Is THIS the BEST FAIRCHILD simulation?

Regarding the Overloud sounding aggressive there is a trick to reducing the distortion. Turn the two Output knobs at the bottom to the lowest setting (fully counter clockwise) and then use the single Output knob at the bottom right for your output level. That knob is post the emulation so your signal should sound much cleaner. This relates to distortion and not aliasing. I have the Overloud and love it. When I first got it years ago I was floored by the distortion until I learned the trick I just shared.

To your comment about the UA interface being messy: if you load it as a VST in a DAW, there will be an option in the upper right hand corner labeled "View". If you switch the view from Editor to Controls, you will get a maximally optimized interface with none of the visual hardware replication... just numbers and sliders that can be adjusted for each of the plugin's parameters. Sometimes, I find that useful. A lot of UA plugins are built that way.

UAD one has a bit more clarity and lighter sheen, which is what it was designed to do, be a mastering compressor before it hit the lathe, for lat vert work on the stylus needle. The perfect mastering comp for that application.

This was actually one of the first UAD plugins I bought after I got my UAD Apollo interface five years ago, it just adds magic to vocals and acoustic instruments that I can't get any other way

There is one problem that does occur when you oversample, which is that you need perform a process that includes a filter, ie, you're going to introduce some kind of delay. If you use an IIR filter which almost all analog filters utilize, it's going to cause a delay, although slight, in the upper frequencies. If you use FIR, it delays the entire signal. Either method also introduces ringing artifacts, which will shape how your compressor reacts to the audio.

technically, the audible level depends on how loud you're listening... 0 dB SPL is the threshold for human hearing. But you could also make the case that something is inaudible when it goes lower than the noise floor of your capturing medium (for example the tape noise, or below -96 dBFS at 16 bit etc etc). In the radio/RF world you'd also have something called Minimal Discernible Signal (MDS), which would be x dBs above noise floor... You also have a masking effect of course, so that would also bring the audibility threshold of some noise/aliasing up a couple decibels... But then you add speaker systems and level etc. So in some cases a signal could be inaudible at -40 dBFS, and in some cases you can still hear -120 dBFS. I'd say a safe bet would be that if a signal is below -120 dBFS (in the final master!) you won't hear it. If you introduce noise at -120 but then compress the signal to smithereens it won't stay that low of course. This is not academically sound, just a rule of thumb for myself. If you're going to CD, -96 would probably be the threshold, or dither level maybe, but sounds louder than that can in a lot of cases be considered inaudible

Great video. I have 16 DSPs from UAD, an Apollo Quad silverface, an Octo satellite and a quad card. I use a LOT of their plugins, but the Fairchild is definitely a go to.

Some time ago we compared almost all Fairchild plugins with a drum loop except Slate and Universal Audio as we couldn't get access to them and clearly "Acustica Audio Ultramarine" was the closest to the original hardware (we compare matching the sound as much as possible, since the same parameters in each company almost always sound different) and over compressing to clearly notice the differences. It was impressive to hear how different the plugins sounded from each other (it's really noticeable on drums!)

I'm listening on a very good Class-A valve system and the UAD plugin still has some distortion which maybe the original Fairchild has(?) but it is deep and lush and open, breathy and gorgeous whereas the others where agressive and flat - suddenly my system sounded like it was transistors, ugh! Thanks for the demo, I will have to get this now! LOL

"it's not about processing power anymore, CPU's are so powerful these days" Cries in Acustica

I am always amazed that you actually hear all those tiny differences. I don't :face-orange-biting-nails: but I do think those little differences in sound can get lost in the youtube audio compression, I could also be deaf^^

This review is golden! I have both UAD version and Overloud but always use the UAD. Works on everything!

I have and love the UAD. They make some of my favorite plugins. People can complain that they’re expensive or need more frequent updating and all need to be native faster etc. etc. but regardless of all those things, they’re just excellent.

A very important (to me) feature that the T-Racks 670 has is the "lat vert" mid-side setting. It was actually the compressor that introduced me to the wonders that mid-side compression can work on a stereo bus

When I was an assistant engineer at a recording studio we would hire a Fairchild every now and again. When I did the recall sheets I would have to write down the serial number of the unit so we would have the same unit for the recall :) (We always hired the same unit. It always felt special. It weighs a lot. 2 man lift.

I believe this is the best video and comparison ever! Also, thanks for revealing what Overloud does with their plugins. I was also looking for a great Fairchild. Thanks!

The klanghelm mjuc is my favorite Fairchild and other mu plugin. Great as always 🤘

Having owned and used several of these units, the UAD vision really does it for me!

Interesting comparison! Been using the Overloud one from time to time and really liking it precisely for it's character and aggressive tendencies. It's been modelled after a tube unit, after all, they sort of almost supposed to do that. And btw messing with the «HARM» knob helps to clean it up a bit. And yeah, OS implementation in their plugins is kinda bad and unintuitive. The UAD one is pretty cool tho, really smoooooooov.

To answer your question about when something is audible or not is a good one. I’ve seen a lot of people online say “two plugins null down to -90dB. I can’t hear a -90dB signal so I can’t hear a difference” That just isn’t my experience. Having said that I prefer to not use oversampling when running at 96kHz and wish UAD gave you the option to turn it off. Steep, linear phase low pass filters color the sound and in my opinion can be more destructive than aliasing in a lot of cases. Some plugins use shallower low pass filters for oversampling at higher sample rates and these sound better to my ears.