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I was just curious if there were any Nebula users or anyone who had a comment about it. I don't know a whole lot about it, I went ahead and bought it, just waiting, uploaded the ser file this morning, so I am waiting for them to reply back with a key so I can test it. I see one of the third party developers AlexB, just put some new stuff up on his website. I was going to test the freebie, but I read someone said that the freebie wasn't anything like the bought ones, and too limiting.

I had the free version; I think I uninstalled it, cuz it's vastly complicated and the manual is translated from another language. (then there were those limitations of which you speak) It's supposed to be very powerful, but I jes' didn't have time to learn it.

I tried it a few years back, when I was pushing a single core Pentium IV computer and it was a non starter on that platform; just way too CPU hungry. That was probably 1 or 2 major releases ago for Nebula as well.

I recently downloaded the free version of N3 and I'm really impressed with the tape sims, and the plate reverb. The tape sims that come with the free version will start finding a place on the 2 buss in my mixes right away; very organic, not hyped at all, just seem to add some sheen and a sense of 'inflation' to the signal if that makes sense. The EQs sound good too,l I hate the fact that you only get 1 adustable band of EQ per instance of the plug on the EQ stuff (maybe that's not the case with the purchased version). I also hate the UI for Nebula. I just don't think you can write one UI to serve EQ's, verbs, preamps, compressors etc. They need a pluggable scripting model like NI's Kontakt. If the UI was better I'd be very inclined to throw down the money for the full commercial version.

Let us know what you think when you start using it. This is a plugin that I'm real interested in using.

I've been sort of testing and trialing some vst plugins, and I noticed some are great and a couple I thought were good, after using a little, or maybe after hearing something better turned out to be not so good. Until I get my key, I'm only limited to a small compressor library, so far what I do like is that they seem transparent and not like some of the freebie plugins that add metallic ringing and grunge.
They thus far seem very subtle and a couple of times I could have swore they were almost 3d, but I need to wait until I have a little more testing to comment. I'm not sure if it's the complication or something different, almost like I am changing to a different OS or something. Ok, I've skipped over the kernal and gui speak,lol, all I keep thinking is corn. As for having one ui, I'm not sure, I would probably be lost if they had several, anyway I hope this is easier than learning cubase.

I've been using the free Marshall cabinets (for Nebula3Free) from this thread:
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equi ... grams.html

...and they're excellent! They're dynamic [speaker] impulse responses, instead of simply static ones.

The difference is astounding: they sound real to my ear.

Stuart

P.S. For anyone reading this: you need to remember to disable the speaker sim in your guitar amp program (e.g. Amplitube, Guitar Rig, Revalver) then run Nebula next in your effects chain. Otherwise you will double up on speaker simulation.

Thanks for the link Cardell! Good info there.

@Len: Did you receive your key?
If so, is the full version good?

Stuart

Hello Stuart. Yes I did, the next day I believe. I have bought several third party stuff from AlexB and cdsoundmaster. I have 3 consoles, neve8014, ssl4000, bbc. The consoles are more subtle. The eq's aren't, they are very colorful. The tube emulator programs are great, vintage tube collection, modern tube eq, I can choose different tubes to route through, and mic pre's. The tape machine emulators are nice also.
The thing about this stuff which I love, is that they don't radically change the sound, but it changes the character in minute amounts, much like the real equipment, except for obvious sound changers like the eq. For me it's like the difficulty of getting a good reverb sound to emulate a real space, in the real world it's very subtle, but when you try to add reverb it's almost impossible not to get too much in a certain area like the tail to make it sound unnatural and lose the 3d quality. It's like for myself, I can't hear a sound clip of different mics and tell much difference, but when I sing with one, I hear a world of difference. Years ago I had one of the first digital workstations, a Roland vs880. It was clean, but it had a slight character that no matter how much I eq's or what I did I couldn't get any better sound from it, until years later, I realized it was the compression in the way it saved sound files that ruined the sound.
For myself I can see myself using it for the console emulations, eq, mic pre, tube, tape, but for compressors, reverb, delays, and other effects I don't think they're quite there yet and probably take a computer with processing power way beyond my reach for sometime.
For that I just use the cleaner sonnox compressor and add some nebula before and/or after. It's sort of strange to love something so much that offers such little in terms of a night or day difference,lol!

I messed with the free version and will some more. I do agree there is subtle differences and sometimes seems to be a good difference. I can't be a 100% sure yet because they are so subtle.

I must say.. I haven't used it since I went to open it in a project and it crashed Sonar 8.5 PE. I wasn't at all happy with it after that and have not used it since. It might not be a flaw in Nebula, it might have been a flaw in code elsewhere, but it was Neb that I opened then Sonar crashed. When I do try it again in a project... I'll be sure to save RIGHT before opening it so I don't lose any work and my anger towards the plugin will be smaller. LOL

Rob