CALF plugins?

[Michael Willis]

Are there any effects in the CALF collection that don't have a suitable replacement among Airwindows, LSP Plugins, x42 plugins, etc?

[GMaq]

Are there any effects in the CALF collection that don't have a suitable replacement among Airwindows, LSP Plugins, x42 plugins, etc?

I would guess probably not, however how someone perceives what they are actually controlling through the UI presentation is part of the puzzle as well. I personally use very few of the Calf Plugins but I do love the Bass Enhancer for kick drums and how it is laid out visually makes it pretty much instant to get results.. As a layman I can't explain the difference between what it's doing with boosting low harmonics and how a similar effect could be done with any other EQ 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.

As far as the regular EQ's, Compressors, Delays and Reverbs there are dozens of choices that equal or better Calf I'm sure..

[bluebell]

Are there any effects in the CALF collection that don't have a suitable replacement among Airwindows, LSP Plugins, x42 plugins, etc?

Vocoder?

[Impostor]

Are there any effects in the CALF collection that don't have a suitable replacement among Airwindows, LSP Plugins, x42 plugins, etc?

Depends on what one thinks is "suitable". I definitely need a GUI, so no airwindows for me. I also prefer "simple" and "intuitive", so LSP is not too suitable either, except for maybe their EQ. I'm not familiar with x42's plugins, but I can't discern things like a delay, flanger, phaser, reverb or chorus on their github page...

And then there are Calf's Crusher and Ring Modulator, which I also use now and then...

And, not unimportant either: I like the consistency of the Calf interfaces with all those different effects. That's why I'm hoping Uh-bik gets an update soon. That plugin set looks like it suits me. It's just that its latest stable version is ancient. Of course, that update needs to be vst2 so I can use them in both MusE and Renoise without wrapping them with Carla or Ildaeil: depending on these wrappers makes my projects even less future proof than the Calf plugins do, is what I think. Also, for the occasional synth they are fine, but needing to wrap all of my effects on all audio tracks is way too much hassle.

[Michael Willis]

The reason I asked is because sometimes I get an itch to develop a new plugin. I don't think I'm up to the task of updating all the calf plugins such that they don't use gtk2, but I was thinking that I could drop one of the algorithms into a new plugin that would hopefully not have some of the problems that have become calf's legacy.

[novalix]

I use the de-esser quite regulary. Though, i do de-essing in stages (two at least) so the calf one is only responsible for a small portion.
The transient shaper is very usable. And yes, the bass enhancer can be a good option, too.

[bluebell]

I use the de-esser quite regulary. Though, i do de-essing in stages (two at least) so the calf one is only responsible for a small portion.
The transient shaper is very usable. And yes, the bass enhancer can be a good option, too.

Oh yes, the Transient Shaper. I use it for snares and don't know an alternative.

[bluebell]

The reason I asked is because sometimes I get an itch to develop a new plugin. I don't think I'm up to the task of updating all the calf plugins such that they don't use gtk2, but I was thinking that I could drop one of the algorithms into a new plugin that would hopefully not have some of the problems that have become calf's legacy.

• Transient Shaper
• De-Esser

[tavasti]

Bashing CALF plugins is an at least 5 year old hobby of Ardour (and its commercial brother Mixbus) users

Well, the well-documented flaws of Calf all seem to be traceable to Ardour and mixbus fora

Most likely any plugin made with gtk is problem in Ardour/Mixbus. Ardour is using gtk, does not have plugin sandboxing and is delivered with own fixed set of libraries. Your system may have more recent gtk, your gtk plugins are compiled against it. Then you add those plugins to Ardour/Mixbus which has own, older set of gtk libraries, and not so amazingly, everything blows. That happens also with qmidiarp, and probably with many other plugins. Things might work if you daw and plugins are compiled with same version of libs. For Ardour built by your distro would most likely solve problem if plugins are also coming with your distro. For Mixbus, would need to get same versions of libs than included with daw, and compile your plugins with those version. And then you have option to use carla to load your plugins, because carla does plugin sandboxing. Stuff is discussed also here viewtopic.php?t=21468

Ardour people say that your plugins need to be staticly linked. That is mandatory in Ardour, and also beneficial for any DAW. And because gtk can't be staticly linked, then it is not suitable for making plugins.

[Largos]

https://linuxmusic.rocks/ has a good layout of categories for people who want to find alternatives to plugins.

[bluebell]

https://linuxmusic.rocks/ has a good layout of categories for people who want to find alternatives to plugins.

This helped to discover that there IS a transient designer in lsp-plugins. It's called beat breather.

EDIT:
At first sight/try to replace CALF Transient Designer in a snare track it adds a lot of audible latency and is much more complicated because it offers so many controls and stages. Maybe it's overkill for a simple snare track.

[bluebell]

Most likely any plugin made with gtk is problem in Ardour/Mixbus. Ardour is using gtk, does not have plugin sandboxing and is delivered with own fixed set of libraries. Your system may have more recent gtk, your gtk plugins are compiled against it. Then you add those plugins to Ardour/Mixbus which has own, older set of gtk libraries, and not so amazingly, everything blows. That happens also with qmidiarp, and probably with many other plugins. Things might work if you daw and plugins are compiled with same version of libs. For Ardour built by your distro would most likely solve problem if plugins are also coming with your distro. For Mixbus, would need to get same versions of libs than included with daw, and compile your plugins with those version. And then you have option to use carla to load your plugins, because carla does plugin sandboxing. Stuff is discussed also here viewtopic.php?t=21468

Ardour people say that your plugins need to be staticly linked. That is mandatory in Ardour, and also beneficial for any DAW. And because gtk can't be staticly linked, then it is not suitable for making plugins.

And not suitable for DAWs that can load plugins.

[Largos]

Depends on what one thinks is "suitable". I definitely need a GUI, so no airwindows for me..

If you have Surge XT, it comes with a separate FX plugin (also a stand alone) This has a lot of airwindows plugins in it as well as the others that come with Surge.

[sadko4u]

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.

[sadko4u]

The reason I asked is because sometimes I get an itch to develop a new plugin. I don't think I'm up to the task of updating all the calf plugins such that they don't use gtk2, but I was thinking that I could drop one of the algorithms into a new plugin that would hopefully not have some of the problems that have become calf's legacy.

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.