move a slider and listen to how the sound changes. That's all you have to go on. It is so amazingly simple and beautiful.

Weirdly labelled sliders that kinda force you to be inquisitive and actually move it if you want to know what it does.

And although the modular nature of the plugs is also a strong point - and the fact that, as you rightly pointed out, many do very little so you have to stack a bunch of them if you really want to bend the sound - there are a great many singular plugins that do enormous things to the signal.

I've come to appreciate these things so much that I disable GUIs on most plugins now when mixing. It feels like I can judge things better that way and make better decisions.

[marcellendi]

A good plugin should be designed to provide ease of use along with the ability to really emphasize what are the important things for that given plugin.
(...)
Calf in his MultiBand compressor does that, in a really straightforward way that even a dummy understands: it combines seeing and listening for what you are doing.

I as dummy agree. I like to record stuff once in a while, but not on a regular basis. It is nice if a plugin is limited to the essence, so the re-learning curve is low. I can remember the essential stuff of a plugin, but I don't want to be bothered with the experienced level kind of stuff that is useful for the daily users.