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[zakco]

I just bought PSP's Mastercomp plugin to use when mastering ITB. I'm really impressed with the sound of this lil' gem, but....       it uses 50% of my CPU in cubase SX! My PC isn't a rocket ship, but it's no slouch either...(P4 2.6 w/1gig ram). Dissapointing in that I was hoping to use it as a mix bus compressor for some projects. Oh well...

Luckily, it uses only 18% in wavelab so I can still use it for mastering...Sure would be nice though if it were just slightly less CPU intensive. I suppose that's the price you pay for quality.

Any other mastercomp users care to comment on their system performance?

-Z-

[Ged Leitch]

Tried a demo, liked the sound, but i also had probs with cpu usage.
Try out psp's mixpressor, ignore the plain gui and delve into this little gem, i actually prefer it to the master comp.
cheers.

[compasspnt]

Tried the demo, didn't like the sound.

[lowland]

I reviewed it a couple of months ago and thought it good for the money, about as good as I can imagine a plug-in compressor made for the current mass market sounding, in fact, but it won't replace my hardware. One 'convenience' area where it scored well was doing parallel compression using the processed/unprocessed mix control, though provision for even more GR with a deeper threshold would be handy. I'm no programmer, but don't you have to expect CPU hogging as well as programming talent for something like this to have potential to sound any good?

OT: Personally, my interest is moving away from this area and towards analogue. Last night I was lucky enough to be able to interview Billy Stull, a real Texas gentleman, of Legendary Audio for a magazine article. What he had to say about the Masterpiece system and his current collaboration with Rupert Neve (along with Alan Silverman's enthusiasm, notably for the EQ) has made me want to get next to a Masterpiece as soon as possible

[Garrett H]

I was a beta tester and can tell you the following things from my experiences:

1. Yes, she's CPU intensive.  Even after a CPU upgrade.

2. However, I had the following observation.  If you are working in 44.1 or 48k and have FAT enabled (for those of you who have not tried PSP's Master Comp or Master Q, FAT is a process that upsamples the audio within the plug-in, does the processing, then downsamples prior to output.  It is defeatable, but is noticably more better sounding in terms of dimension and sonic clairity) then, it's a CPU hog.  

HOWEVER, if you're processing 96k audio, you can bypass FAT (see the manual) as there is no need to upsample audio that is already at 96k.  At that point, I've noticed that the CPU drain is a bit less, even though I'm running at a higher sample rate (we use SADiE, which offloads alot of processing to it's onboard processing card).

Hope this helps.
GH

[Ronny]

Garrett H wrote on Sat, 26 November 2005 15:20

I was a beta tester and can tell you the following things from my experiences: 1. Yes, she's CPU intensive.  Even after a CPU upgrade. 2. However, I had the following observation.  If you are working in 44.1 or 48k and have FAT enabled (for those of you who have not tried PSP's Master Comp or Master Q, FAT is a process that upsamples the audio within the plug-in, does the processing, then downsamples prior to output.  It is defeatable, but is noticably more better sounding in terms of dimension and sonic clairity) then, it's a CPU hog.   HOWEVER, if you're processing 96k audio, you can bypass FAT (see the manual) as there is no need to upsample audio that is already at 96k.  At that point, I've noticed that the CPU drain is a bit less, even though I'm running at a higher sample rate (we use SADiE, which offloads alot of processing to it's onboard processing card). Hope this helps. GH

FAT typically stands for File Allocation Table and is a filing system for windows. FAT 16 (Win 95 and before), FAT 32 (Win ME, SE, NT), XP they improved it to NTFS. Is that what you mean by enabling FAT in the master comp? The reason that I'm asking is that FAT 16 has a file size limit and is all but obsolete.

[lowland]

Garrett H wrote on Sat, 26 November 2005 20:20

we use SADiE, which offloads alot of processing to it's onboard processing card

I also use SADiE and found this to be true - my relatively low-specced PC was able to use the DirectX version of MasterComp without difficulty, despite the fact that it fell below the minimum system required.

[bblackwood]

Ronny wrote on Sat, 26 November 2005 14:42

Garrett H wrote on Sat, 26 November 2005 15:20 I was a beta tester and can tell you the following things from my experiences: 1. Yes, she's CPU intensive.  Even after a CPU upgrade. 2. However, I had the following observation.  If you are working in 44.1 or 48k and have FAT enabled (for those of you who have not tried PSP's Master Comp or Master Q, FAT is a process that upsamples the audio within the plug-in, does the processing, then downsamples prior to output.  It is defeatable, but is noticably more better sounding in terms of dimension and sonic clairity) then, it's a CPU hog.   HOWEVER, if you're processing 96k audio, you can bypass FAT (see the manual) as there is no need to upsample audio that is already at 96k.  At that point, I've noticed that the CPU drain is a bit less, even though I'm running at a higher sample rate (we use SADiE, which offloads alot of processing to it's onboard processing card). Hope this helps. GH FAT typically stands for File Allocation Table and is a filing system for windows. FAT 16 (Win 95 and before), FAT 32 (Win ME, SE, NT), XP they improved it to NTFS. Is that what you mean by enabling FAT in the master comp? The reason that I'm asking is that FAT 16 has a file size limit and is all but obsolete.

Ronny, did you read Garrett's post? From the PSP website:
PSP MasterComp is a high fidelity stereo dynamics processor (plug-in VST, DirectX, RTAS for PC; Mac version in development). Its double-precision (64-bit floating point) and double-sampled (FAT - Frequency Authentication Technique) processing offers transparency even at extreme compression settings and high sample rates.

[Ronny]

No I didn't. Sorry it didn't register, I thought FAT I thought file allocation. Thanks for telling me, Brad.

[bobkatz]

lowland wrote on Sat, 26 November 2005 09:11

I reviewed it a couple of months ago and thought it good for the money, about as good as I can imagine a plug-in compressor made for the current mass market sounding, in fact, but it won't replace my hardware.

It's definitely an excellent sounding compressor, very sweet and you can make it as slow or as fast as you want. Not enough ratio range yet, for my tastes. They have their DSP down pat and engineer for good sound first.  But I second the motion that it is a BIG CPU hog... I think I need a 3 GHz machine, fast!

I have not used it for mastering, by the way; still use outboard gear for that most of the time; but I have used it as a plugin on vocals or instruments while mixing.

BK

[aivoryuk]

i'm glad i read this, as i was seriously consdering trying this out but if its a real cpu hog then i may not bother.

[zakco]

bobkatz wrote on Sat, 26 November 2005 16:16

They have their DSP down pat and engineer for good sound first.  But I second the motion that it is a BIG CPU hog... I think I need a 3 GHz machine, fast! BK

Well I've got a 2.6 GHz and it is not nearly enought to use this as a channel compressor in a full mix situation. I don't think another 400MHz is going to make much of a difference with this plugin...  Perhaps if you're not using ANY other host based processing, but if your cpu is already working past 20% or so, forget it. I can't even run 1 instance of mastercomp in fat mode at the same time as a convolution reverb. Brings my DAW to it's knees...Unfortunately, fat mode sounds so much better than "non-fat" mode, that it's no contest really.

-Z-

[OTR-jkl]

I've been using MC on my 2.8M P4 and getting far better results than with any other s/w comp I've tried.

It is CPU hungry, though. My CPU load usually hovers around 50% while running 2 instances of Samp, a couple of EQs, the MC and a s/w limiter all at once. I don't use MC in FAT mode since I upsample and work on hi-res files...

I do agree with BK that the ratio selection is a bit limited.

[Pingu]

Quote:

BK Not enough ratio range yet, for my tastes.

I agree with you there Bob it needs a more versatile ratio button.

But apart from that i think its awesome.

I also love plugins that have a mix function such as this.

I was mastering a tune the other day with this beast.

 Slam it a bit harder than normal and then pull the mix down to about 60%. Sounds great.



Its been 3 months since the last comment on this thing and im wondering what you guys currently think of this beast.