In a recent article I wrote about 3 Types Of Audio Plugin I Regret Buying, it seemed to strike a chord with many of you, thanks for all the great comments. In this article I’m going to flip the same coin and talk more positively about 3 types of audio plugin I'm glad I bought. At least one of them may surprise some of you.
Fast
I do a lot of work with video and the new reality of a film shoot is often a camera person with an assistant. That’s partly down to budget and also down to recent pandemic restrictions. This means I can rarely rely on the audio I get sent. That’s despite me sending clear instructions about the sound before the shoot goes ahead, I suppose it stands to reason that the audio is going to suffer if the person is a video specialist. Although truth be told, some of the worst audio has been sent to me by audio professionals, although special mention needs to go to our team member Damian Kearns who recently sent me perfect audio from an interview shoot.
Fact is, that nine times out of ten the audio ends up in iZotope RX, which to be frank is bloody miracle and the gift that keeps giving. Nearly a decade ago I worked with iZotope on a campaign called ‘Let’s RX It’, it seems that’s the mantra of many of my sessions. Most of the time it’s being used to de-noise or de-reverb, but also for removing clicks, lip smacks and various other artefacts that have crept down the mic. I’ve also found it incredibly useful in musical applications, it’s great if someone has got too close to the mic and the lip smacks are on full power, or a squeaky acoustic guitar tracks. Accusonus also has a fantastic suite of audio cleaners, we have looked at them in detail Accusonus ERA 5 Bundle - Fast Audio Repair Tested
There’s other notable plugins like Sound Radix Drum Leveler and Auto-Align Post, and Sonnox Oxford Drumgate, please tell us yours.
For a professional, time is money, and anything that can help us get great results in a fraction of the time gets my vote!
Efficient
I’m not going to name any names but there are a couple of plugin brands that seem to think the path to a great sound is by making a plugin that requires the computing power of NASA to mix a track. I’m often reading on social media “I’m trying to use this plugin but I can only get two instances.” Then a thread ensues about how to set the buffer size, get more RAM, or in many case buy a new computer. Are you kidding me?
There are few plugins that are that good that one should need to rebuild their computer or radically change their workflow in order to use them. Furthermore, I’d defy anyone in a blind test to tell the difference between a ram hog and something that might not be quite as good.
It’s possible to have a great sound and efficiency and many plugin developers prove it. Some of them, like the now-retired Michael Carnes cut his teeth putting reverb algorithms on tiny chips in Lexicon boxes, he translated that thinking to his Exponential Audio reverb plugins and many people love them. That said, when it comes to efficiency it’s easy to think algorithmic = good, convolution = bad, but Matt at LiquidSonics has proved you can have stunning convolution reverbs without having to download the audio equivalent of the Library of Congress. He’s even managed to put a Bricasti simulation in a plugin using FusionIR in his acclaimed Seventh Heaven plugin, a remarkable feat of coding. I’m pleased to call both Michael and Matt friends who happen to be much smarter than me and incredibly nice guys!
One place to look for efficient plugins is the ones that ship with your DAW, there are plenty of top engineers, mixers and producers using stock plugins on tracks… which cost nothing.
Should we really be expected to change our workflow or our computers just to use certain plugins? No thanks, I’ll pass.
Flexible
The most contentious of my three reasons to love some software and that’s iLok Cloud. For some the very mention of iLok sends them into a rage.
What sends me into a rage is having to remember to deactivate my plugin collection before I flatten a hard drive. That’s happened at least once before. Some plugin vendors won’t let you then use those licences again. What is equally frustrating is going between machines and not having access to software because it’s activated elsewhere.
Whereas, if I need to use something like Pro Tools, or another plugin that has iLok Cloud I simply login and get to work. Some on the team don’t trust it saying they don’t want to trust their licences to the cloud always being available. One of them has two iLoks with identical licences on them, it’s an alternative method, but still not failsafe, you can still lose them or have it stolen. To this day I’ve not found myself locked out of a cloud session.
Some people love machine activation, I get it, but if you are moving between machines then it can get annoying having to activate on numerous computers. It’s even more annoying if you find yourself in a studio you don’t work in.
For me, and perhaps ironically, cloud based activation is the closest thing to not having any protection, it means I don’t need to remember anything. I’m sure some will disagree, even some of my colleagues do, but it’s nice to have the choice!
What about you, what makes you love a plugin?