In this article, we asked our extended Expert panel to tell us about how they use plugin presets? Do they even use presets? If so what types of presets do they find useful? And what types of plugin presets would they never use. Read on to find out the good, the bad and the ugly of plugin presets.
Audrey Martinovich
If I am unfamiliar with a plugin and want to see what kind of sounds I can get out of it, I like to quickly audition the presets. I figure if they exist, the developer thinks they are a good example of how the plugin can be used so it's natural for me to start there and tweak when I'm just learning a plugin.
I don't really use stock presets in my everyday workflow, but I do have a handful of favourite plugins that I have created my own presets for and usually recall those as a starting point for any mix.
I'm less likely to go for any mastering presets on my compressors. In my experience they tend to be more compressed than I like so I'll use my own presets rather than what might come with the compressor.
That being said, I do use stock reverb presets fairly often and make adjustments to the length and EQ to fit the song's style and tempo. I'm a fan of the presets in Cinematic Rooms for example.
Audrey Martinovich’s interest in recording was sparked from her background as a classically trained singer who, through experimenting with recording voice lessons and performances, fell in love with engineering. She co-owns Audio for the Arts with her business partner, Buzz Kemper, where in addition to their acoustic music projects, they produce podcasts, radio shows, advertisements, and do post-production for film.
Chris Vandeviver
Presets were never that fashionable for me. When it comes to "typical" processors like EQ or compression, I just about never rely on presets for crafting sounds. I can't help but think that the ‘Pop Vocal’ EQ preset or ‘Vintage Snare’ compression preset will never truly fit the vocal or snare track I'm mixing right now.
Yet it seems like I've read and seen several high-profile mixers and producers find great value in EQ or compression presets. And it certainly sounds like it! So perhaps I should let go of the wheel (and my ego) a little and give them a try.
But for more ‘creative tools’, which I identify as reverb, delay, amp, or modulation effects - that's when I just about always reach for presets.
In those cases, I have a particular sound in mind. And it's almost inevitable that if I paw through enough presets I'll find the sound I'm looking for. It might take a bit, but it seems more effective than dialling up my own reverb from scratch!
Or if I'm looking for inspiration to spring creativity forward, a preset can inject that magic into a mix I never could've dreamt up. In my teens, I dug through records for cool new sounds of music. Now I dig through presets for cool new sounds for music.
Chris Vandeviver is a mix engineer and content creator based out of Rochester, NY. His website, Why Logic Pro Rules is a website dedicated to helping Logic users get the most they can out of Logic Pro X. Studio work ranges from producing to commercial composing. Chris remains fervently entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.
Damian Kearns
Plugin Presets are integral to my workflow, particularly in these days of remote collaboration. Sometimes I’m overseeing multiple projects at once, which means I’m delegating. Even though other people are doing the work, I still want things to sound as though I had a hand in the signal processing chain. To make sure this happens, I keep a number of presets in a basket for an entire series. It is not unusual for me to play around with a basic setting, tweak it to my liking, then store it and share it with the team. In this article, I’ll focus on 4 key dialogue presets.
A prime example of this preset collaboration with my peers is my mono reverb setting. Most people don’t think about using mono reverb instantiations but for dialogue, for me, it’s a key to success.
Interviews and location dialogue are almost never stereo recordings so if I’m trying to match a room resonance, a slight slap of a street echo, or fix a ‘franken’ edit where the end of a word or sentence has been chopped off, I need a mono reverb to match the reverb on a mono recording.
This setting is the basic preset for my ‘franken’ edit reverb patch. I only use reverb where the resonance has been blunted, to give the ends of sentences their life back or to bind together two tightly packed lines where the outgoing one has been shortened.
Moving from resonance to basic console style processing, another essential preset, baked into my template, is this one I call “OHM DEFAULT,” named for the production company who inspired me to build my open source 5.1 and stereo template.
There’s nothing really special about this on the surface; it’s just an Avid Channel Strip User Default Setting I’ve developed. Dive a little deeper and the real focus is again, dialogue processing.
I’ve set the FX Chain to put the filters first, followed by the compressor, then the EQ, then finally the output volume.
Why filters first and EQ after comp? Years ago I had a fairly in-depth debate with a colleague who came from a successful music recording and mixing background, prior to his post-production career.
He was insistent I move my EQ prior to my compression but I always felt that EQ was meant to finalise the spectral content, after dynamic range compression.
His salient point was if I was using a roll-off to remove wind, for instance, this reduction in energy would drastically change the way the compressor worked if the bass was removed prior to dynamic range compression.
The beauty of the Channel Strip Preset outlined here is we could both win the debate. I used the roll-offs to reduce unwanted spectral content on the edges of the human hearing range and the EQ to shape the final contour, snugging things nice and neatly into my mixes. I have the dB scale set to 24 rather than the factory default of 12 dB because I often need a lot more top end than I get from the field. A lot more!
Sometimes, presets are all about saving time. If you look at this preset above from The Cargo Cult’s Envy plugin, I’ve built it so it’s ready to help me fix those ‘franken’ edits in dialogue.
This fantastic plugin has become somewhat of a hit here in Toronto, amongst my friends and colleagues. I bought it the day it came out because of Envy’s sound design possibilities but its natural fit in my workflow is as a dialogue pitch manipulation tool.
The ‘Smooth’ setting in the pitch envelope is so wonderful sounding, I find myself preferring it over other great tools like Melodyne. This preset is my User Default to save myself time configuring Envy each time I open it.
I’m not sure if the readers are aware of this but if you are using Window Configurations in Pro Tools, open an AudioSuite plugin, set the plugin up the way you want it, store the setting (example number 5 on the keypad and then +) and you’ve got yourself a preset without having to actually store it in a preset folder. For me, Envy, with these settings, is recalled in my template using number 5 and asterisk (5*) on the numeric keypad.
Finally, even though I use the tools above more collaboratively a lot of the time, Dialogue Match by iZotope is really all about my personal preference. Each interviewee in a typical documentary-style TV episode gets a dedicated track. I scan segments of each person to build a profile, then tweak it on the first couple of edits I have to clean.
I mostly focus this plugin on fixing ‘franken’ edits using reverb and ambience fill. Once I have the general setting, I save the preset, named for the person. Even though I go through and edit a character at a time, if for some reason I need to go back and edit or swap something out for a new piece of dialogue, I need a “log” of the settings I used.
For me, that’s really what presets are about. Before all parameters were automatable in modern DAW’s and consoles, snapshots of settings were the only way to store a picture of things like EQ, compression, Sends and Returns. The timesaving ‘Plugin Preset’ is a homage to the venerable tradition of taking a picture to retain information one would otherwise be unable or unwilling to recall; a ‘log,’ if you will.
Damian Kearns is an extremely creative, versatile audio engineer. He specialises in post-production for television and movies and has many promotional, pre-production, production and presentation audio credits. This past winter, Damian has led the post-production team as lead mixer for "Fear Thy Neighbour," "Fear Thy Roommate," and "History Erased (season 3),' as well as the UHN podcast “Behind the Breakthrough (S2)”.
Eli Krantzberg
Look anywhere on social media discussion groups, and you'll find no end of discussion on the usefulness of plug-in presets. You'll see modern-day ultra-cool hipster haters right alongside newbies - all with plenty of time to share their passionate opinions. I don't see plug-in presets as inherently good or evil. Some are useful others are not.
When talking about plug-in presets, I think it is important to distinguish between effects plug-ins versus software instrument plug-ins. In the latter case, presets are almost universally a huge asset in discovering the versatility, flexibility, and range of creativity available. Trying to imagine Omnisphere or Falcon with no presets would be akin to staring out over the Grand Canyon while figuring out how to build a skyscraper. Not every preset will be useful, of course, but they open doors to understanding signal flow, how the various components work, and how to create certain types of sounds. In the case of effects plug-ins, preset usefulness is, in my opinion, more nuanced.
When it comes to creative plug-ins, particularly if they incorporate modulation and unusually named parameters or macros, presets are extremely useful in revealing the plug-in's range. For example, something like Portal from Output would be difficult to decode without a collection of superbly crafted presets to point you in the right direction. The fact that they are well organized into meaningful categories makes them a pleasure to browse.
Eventide has a range of sophisticated plug-ins that often go much deeper than a cursory glance of the GUI might suggest.
This is the sign of a well-designed interface. It doesn't intimidate yet also has deep versatile potential. Crystals, for example, begs for experimentation. Its presets are fantastic jumping-off points for sonic exploration.
So if the plug-in is full of flexible, creative potential, there are often at least some presets that will open doors you might not otherwise have seen so easily or discovered as quickly.
When it comes to more bread and butter mixing-based plug-ins, it's a different story. I find presets in these situations not particularly useful. In fact, they are often an actual hindrance to learning proper usage.
Things like EQ and compression are so dependent on the material they are applied to that the idea of a preset can actually point you in the wrong direction. Take drums, for example. There are so many variables, not only in drums themselves (sizes, skins, tuning, etc.) but in how they are recorded, that there is no possible way to know in advance how they will need to be EQ'd. Or compressed. Calling up a factory "bass drum" preset on a bass drum could actually be exactly the wrong thing for what your specific bass drum needs in your specific mix.
When it comes to basic mixing settings, celebrity presets are a category of settings to be extremely wary of specifically.
Big-name engineers are more than likely working on mixes recorded with top-shelf instruments in great-sounding rooms, with boutique mics and preamps and monster players. Their bass drum track will almost certainly require very different treatment than yours.
If you are a newbie, an inappropriate preset may point you away from what you actually need in your mix. So use your ears, not your preset menu - particularly when it comes to EQ, compression, reverbs, and even delays.
Once you find or craft settings of your own that work with your tracks, be sure to save them as your own presets so that you can recall them in future projects. Good presets are useful; bad ones are not.
The real question is, do you have the ears, confidence, and experience to distinguish between the two. A bit of cautious scepticism will go a long way in helping you develop all three of these attributes.
Eli Krantzberg’s greatest loves, beside his wife Mariam are drumming, his vibraphone, Logic Pro, and jazz. Leader of a commercial band for three decades, Eli has been demystifying and simplifying music software since 2008.
Garrard Whatley
For all plug-ins I use in my template, I have created a "(plug-in name) START" preset, and then set it as the user default. This helps in building the template quickly and efficiently. It also means I rarely need to refer to these START presets again, but it is nice to have if, for example, I feel like I've gone too far in trying to EQ a clip and need to start fresh, back "at zero".
Beyond that, I have only a few EQs I need to go to in dialog, including phone futz, walkie-talkie futz, skype call, stuff like that. Otherwise, each plug-in setting is likely going to be unique (especially for dialog EQ), so presets serve less of a purpose.
I have START presets for all manner of things: compressors, noise reduction, reverbs and delays. That is where I get most of my mileage out of presets.
One instance where it occasionally comes in handy is during mixing. If my fingers are moving a little too fast, and I accidentally apply a PREVIEW setting to an entire track rather than just the clips (or group of clips) I am working on, If I select "undo" it thankfully reverses that move, but it also gets rid of the EQ setting I had been labouring to apply.
So, before selecting "undo", I save the EQ as a preset (named something like, "(movie title)_here's where I screwed up"), then hit undo - and then simply recall and apply the EQ to the proper group of clips.
Garrard Whatley owns Seismic Post Audio in Los Angeles and has worked as a Supervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer for 24 years. His first company RocketWerks was located in Santa Monica, primarily catering to independent films. Still working on indies and larger film productions, he has added television series work over the last 10 years, bringing a cinematic sensibility to his broadcast work. Seismic Post Audio is also home to software development for post audio applications, with an eye toward making Pro Tools session organization and navigation faster and easier.
James Richmond
We have to start by considering what a preset is for. Is it to allow you to work quickly? Or is it to show you the capabilities of the plugin?
Plugin presets can be useful for an initial exploration of a new product, see what it can do. You don’t want thousands of them. 10 to 20 is usually more than enough for most products. More than that and you end up with too many options and it heads towards ‘preset shopping’ which can be the death of creativity.
I do get why people new to mixing are focused on using presets but it can be a bit of a double-edged sword. I’m not someone who thinks that it is lazy but it can stifle learning if the presets are used without thought.
My advice for anyone new to mixing is to go through your plugin presets consciously and to treat it as a learning session, observe what is happening and look to make your own.
There is an elephant in the room and that is that there is no easy way to move your own presets from machine to machine. I would very much like there to be an easier way to sync your own plugin presets so they port over to different machines, like the way iCloud works.
In terms of my own use, I don’t use synthesiser plugin presets, as a rule, because it is the sound design process that the track comes together for me. I also find EQ and compression presets less useful beyond using them as a very rough guide.
James Richmond is a producer/engineer based near Oxford. He is a former SSL tech support staffer as well as having written for a lot of Australian Pro Audio magazines (Next Music, Australian Guitar, Australian Digital magazine). He was the technical editor for Next Music (a sort of Aussie Sound on Sound/Future Music style magazine). Previously he was an IT networking consultant.
Lucy Mitchell
I think plugin presets can be very useful, especially when you are learning your craft, or just simply trying out a new type of plugin. It is a quick way to see what the plugin is capable of, and how to use it, especially if you, like me, have had to learn on the job.
When I first started, the parameters on compressors really confused me, I kept forgetting what they meant(!) so it was nice to be able to choose a setting and leave it. The same goes for de-essers. If I'm having a problem with say, a voiceover, I can set my de-esser to 'male ss' or 'female sh'. I can then tweak if I need to, but it puts me in the ballpark.
I've been doing a lot of Virtual Choir work over the last year and have been using a multiband compressor in my 'mastering' stage, which is not something I use very often at all in my post-production work, outside of a bit on dialogue if it needs it.
Before March 2020, music mixing was not something I had really done much of so I found some of the presets very hand. I flicked between thing like 'pop vocal', 'energising rock' and it definitely took the track up a notch after I'd spent all that time editing all the individual voices! I don't think I would have had the time/patience to figure out exactly how I wanted to set the multiband compressor and loved that I could just essentially chose my style. Obviously, if I were to move into more music mixing work, I would start to do it myself but with the experience I have in that area, presets are a lifesaver.
The same goes for reverbs, obviously for convolution reverbs, it goes without saying, but in general, it can be a real time saver flicking between the presets to find the sound you want, rather than changing each parameter my small amounts.
I have found Nugen's Paragon particularly useful recently as they have some great presets, but you also have great control with a lot of adjustable parameters so you can really hone in on the desired effect. It's nice that you can save a preset in Pro Tools as well.
If you are constantly going back to the same location, or even just if you need to add reverb to both the effects/foley and the dialogue (and sometimes the music if diajetic) then you can set your parameters once, save them, and then set them to other tracks/scenes with ease.
I do this a lot in my fiction mixing, especially with Q10 if there's been any notch filtering. Some might say that presets are cheating - like using 'Speakerphone' to make something come out the TV rather than doing the eq-ing manually. But I think they are great - they speed things up and leave you time to work on other areas that really need it.
I personally wouldn't use a preset on an EQ, apart from creative eq-ing like 'headphone' settings or the self-saved ones I mentioned above, if coming back to the same person/location etc).
The majority of audio I EQ is dialogue, and there truly is no one-size-fits-all. You could have two deep male voices recorded on the same mic in the same room that need completely different eq-ing. I guess it could be useful to use something like 'bright room' (I admittedly don't actually know what presets there are for eqs).
If you are a junior then presets here would be more useful, or maybe if they have things like 'too boomy voice' but for fixing problems I like to find them and fix them manually. This is just my personal preference, perhaps because I use and adjust EQs so frequently that I'm more comfortable doing it myself now.
Lucy J Mitchell is a freelance Sound Editor and Dubbing Mixer for TV, Film and Computer Games living on the Surrey-London border, with new own facility LJ Studios in a purpose-built studio in the garden. She works on all genres and all areas of sound editorial; you name it.
Luke Goddard
Trying to find a factory preset that agrees with the source is so much slower than pulling an EQ band or skimming over my compressor’s Big Three (that’s Ratio, Threshold and Auto!) to paint the picture.
On the assumption that presets are supposed to speed up workflow, or provide serving suggestions, for me using one would involve more tweakage than starting afresh.
I find lists of anything pretty joyless, so for me at least, when it comes to creating something they’re off the menu (pun intended).
For newbies, I’m not sure if presets are the best place to start in terms of developing listening skills, but of course, they can get you further if you’re going it alone with something completely new. I speak as someone who recently dived straight into the safety of a preset menu when faced with Logic X’s Alchemy for the first time!
I do make and use my own presets, but the biggest time-savers relate to the functionality rather than the audio's aesthetic. In Softube Console, signal flow through the channels’ three blocks of Shape, EQ, and Compressor is configurable. My User Default on inputs is Shape-Comp-EQ, which swaps the factory default order for the last two. Setting this as the plugin’s default in PT is another time-saver.
For me, inputs always benefit from settings dialled in from scratch. It’s simply quicker than forcing a preset to work on a source and helps me to keep an open mind.
Where I do use my own presets to shape sounds is across outputs, namely for buss comp duties for music. I always gravitate towards the same values, so these have my go-to settings but with high thresholds that I can tease downwards to taste. These were in CompressorBank up until recently, and now Softube’s Weiss Gambit DS1.
With many people using the same tools on everything, presets can only increase the ubiquity of some sounds. Is that a good thing? Some sounds have had to earn cliche status before being immortalised in a preset! The source is everything, and for me, no EQ or dynamics preset can know how to be right for the source, although the recent emergence of tools such as Focusrite’s FAST suite will change this.
It’s true to say I often find myself dialling similar settings into the same plugin. For that, there are user presets. But for the genesis of those sounds, where’s the creativity (or fun) is not coming up with your own recipe for weird SFX, a larger-than-life acoustic guitar, or a razor-edged synth that sounds like it wants to steal your dinner money?
Luke Goddard is an engineer and musician who has been living with instruments, mics, consoles, tapes, and gear of all shapes and sizes since he first started playing music nearly 30 years ago in the days of Portastudios and MIDIVerbs. His day job is educator, freelance recording, mixing, mastering engineer, and drummer, keyboardist, vocalist for anyone with room on the bus.
Mark M Thompson
Presets can be a great starting point for certain types of plugin. A particular compressor’s “kick drum” preset, for instance, is likely to be fairly close to what you require and if you want a hall reverb on your vocals, then selecting “vocal hall” is quite probably going to save you a fair amount of time as opposed to attempting an algorithm build from scratch.
However, in the case of EQing, de-essing and anything that isn’t tempo-based, then dialling in the desired settings yourself from a blank canvas is not only going to yield far better results for your mix but may even give you the satisfaction of having not depended on a manufacturer’s idea of what your acoustic guitar should sound like.
Mark M Thompson is a musical director, arranger and entertainment developer for P&O Cruises. His roles include performing live and creating shows for the company, as well as freelance work. His credits include touring and/or recording with Paul McCartney, Sarah Brightman, Slash and the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing house band.
Michael Costa
The age-old criticism of EQ presets is when something is labelled “Snare” or “Kick”. How can the designer of the preset possibly know what my snare or kick sounds like? Mine might be well recorded, or it might be poorly recorded. It’s a fair criticism.
A far better approach, I feel, is the one taken by Eiosis in their Air EQ. In my opinion, it succeeds on two important levels:
Each preset presents with all gain controls set to 0. So no preset has an affect on the sound just by itself. That way you’re starting with a sanitised ear when you begin tweaking.
This plugin has an excellent feature where every band can be renamed. So instead of the generic “Hi Mid Freq”, that band can be renamed in a kick preset to say ”Attack” or any other word that conveys its intended purpose.
Have a look at this “Kick Drum” preset from the Air EQ.
When it comes to what types of presets do you find useful. When a plugin is complicated and/or powerful, some well thought out presets can take away the mystique or fear, especially for less experienced users or those looking for instant gratification because they are working on music and not being a technician.
Something like the excellent Waves CLA Epic comes to mind here. There are so many wonderful options with this plugin, it can be easy to get tangled up with the choices. In this situation, the presets can throw you in deep instantly, with the ability to completely reconfigure things if you don’t find something inspirational or useful.
While it’s easy to mount arguments against the use of presets in devices like an EQ, I feel it’s much harder to draw that same argument against the use of presets in synths.
My axe of choice is Omnisphere from Spectrasonics. A product like this could not succeed without a suite of hugely varied presets. Its feature set is so incredibly rich, and it sounds so damn good, that I simply don’t have the intellect to create a patch from scratch that could match anything from the suite of (literally) 12,000 presets.
My normal operation is to browse presets, avoid getting too inspired and wasting an evening jamming with them, and then finally settling on something close enough to what I’m after. Only then do I dive into the patch itself and generally tailor the envelope to match the need, and perhaps tweak the onboard effects if they’re a little too strong for the song.
Michael Costa is an audio engineer, educator and musician with a long history in mixing and mastering. His career began in the early days of Pro Tools and he later co-founded a successful DVD authoring company that specialised in producing surround sound audio for DVD. He has worked with such notable artists as INXS, Little River Band and John Farnham.
Mike Thorne
I’m not a preset snob - I’m pleased to use them as a jumping-off point, especially if I’m unfamiliar with a plugin. Let’s be honest: how many of us would ever program a reverb setting from scratch?
Most of us are naturally nosy - we like to see how other engineers use the same tools. Although I might not use CLA’s or Andrew Scheps’ guitar presets in my own mix, it’s fun to check them out and get insight into how they work.
The most useful presets I’ve found are Bob Katz’s mastering ones for Leapwing’s DynOne plugin and Softube’s Weiss DS1-MK3 limiter. Although I always tweak these according to the source material, they are great starting places that I often use.
Creating my own plugin presets has become part of my workflow. I often use Izotope’s RX plugins in my sessions, and being able to call up an audio suite plugin with my default settings is a big time-saver.
Similarly, with Track Presets in Pro Tools, I can instantly import entire headphones or mix bus chains.
Mike Thorne has been playing, recording and mixing music professionally for over 23 years, including the last 12 years with a focus on mastering audio. He works out of his studio, Rimshot, in the UK and is one third of Brik Hit House, a production company he formed with cellist Jess Cox and composer James Pickering.
Roger Guerin
I use presets when I want to be inspired, something off the wall, outside the proverbial box. If it triggers an idea, I will fine-tune it to my specific need. Or I'll go on YouTube and see what others are using, but specifically how they are using it.
I also use presets when I receive a new plugin. I have a dummy session that includes a human voice, a bass drum (kick) and a snare. It's a quick and dirty test, covering High, Mid Low, to see how the plugin's presets behave. I usually go through roughly ten (10) presets with the most ‘artistic’ names, then I customise them by adding my initials, and maybe they’ll end up in my workflow.
I use presets when I no idea what the manufacturer’s initial intent was. I remember when I got my copy of Excalibur, I binged through every presets with amazement. It is clearly a very creative plugin. I then customised some of them slightly, to match a tempo or what have you, but most of them are great right out of the gate.
Other presets I use are reverbs, it's always nice to hear the original intent, and figure out how can I push its boundaries, how does it sound in surround, is it Atmos friendly?
When I do the occasional piece of sound design, I am a great believer in making use of samplers. Nothing beats a power chord triggering the ultimate explosion. My library started out with the Roland S750, transported that to the MachV, then Kontakt, and now I am settled with the UVI Falcon, without forgetting the very inspiring Iris2. I have a large collection of Patch-Samples, but I am always on the lookout for a new collection of inspired sounds, usually musical instruments that I make use of in a whole new way.
Roger Guerin comes from the music recording world, after several platinum albums he brings his quest for quality sound to the pictures. With close to 200 entries on imdb.com, he is a rare member of both the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) and the Cinema Audio Society (CAS).
Steve DeMott
What do I love about the supplied plugin presets, which come with just about every plugin I’ve ever purchased?
Nothing (mostly)! I mean, there is very little chance that whoever created the ‘warm acoustic guitar’ EQ preset that shipped with that EQ plugin was treating a source that was similar to mine. The same goes for the ‘Smooth Vocal’ preset that shipped with that compressor plugin. There are simply too many variables, and since I know what I want to hear it has always been easier for me to tweak the knobs myself.
That said, the idea of pulling up a setting, with a click or two really appeals to me. So what I do is save presets when I get a setting I like and want to be able to use as a launch point later. I don’t do this so much for individual sources, but I do save presets for bus processing.
Okay, okay...I will admit that there are a few types of plugins where I find the presets usable. Particularly the sound design type plugins and some of the “character” plugins. For the sound design plugins, the presets generally provide a great starting point for getting to interesting sonic treatments.
And the ‘colour’ type plugins often have presets that represent some sort of hardware colouration, like gentle tube saturation or transformer clipping.
Steve DeMott is a Connecticut based audio engineer, producer and multi-instrumentalist. He studied Songwriting and Music Production & Engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA & has been recording professionally for over 20 years. He now manages a commercial studio where they produce, record, edit, mix & master music & audio projects for artists & companies.
Ufuk Önen
Professionally, I use plugin presets (whether I created and saved before or that come with the plugin) as starting points, just like most people do. I then tweak them to the needs of the particular track.
However, as an educator, I use them as a teaching tool. I suggest my students analyze how the settings of parameters change from one preset to another and how these changes affect the plugin's working.
For example, in a compressor plugin, let's assume that we have presets named 'vintage rock kick' and 'tight kick.' What are the differences between ratio, attack, and release values? How do these differences contribute to the working of the compressor and the sound character of the kick? What happens when you increase and decrease these values? My students find these analyses and comparisons very helpful.
Ufuk Önen is an audio engineer, author, and educator with 30 years of experience in music production and audio post-production. He has a passion to publish books, articles, and blog posts. He has also contributed to more than 300 sound reinforcement, cinema sound installation, and electroacoustic projects as a consultant. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate-level courses on sound, music, and media at Bilkent University.
William Wittman
There are no doubt certain types of plugins where presets are extremely useful starting points. It’s useful with effects plug-ins specifically and especially reverbs, to be able to page through a list of general preset ideas. Is it a ‘warm plate’ or a ‘wooden hall’? Is it a ‘slap delay’ or ‘endless ping pong’? And so on.
The same goes for synths or amp sims or anything where you’re potentially choosing wildly different flavours of a thing. These are obviously useful starting points.
But when it comes to the basic tools, such as EQ and compression, I frankly don’t find presets to be particularly helpful.
For one thing, they inevitably make certain assumptions about your recording that I can’t help but find unwarranted at best. So when I pull up a “guitar solo” EQ preset, it assumes that my guitar solo ‘needs’ to be brighter or have some mid frequencies scooped out or the low end filtered, etc.
But what if the guitar I’ve recorded, or been handed to mix, is already too bright? Those built-in assumptions are rarely on target in my experience.
Now, looking beyond those specifics, an argument might be made for looking at that preset as a guideline. So, for example, pulling up a “Snare” EQ preset might not give you instant snare happiness, but it might hint that 100Hz, and 1kHz, and 4kHz, and 10KHz could be the areas you could consider boosting or cutting depending on your needs.
I’ve heard that argument made; that it’s about suggesting starting points. But even there I find the concept wanting. Those frequencies are in fact what a Wittman Snare EQ preset might look like, but they’re going to be quite different from what someone else’s idea as to the frequencies to fiddle with are.
That’s what makes recording interesting; the fact that we all have our own tastes and preferences and predilections. At the most, and because of this, I think the most potentially useful plugin presets are often grouped in “artiste” folders so that you might see how a variety of different engineer who’ve contributed presets aim at a particular instrument.
I’d much rather see “Roy’s Snare” and “Ken’s Snare”, and so on, in the list than just the manufacturer’s blanket “Snare” idea. On the whole, I can see why plugin presets can be a useful educational tool, especially for the beginner, to see where the more experienced user might go as a starting point. But I have to say that for me, the presets I use tend to be the ones I’ve stored myself.
William Wittman is a Grammy Award-winning independent Producer/Engineer/Musician/Songwriter based in New York whose credits include the multi-platinum debuts from Cyndi Lauper, Joan Osborne, the Hooters, and The Outfield.
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