Essential plug-ins are tools that give you confidence in your abilities and the music you and produce. It’s so important to use plug-ins that you know inside out, regardless of whether they are stock DAW plug-ins or third-party. In this article I look at the plug-ins that I consider to be more than just my go-to tools, these are my plug-in essentials.
The team at Slate Digital are very pleased to announce the amazing sounding TH-U Slate Edition guitar amp, cabinet and effects emulations is now available as part of the Slate Everything bundle as well as a stand-alone purchase. I love a good amp-sim so check out the video where I dig in and create 3 very different, yet classic guitar tones.
We take a look at the new Gates Bundle for Virtual Mix Rack from Slate Digital. In the video we first test the Drums gate on Kick drum, Snare and Toms, before trying the Classic gate on a Vocal track.
Eventide has released Instant Flanger Mk ll, a free update to registered owners of Eventide’s Anthology X or Anthology Xl software bundles. Instant Flanger Mk ll emulates to iconic sounds of the original 1975 Eventide Clockworks Instant Flanger hardware unit. We try it on an electric guitar part to see how well it stands up to the original hardware it is based on.
We predicted this would be the year of more smart plugins and now ReConnect promises to fix bad cable choices made in the recording process after the event using machine learning.
GetGoodDrums is an impressive new company. Their purpose built Smash and Grab drum compressor brings a surprisingly fresh, intuitive, and musical plug-in to the table in an already extremely crowded market. In this video, you’ll see and hear how it works on more nuanced and complex drum parts; that use grace notes, dynamics, fills, rolls, and more.
In this video, supported by Antelope Audio, Pro Tools Expert Technical Editor James Ivey takes a look at some of the latest Antelope Audio gear. James teams up with songwriter and guitarist Paul Sundt and they use the Antelope Orion Studio 2017 to track a song called Crazy Lady. This video is the story of recording this track, and how it was mixed using the new Antelope Audio AFX2DAW plug-in.
In this video with the support of Universal Audio, Paul Drew shares his thoughts and ideas when it comes to mastering the track Thought of Love by Rooftop Renegades. In this final part in the series, Paul shows us how he uses the SSL Bus Compressor to glue to mix together then he reaches for the new Brainworx bx_masterdesk, which he uses as a “one stop” mastering processor.
There are lots of great audio/music software & hardware products out there in the Pro Audio world. At Production Expert, we review a variety of products designed to make you work smarter and produce better results in your studios. There are occasions when a product is so good we end up buying it for ourselves, these products usually get our Expert's Choice Award (formerly known as Editor's Choice Awards) for being such fantastic products.
Dear Reality, the makers of dearVR ambisonics and immersive audio software, have just released AMBI MICRO, a free plug-in which converts ambisonics A-format to B-format and binaural audio with the added twist of supporting head tracking with a VR headset. dearVR have produced this free plug-in in cooperation with Sennheiser meaning it has a A to B-format convertor optimised for their AMBEO VR microphone.
Any modern pop or rock track needs a good solid foundation. In this case we have a combination of real acoustic and programmed drums to give the song “Thought of love” by the Rooftop Renegades a good solid groove. Paul Drew of Production Expert, with the support of Universal Audio, shows how by using only Universal Audio UAD-2 plug-ins, he mixes the acoustic drums with some of the programmed percussion to give the track a driving feel.
With the primary tracking and recording finished, Paul Drew of Production Expert starts to mix the song “Thought of love” by the Rooftop Renegades. Paul shows how, exclusively using Universal Audio UAD-2 plug-in he is able to turn a well recorded vocal into a top line part that sits well in the track but allows the lyric to shine through.
In this free video tutorial we show you just how quick and easy it is to shape up a mix using just Softube’s Tube-Tech Mk II channel strip plug-in that we feel could quite possibly be the best analog sounding EQ compressor combo around.
The team at Universal Audio are very pleased to announce the latest version of the UAD Software, version 9.8. This includes 3 new plug-ins for us to lust over. The V76 mic preamp is an accurate emulation of a true classic. The Diezel Herbert guitar amp plug-in by Brainworx is a heavy rock powerhouse of an amp emulation and Antares Auto-Tune Realtime Advanced takes real time pitch tracking and correction to a new level.
ReCenter is a new plug-in from Booom that is designed to automatically repair off-centre stereo recordings while keeping the original stereo width. Fix off-centered stereo field recordings, dynamically center vocal artists or musicians that moved around the stage or centre hard directional effects like drive-bys and stereo whooshes.
The Telos Alliance TV Solutions Group has introduced AudioTools Voice, which they describe as “a brand-new enhancement tool that addresses television viewers long-standing and ongoing struggle to clearly hear and understand program dialogue”.
The team at RTW focus on helping users to visualise audio to help audio engineers take more informed decisions in broadcast, production, post production and quality control. As well as their hardware audio meters and monitoring devices, RTW also offer a range of native plug-in suites, comprising Loudness Tools, Mastering Tools and Continuous Loudness Control.
Recabinet was Kazrog’s first ever product and was released in 2009, how time flies. Ten years on and Kazrog has developed a new Recabinet – Remastered update of the original Recabinet speaker cabinet IR library. When this library launched, it was the first commercial library of speaker cabinet impulse responses, and by far the largest collection in existence at the time, now the IRs are in higher res and sound better than ever!
With 3D immersive audio continuing to make its way into productions globally, Sennheiser and its partner Dear Reality are showcasing a full scene-based end-to-end workflow for VR and 360° video productions at NAMM 2019 with the announcement of a new dearVR AMBI MICRO VST/AAX plug-in for DAWs, developed in cooperation with Sennheiser’s AMBEO team.
As well as the new HypeMic, which should be available almost immediately, Apogee are taking the opportunity at NAMM 2019 to preview several products not due for release for some time. Apogee are showing their Apogee FX Rack DualPath Monitoring Feature, their Pultec Series of plug-ins for Apogee FX Rack - two classic vintage Pultec plug-ins and a Symphony Mk II Dante Software Preview.
