Sound Machine Wood Works®
Customer Reviews
Sound Machine Wood Works
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T. Urban
Was hoping for more
I found this plugin to have some interesting features, but found that it was difficult to sound good. My direct preamp alone with Ocean Way sounded better than most of the sounds. Setting this up on an aux channel gave a little width, but still didn't meet my expectations. I am hoping that someone revisits this plugin. I would definitely purchase it if I could find a way to make it more useable. It would be great to have while tracking live. But for now, I'm sticking with the direct out of my Adamas mixed with a mic.
R. Lucas
Sound Machine Wood Works Review
I find I can make a DI acoustic track usable with this plugin... lots of times I have a singer/guitarist cutting vocal and acoustic tracks live with a band and can use this plugin to achieve a much more desirable track in the mix.
D. Johnsnon
Frustrating but worth it
Firstly, insert this, and it will sound awful. Treat it like a reverb or exciter, as a subtle send, and excellent results can be achieved (with a lot of practice). Listen to your DI track and hear what's missing, usually body and resonance. Then you have a few choices, go through the presets and find the best sounding option, blend to taste, or, and I've got the best results this way, find the option that best fills the hole, even if it sounds wrong on it's own, switch to manual, tweak, and then blend. It takes a bit of getting used to, but for guitars recorded straight to the desk, especially live, this can make an ok track just that bit more special. I'd always record with mics at home or in the studio, but sometimes it just isn't possible. Put this with the Ocean Way in remic mode, blend all three tracks, and you'll get as close to real, as a DI'd guitar is going to get.
R. Bowling
Still learning my way around the Plugin
Adding this with the Ocean Way Room type plugins is my starting point...I'm also adding a Live Mic Blend with this....I'm looking for Possibilities as well as putting Air & Resonance in a track
C. King
Awful Results
Mic'd a $1400 Taylor and ran it's pick ups through a Neve RNDI (excellent DI) into my Apollo Quad and thought I'd give the plug a demo run. The results were simply awful...in fact, the DI sound on it's own was way better than the plug! Sure maybe this plug will help some but I'm just glad I was able to demo this because I would have been ticked if I spent money on this one!!
G. Bicalho
Let`s be fair...Beautiful sound..."Unique" Tool!
I not yet bought this plugin, just used the demo, but for those who do jingles and tracks for advertisements will be a very practical tool!! The sound is beautiful for solos!Certainly on my list!
I just have to say congratulations!
N. Emowy
Quack quak
I used it on recent live recordings of Oud and Qanun in a small but loud 8 piece ensemble with choir. Both instruments were DI'd and mic'd in a live concert scenario at the Sydney Opera House..Simple as it is, it does work..just put the effort in.
Essentially
The Oud DI was a Barcus Berry contact mic (used for pianos normally) to cut thru the live mix.
In mixing the show to prepare a CD of the concert, SM Woodworks proved perfect in getting rid of the qwak,allowed the performance to sound more realistic, however it brought into focus the room sounds that were feeding into the Oud.
I ended up combining the Di + SM Woodworks processed DI and a hint of the mic as well to create its final sound
s. bensifi
Yeah!
Verry good with ocean way studio !
T. Abraham
Barely Useable, I'd pay $50 max
I really wanted this plugin to work. I mix a fair number of live concert recordings and piezo guitars are virtually impossible to make sound good, never mind real. This plug works about 20% as well as I hoped. There is a phasey, ringing artifact to all the models. There are only a couple of the models that don't sound dreadful (as in, I'll keep the piezo, this sounds worse). With alot of tweaking, blending, and other fakery, I'd say this plugin can make a piezo recording sounding slightly better. But at $300, this plugin does not deliver the goods. Please make this better, it could be amazing, but it's not there yet.
M. Niemczyk
Gives life to a flat piezo guitar
I tried this one with a Godin LGX SA which is a three-voice guitar featuring electric and acoustic guitar sounds. Actually it was the first time the guitar with a solid body sounded really like a acoustic guitar should sound. So this makes up another cool use case, you can use a solid electric guitar and have a sound of a real acoustic guitar and also not only one, but multiple, regarding the different settings of the plug. The only downside is the price. Actually you can gat a good acoustic guitar for 300 bugs so, well guess i have to wait for a real good discount.
T. Morgan
Really nice
This sounds really nice on an acoustic guitar plugged directly into the DAW when mixing, and that's what it's meant to do. Quite a bit of tonal variation offered. Would be nice to be able to move it forward in the mix if needed though (like moving the mics closer or further away). But very impressed.
W. Easley
Great tool for reworking older recordings
I've used this to enhance older recordings that were less than professionally recorded.... I've never failed to get improved quality over the source material. the level of improved... of course depends greatly on the actual quality of the source.
this adds back some of the natural sounds that you lose when you have tracks that were recorded direct to tape/disk.
s. kgr
most unique plug-in UAD-2
Plug-in, which has been concerned about from the front.It is under purchase consideration. The sound of the acoustic guitar me exquisitely varied, I can UP the presence in the track. Presets rich and intuitive operable. It is be easy to use to be a little more light. I think that it is the most unique plug-in UAD-2.
T. Koeroglu
For live Recordings Good Option.!...Why Not!
For the piezo guitar pickups works well, but piezo and mic combi 2way pickups I hear little bit Phase and Hollow in Sound..:( Maybe I hate piezo pickups!...Still good option for a live recordings!...Thanks UA....Happy New Year!....Peace:)
J. Grefsrud
For what it is, brilliant!
I see this product, not as a substitute for miking a guitar, but as a saviour of piezo-recordings. It is absolutely not as good as a proper microphone-recording.
But if you take this out of the equation, and your left with this or a piezo-recording, it's soooo much better. Add an IR-reverb of a lively room, and this thing saves your a**.
F. Schoffelen
Woodworks revisited.
Doing most recordings via a different venue (AURA) that process was sometimes too tedious for old tracks. When Woodworks came on sale I retried it and my first evaluation still holds BUT : i now mix the Woodworks sound together with the original and found a MAAG EQ setting that eliminates the harshness of most presets. I would LOVE an update with at least a bit of EQ . For many of the old tracks there are just too many RESONANCES inside the captured guitars. A way to do Effect-Mix would put this plugin back on many people's list imho. With a coupon and on sale I decided to give it another try. Oh and Ocean Way helps too ;-) I'll give it 4 stars when EFFECT mix ever gets integrated and one parametric for resonances.
M. Kraus
It is just awesome
A Friend of Mine came over with his drummer and we wanted to Record a Little piece of him as a Trio .. I gave it a Shot miked his Voice and a crappy sm57 for the cajon and i Played Guitar through my di Input. Well the cajon and the Voice sounded good.. Well like i thought Guitar sounded like crap..therefore i wanted to find something whitch solves the Problem. I tried out the Demo of the Plugin .. The drummer asked me how did you achive that sound do you habe some Nsa invisible microphones whitch recorded as well... Long Story it Sounds just awesome and right afterwards i spent my Rent Money on that Plugin
.. By the way it Sounds awesome when you Record with 2 small condensors Stereo and mix it with the di woodworks plugin
:)
R. Butt
Sound Machine Wood Works
I like this plug in from a creative point of view. If you play through the presets listening in conjunction with your mix it will find a place to sit well in your mix. Listen to it all on its own.. not so impressive for me it is definitely a mix tool and I even put other string instruments through it like violins, cellos etc ... very unique and cool and there is no other plug in like it.
R. Richard
Better that some of these reviews
After reading the negative comments here, I was prepared to not like this. And at first I wasn't impressed either. Being lazy, I threw it at the first few acoustic guitar tracks I found lying round. Not good. I wonder if that's what some of the previous users did as well. Finally I tried it out the way it was meant to be used -- on a piezo pickup (an L.R. Baggs iBeam in a Larivee L-05) direct into my DAW. Very good! The same guitar also has an L.R. Baggs Element, which doesn't need this kind of help. Even so, I appreciate having 16 sounds to choose from. I do find that I usually want less of the effect and am mixing the plugin output with some of the the dry signal, which gives even more flexibility. In V2, olease add a wet/dry mix control.
D. Thompson
Was a little dubious at 1st... but
This plugin is worth the purchase, but as many others have said, it takes a little time to play around with the settings. It also does in fact sound pretty nice when you find the settings (which you save).
My only gripe is it takes a while to find the right setting, and the price, it is not worth that. I think UAD could come up with a much better solution.
But I'm giving this 4 stars as it actually works and does produce a nice sound for your acoustic guitar when DI'd