MixWave Coil CA-70 Plugin: Can It Replace the Hardware?

Coil Audio makes the best preamps I've come across in my almost 20 years of recording professionally (Make sure to watch my two part review on the Coil Hardware Preamps). When MixWave said they were modeling a plugin version of the CA-70 at a component level, I couldn't wait to try it out!

I'll share a cool story and some thoughts at the beginning, followed by a full song where I split each source out the my hardware CA-70 preamp, as well as the clean preamps on my Universal Audio Apollo. I then applied the MixWave CA-70 plugin to all of the tracks recorded through the Apollo preamps and matched them to the Hardware settings. I'll do a back and forth between the hardware and software for each source, as well as a full mix of the song at the end to compare everything in a finished context.

Make sure to download the full session files below to do your own comparisons, as well as links to my review of the Coil Hardware preamps!

Full Session Files:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oQXa...

Coil Audio Hardware Review Part 1:
   • Coil Audio Review Part 1  

Coil Audio Hardware Review Part 2:
   • Coil Audio Review Part 2  

Dave Matthews #40 "Yoshi's" Recording:
  / 40-dave-matthews-band-yoshis-full-band-aco...  


Time Stamps:

00:00 Story time! (Talking...)
05:17 Hardware Preamps vs Plugins (Talking)
09:30 How I've set up the test (More talking...)
10:55 Acoustic Guitar Compare
12:26 Vocal Compare
16:04 U-Bass Compare
18:34 Percussion Compare
21:02 Wrapping Up (Talking)
24:28 Full Song Mixed (Montage)
27:40 Addendum (Line Level Hardware Passes)
32:06 Montage 2 (UA Preamp Files Line Level into Hardware)