Noise with some u-he plugins

[finotti (Luis Finotti)]

I’ve noticed recently that I was having some noise in my recordings. After some investigation, I noticed that the sources were u-he’s Satin and Colour Copy.

I’ve used these quite a bit in the past and never noticed any noise before, but reopening old projects, there is noise in those projects. (Even though my exports do not have noise.) I have not updated these plugins… Is it possible that some update in Ardour might have exposed some bug/problem with these plugins?

An empty stereo audio track, with nothing connected, with Satin (with its default settings) immediately introduces noise at -67.0db (with no audio content in the track). Colour Copy, again by itself in an empty track, introduces -78.2db of noise.

I understand that these are low, but they add up in many tracks, especially with added compression, EQ, and limiting. The end result in my mixes is quite noticeable.

I also understand that these plugins emulating analog gear (especially saturation) can introduce some noise, but I’d never seen this before. (Calf Saturator, with saturation maxed out and output boost of 36db introduces no noise in an empty track!)

Any suggestions? Should I try contacting u-he or is there something else I should look for?

[seablade]

Unlikely to be Ardour.

If you bypass the plugin does the noise dissappear? If so chances are the issue is in the plugin processing. Given that Satin at least seems to intentionally introduce some hiss (It has an entire section of controls for this) I suspect this ‘issue’ is intentional in the plugin, and likely could be adjusted using the controls of the plugin.

   Seablade

[finotti (Luis Finotti)]

Thanks for the reply! I really doubted it would be Ardour, as it is only these two plugins that seem to have this problem. I will try to investigate it a bit further… Perhaps I just did not notice the noise before…

Even removing the “hiss” from Satin, I still get some noise, but it’s better. Thanks for pointing it out. (It was hidden in a drop down arrow for these settings.) I don’t see anything like that in Colour Copy, but I do not use it as much anyway.

Thanks again for your reply!