Brief Summary
Third-party AAX DSP plugins are increasingly uncommon, with the majority of DSP plugins available being older titles. Since the introduction of Carbon, the Pro Tools Hybrid engine has increased the usefulness and relevance of DSP. Julian looks at what kind of third-party DSP plugins get regular outings in his sessions and why.
Going Deeper
To misquote Mark Twain, reports of the death of DSP systems have been greatly exaggerated but according to many, the decline and death of DSP audio systems has been imminent and inevitable for years. With the power of modern computers, and particularly Apple Silicon based Macs making more power than many typical users will ever need available, the argument that you need to offload processing to dedicated DSP is no longer the case. Whereas we used to run plugins in DSP to preserve precious CPU processing, the situation is now reversed, with those who still use DSP reserving those finite resources for the places where it’s needed or helpful.
The major change in the DSP landscape is the introduction of the Pro Tools Hybrid Engine. Pro Tools 12.6 brought extraordinary gains in power and flexibility for HDX users and, at a stroke, brought a system which was looking increasingly redundant back to life by making the choice between DSP or Native processing far less of a binary choice. It has always been possible to combine Native and DSP processing in a Pro Tools session on an HDX system, but it was clunky and wasteful. The Hybrid Engine, introduced with the Pro Tools Carbon, showed how native and DSP could co-exist elegantly in the same Pro Tools system and when they tried it with HDX, it brought significant performance gains too!
In a recent article, we highlighted the number of small interfaces which are incorporating DSP, and while some of them hosted DAW style plugins, the majority of them, while including utility processing, principally used DSP to provide near-zero latency monitoring via a DSP mixer.
Scaling up to larger systems, the motivation and principal advantage of DSP systems such as Pro Tools HDX is latency-free tracking, and while the days when RTAS and TDM plugins sounded different are in the past and Native and DSP AAX plugins are interchangeable in terms of quality, there are some plugins which are just better when available in DSP as well as Native when using a DSP based Pro Tools System.
Pro Tools Hybrid Engine
The thing which make the Hybrid Engine so great is that it allows native plugins to do what they are best suited to and DSP plugins to be used where and when there is an advantage to using DSP. This will be during tracking, and once you are finished, you can just click the green ‘lightning flash’ button and toggle the track and all its DSP plugins back to Native.
If you have an ‘on plan’ version of Pro Tools, you’ll have access to a wide variety of Avid AAX DSP plugins. Some of them are fairly long in the tooth, but as our recent article, The Shocking Truth About Pro Tools Stock Plugins illustrated, there is much to like about some of these older AAX DSP plugins. Looking more closely at the offer, plugins such as the Avid Pro Series are as good as any third-party plugins out there, so even without looking beyond the bundled Pro Tools plugins, there is enough to cover tracking scenarios. In our recent podcast about stock plugins, the most significant gap we identified was in noise reduction - not something for which low latency is usually a requirement. you can listen to the podcast below:
However, with many of the third-party plugin developers who used to support AAX DSP no longer doing so, what would be some of the plugins we’d like to find in the list when setting a track in Pro Tools to DSP mode? Here are our four choices.
Brainworx Bassdude
If there is one category I need to see in DSP, it’s amp sims, and while workhorse compressors or equalisers give broadly similar results, different amp sims sound entirely different. This is a deeply personal area, and Avid’s Eleven MkII is a good all-around candidate, but my choice and the plugin I have installed on my mobile Carbon system for recording my band is Bassdude from Brainworx. A model of a 60s Fender Bassman, it’s one of the few amp models I really like.
A good DSP amp sim opens us the possibility of much more flexible tracking arrangements when working in small studios or in hired spaces where isolating drums from guitar amps isn’t possible. Bleed can be good on live recordings, but it can also be very bad and tracking through an amp sim with the band on headphones can give a far better take than the overdubbing route, particularly if the band aren’t used to playing separately.
Plugin Alliance and, specifically, Brainworx are one of the principal supporters of the AAX DSP format outside Avid. While some companies’ more recent output is native-only, even the most recent Brainworx releases are AAX DSP. Well done, PA!
McDSP Channel G
A virtual console tracking experience is something which, in principle, sounds wonderful. The sonic benefits of a homogenous sound with the same EQ and channel dynamics in use across the whole mix, as well as the benefits of a limited set of choices, mean that we actually get on with tracking, listening more and making more, hopefully, better, decisions. Plugin Alliance have a really strong showing in this category, and I own a couple of their channel strips, but I want to highlight an alternative. To really get the benefit of a channel strip, you want to be using a plugin which, as well as sounding good, maps well to a control surface.
My first experience of this was McDSP’s Channel G which I bought when I was working on a D Command regularly. This had a well laid out centre section with encoders which were laid out like the EQ and Dynamics III Pro Tools plugins, giving instant 1:1 control mapping between the familiar stock plugin interfaces and the encoders and buttons on the Worksurface. The original Channel G adopted exactly the same layout, making it a flexible, premium alternative which offered more features and sonic options.
The updated V7 Channel G looks very different but still offers the same control layout and impeccable quality, a one-stop shop for EQ and dynamics and offers E, G, N and A styles of EQ (not hard to guess which consoles they represent) as well as a dedicated Post and Music mode. Compression offers feed-forward and feedback modes, and something I particularly like is the fact that while it’s skeuomorphic, it doesn’t use a photorealistic rendering of a classic desk and very commendably offers EQ plots and metering but as an option, encouraging you to listen. It even offers an RTA, but it’s so tucked away you’d probably miss it if you didn’t know where to look.
Massenburg Design works MWDEQ6
Much of the EQ used at the tracking stage is utility EQ, corrective moves to fix specific issues, and as such, they are likely to stay in place through the mix process. While there is nothing wrong with Avid’s EQ III or Channel Strip, if you have a really nice EQ, if it’s available as a DSP plugin, then it can be used at any stage of the process. One such plugin is Massenburg Design Works MWDEQ6. It has exemplary heritage courtesy of George Massenburg, and as an unashamedly modern digital EQ, but rather than focusing on new or extended features, it focuses on the quality of its audio processing. If you’ve ever swapped out an EQ III for an instance of Pro Q 3 at the mix stage, this might be of interest.
Autotune Hybrid
This one is divisive; for many, the idea of tracking through Autotune is counterproductive. How can you intonate properly if your voice is being tuned, in real-time, at the tracking stage? Clearly, this is a stylistic choice, and if the vocal is going to be heard in context in the mix with Autotune in use as part of the performance, then it makes sense to hear it that way as early as possible. Clearly, this is a case of what is appropriate to the genre, but if you want to track or even print vocals with autotune, doing it in a low-latency DSP environment makes sense. Autotune Hybrid is a version of Antares’ infamous Autotune plugin, which is specifically built for use with the Pro Tools Hybrid Engine and switches seamlessly between Native and DSP modes for use during tracking and during playback.
Of particular interest for those using the Classic Autotune 5 algorithm will be MIDI target mode, in which melodies can be played in from a MIDI keyboard in real-time to control the pitch of the performance. Even if your style of music isn’t right for this treatment, it can still be an interesting way of experimenting with harmony ideas to replaced later.
If you are a Pro Tools HDX or Carbon user, what AAX DSP plugins do you find featuring in your sessions?
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Photo by César Vonc