About
What is audioplugins.watch? link
https://audioplugins.watch gives you audio plugin datasheets.
Those datasheets contains speed, memory and latency information about audio plug-ins that are often missing from the official documentation.
In normal times, those informations are not crucial to know except if you want to:
- Save some CPU to be able to open larger sessions.
- Know how much processing latency your live setup might add.
- Use 32-bit systems with limited memory address space.
Why PDF datasheets? link
The datasheets themselves are PDF files meant to be printed and act as missing reference data. There is blank space so that you can add that plugin X worked well on source Y. Intentionally, it doesn't say too much about a subjective review of the sound. It's more for plugins you already know.
Who are you? link
I'm a plugin developer, and would perform analysis on competitor products anyway.
You need to understand that this site will have bias (most developers genuinely think their products to be the best, that includes me) and isn't meant to be taken as gospel. It is instead solely made for content marketing and inbound links, and the simple pleasure to be judge and party.
For example I tend to list smaller developers, because in my opinion the market can be a bit twisted by influence marketing and venture capital, so with a constantly renewing population of musicians it's hard enough to get noticed.
I'm a plugin developer or reseller, may I ship the PDF with my binaries? link
Yes, you can ship the datasheets unmodified. If you want a datasheet created, updated, modified... then contact website.
Should I choose plugins based on this website? link
Probably not.
Outside of live performance and geeky pursuits, the information displayed here is not vital for plugin selection and music making. You should select the software that inspires you and leads to better songs first and foremost, whatever that means for you.
Most of what makes the sound of a plugin isn't accessible to analysis. For example, a compressor sound will be in its gain reduction circuit, attack and release shape, dynamic behaviour, and isn't accessible in DDMF PluginDoctor.
Typically, analysis with sine waves leads to aliasing issues being overblown, while in reality transients hardly suffer from aliasing, only tonal sounds. And sometimes the cure might be worse than the disease.
Should I worry about plugins that misreport their latency? link
In most case not.
The effect it will have is that you can't blend dry with wet externally without introducing comb filtering.
For example, if you use a plugin that misreport 3 samples of latency, and you blend the plugin using REAPER host-provided dry/wet, then you will have a bad sound. Or if you do parallel processing through this plugin, this will break PDC if your filtering and phase changes didn't break it already.
Otherwise it's pretty minor thing and some plugins will voluntarily report 0 samples (wrongly) to help you have low latency live. This is because Plugin Delay Compensation (PDC) works by delaying all your other tracks to time match each track.
Should I worry about plugins that do not null? link
No, please no.
The reason you instantiated a plug-in is usually to change a track. So why would you want the track to stay the same now?
Is the intent of the song enhanced and respected? This should be the benchmark. If a plugin achieve better respect for the intent of the song, at the cost of phase and frequency bumps, then what's wrong exactly?
Please remember that the only effect that preserve phase, frequency, and has zero latency, is a 1.0 gain.