Recently, I’ve been going through a cleansing ritual at Everything Recording HQ. Computer formatted, plugin folders liquidated, and a long hard look at the choices I’ve made as far as hardware goes. This was no small task, either. Almost half of my entire setup was sold: HD Native System, Sonnet Thunderbolt Chassis, Slate Raven, SwitchCraft Patchbay, and many others pulled from their loving home and placed in another.
Many of you may be asking, “WHY?” The answer is simple and a whole separate article within itself – because change is good. I get the other side of the argument involving faster workflow, but it’s good to shake things up a bit. All of the gear I sold was great – I have no complaints about the performance, but if I’m truly going to stay with the times, I’ve got to be willing to jettison the familiar and evolve with the times.
With that newfound philosophy, I took my own site’s advice (courtesy of my good friend and excellent writer B. Church) and bought the very same interface he did, the PreSonus Quantum 4848. While I was patiently waiting for the interface to arrive, I browsed the site, getting myself pumped up over all of Quantum’s new features and something caught my eye. Something I’d been missing since I gave up my Digi 003 to buy the HD Native – buttons, knobs, and faders!
In with the New
The item in question was the FaderPort series, namely, the FaderPort. This controller had exactly what I was looking for and the motto to boot: “Don’t Kill That Mouse. Give it a Companion”. Many manufacturers set out to eliminate the mouse and keyboard. The FaderPort offers something different: a device a little bigger than a keyboard that can sit right beside it with just the controls needed to get things done. No convoluted gestures on a screen, just good old fashion button mashing and fader pulling. I immediately contacted PreSonus and had it added to the order.
Fade to Black
Here it is! Everything that comes in the FaderPort’s box
Coming in just under $220.00, FaderPort maintains a low price point and footprint. The unit is only 2 inches tall x 9 inches long x 5.5 inches wide. This fits perfectly in a sliding pullout keyboard drawer next to your keyboard, which is just what I did. I placed mine on the left to quickly access whatever buttons without releasing the mouse, almost like an extension of the keyboard itself. In the box, we have a standard USB cable, round anti-skid pads for the bottom, and nearly every type of power receptacle the traveling producer would need.
Hey Good Lookin’
The unit itself is a sleek black with a Christmas tree’s worth of backlit colored buttons, each corresponding to different functions. The only small gripe about the actual hardware is that the surface tends to fingerprint and smudge easily, especially during marathon sessions. The knobs and buttons feel very durable and solid, and the fader itself is very smooth. Being a 100mm touch-sensitive fader, even the smallest move gets recognized. As far as ports on the back, FaderPort clocks in with three: a power adapter, an optional footswitch jack, and the USB port to connect.
Options abound as far as DAW-of-choice, with FaderPort easily supporting all mainstream DAWs without any driver installation. To test this out, I ran it on Logic, Pro Tools, and of course, Studio One 5. Switching quickly between DAWs is very simple; power off, then power back on while hitting specific button combos. The only drawback is that each time you power off, you have to perform the same power off / on key command to set the unit up for your DAW (that is, unless you use Studio One). Additionally, some of the buttons do not have any functions for different DAWs, and currently, there’s no way to change them. Although FaderPort works for different DAWs, primarily, it was designed to be optimized for Studio One. Don’t let this stray you from using with others; consider it all the more reason to move over to Studio One.
Everything in its Right Place
PreSonus has the organization game locked down on FaderPort. You get only the buttons you commonly used, and they’re laid out logically. My only issue is with the “SHIFT” button’s location. I have smaller hands, and it’s a stretch hitting those F keys in combo with the SHIFT. It would feel more natural to me if the shift was closer to the middle or bottom. The only button missing is an “Enter or OK” button, but other than that, everything else makes perfect sense, and in no time, you won’t even have to look down to find the right function.
Speed and precision is the name of the game, and the FaderPort has it in spades. The Session Navigator comes complete with a big blue button right in the center that makes finding tracks, markers, zooming, or panning a breeze. If further control of panning is needed, the Flip control gives laser precision by turning the Fader into a pan control.
In Use
The learning curve couldn’t have been easier. You already know what the buttons do in your DAW; you merely need to memorize their location. The color-coded system makes this task even easier. The workflow on FaderPort is masterful. No more fumbling around for automation. Grab the session navigator, find your track, hit the automation mode, and you’re instantly on the fader making moves. PreSonus has hit a home run with FaderPort. In the several months that I’ve owned my FaderPort, I’ve already used it immensely more than my previous control surface. No extra setup or steps needed, simply turn it on, hit your key modifier for your DAW, and get to work. I bonded so well with the unit, I started taking it to other sessions, and when I’m traveling, it’s small enough I can throw in my backpack.
If more is what you need, PreSonus takes the same incredible functionality and expands the number of faders and knobs in both eight and 16 channel varieties. The expanded versions do get the upgrade of small LCD screens and expanded buttons for quick access to sends, FX, outputs, etc.
There’s no shortage of reasons to buy any of the FaderPort series. Whether you’re on the road, looking for a control surface with just the essentials, or out of desk space, FaderPort has you covered.
Not So Fast… There’s Something Possibly Better
ioStation 24c
What if for 80 more dollars I could show you something even better, especially for the musician or engineer on the go? Behold the ioStation 24c! This ever so slightly bigger unit (2.4 inches tall, 6.76 inches wide, and 9.6 inches long) tacks on 2 of PreSonus’ acclaimed XMAX preamps, along with a monitor output, headphone out, and footswitch jack. Further future-proofing your setup, ioStation 24c can run resolutions all the way up to 192kHz as well as employing USB-C. In the box, you get the same setup as the FaderPort along with the addition of one USB-C to standard USB-A cable (in case your workstation doesn’t have USB-C yet).
Although the unit has impressively low latency, ioStation 24c includes an input/playback blend knob that gives you the power to mix the precise amount of dry signal into your headphones while recording. The preamps can handle up to 115dB of dynamic range, and the connectors for your mics and instruments utilize very sturdy Amphenol jacks.
More Reasons to Upgrade
If two added preamps, monitor output, and a headphone jack wasn’t already a steal for eighty more dollars, ioStation 24c comes with StudioOne Artist along with the 2020 Studio Magic Suite. This suite in itself is worth almost three times the value of the ioStation 24c itself with six virtual instruments and nine effects plugins. These are no bottom-of-the-barrel plugins. We’re talking names like Arturia, Plugin Alliance, Output, and Lexicon.
In Use
I travel quite a bit, so having a two-channel interface along with a controller is a dream. I don’t know of many other all-in-one units, especially one with the caliber of preamps and functionality ioStation offers. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything close to comparable to ioStation 24c. The preamps sound excellent, and even if you rarely used them, you’re still getting a massive upgrade from the FaderPort. I know 80$ is a lot to come by for the struggling musician but go ahead and do yourself a favor and ditch the old interface and buy this.
Improvements?
Honestly, there are not many, with most of the ones in this review being personal taste, but there are a few. As for the ioStation, I wish the headphone jack was on the unit’s side, or an additional one was placed on the side. Many times my headphone cord kept draping over the controls. A simple extension cable will suffice, but that’s just an improvement for the next one!
In the same vein of improvements for the next version, an enter or OK key would be nice, and the shift button moved to an easier place to reach. Additionally, I wish the FaderPort 1 and ioStation 24c had an LCD like the FaderPort 8 and 16 models for expanded feedback. I don’t necessarily feel like it’s a dealbreaker, but it seems very useful.
Lastly, I’d like to see the ability to custom map buttons that don’t function in certain DAWs. The easy PreSonus answer to this is to switch to Studio One (which they have made easy with a version that comes with ioStation 24c), but that is a gradual change that takes time. I am learning Studio One for the record, and I must say Presonus has me getting FOMO when I work in my normal DAW. Change is definitely coming!
In Conclusion
You won’t have a single regret purchasing either one of these, but I do strongly STRONGLY encourage you to consider the ioStation 24c. I’ve never seen an $80 upgrade have so much return on investment. These controllers are the absolute perfect companion for anyone. I’ll put my money where my mouth is on this one. I bought both of them! The FaderPort stays in HQ because I have the Quantum, and the ioStation 24c stays in my travel bag.
Price (FaderPort): $219.00 Link HERE
Price (ioStation 24c): $299.00 Link HERE
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FaderPort / ioStation 24c Rundown
5 / 5Reviewer
Pros
- Small footprint, perfect for placing next to a keyboard for expanded control
- All of the buttons you need without all of the filler
- No drivers needed. Just plug and go
Cons
No real complaints
Summary
If you've already got a great interface, FaderPort is perfect for you. If you need one, ioStation 24c has you covered with two XMAX preamps, monitor output, and headphone controller. Both offer a sleek look with functionality to boot. You will be hard-pressed to find a better alternative to either of these impressive units.
Unless you’ve been under a rock (which these days may be a very safe place to socially distance), Black Friday 2020 is upon us and Loopcloud has an immensely enticing deal. Plus, you won’t even have to come out from under your rock! Details below.
3 months of Loopcloud for £3 / $3, and get Bass Master (VST/AU) for FREE
Everything you need to create amazing music in Loopcloud’s best ever promotion!
Want the largest and most diverse sound library in the world, covering all genres of music? From now until 2nd December 2020, new subscribers can get that vintage synth, drum machine or guitar sound they’ve been eyeing up. It’s all here along with acapellas and every instrument you could wish for, lovingly recorded in the best studio environments all for £3 / $3 for 3 months.
Nobody has more content from top artists, Loopcloud’s library has been curated by the very best artists, DJ’s and musicians for nearly 20 years.
What’s more, this deal also includes a license for Loopmasters’ own Bass Master plugin, worth £69.95 / £89.
About Loopcloud
With 4 million samples to audition right inside your DAW, in key and in tempo with your project, Loopcloud gives you access to the highest quality, professionally recorded loops and one-shots in an instant. Using the Loopcloud plugin to audition new sounds in context with your current production, you can check that each sound inspires you before using any points to download it.
Loopcloud comes with the inspirational Loopcloud DRUM and PLAY plugin suite, two cloud-connected instruments which come complete with exclusive Artist content and vast amounts of sounds which span a huge number of genres.
About Bass Master
Heavy, speaker-shaking tones are just a few clicks away with Bass Master. Combine two of 217 waveforms from a mixture of legendary hardware classics and cutting-edge synth tones, and use the onboard envelopes, effects, and comprehensive filter section to make them yours.
Bass Master functions as a VST/AU plugin instrument, and includes 350 presets to give you mix-ready bass tones every time. Bass Master usually costs £69.95 / $89 but is free as part of this deal.
Get 3 months of Loopcloud for £3 / $3, and receive Bass Master for Free. This offer ends 2nd December.
We have watched Ozone grow over the past several years (Ozone 7 Review) (Ozone 8 Review). For Ozone 9, we decided to do something different. This version comes with quite a few new features and updates, so instead of rush delivering a review, we sat with the software for over a year to see how many of the new features stayed in our rotation. Let’s get to it.
Version 9
With the number of new bells and updated whistles, it makes you wonder how they’re going to top themselves for Ozone’s tenth anniversary. A quick overview will show a bevy of under the hood enhancements, additions to existing modules, and two all-new tools to shape your tracks. Ozone 9 still comes in their Elements, Standard, and Advanced, with Advanced packing the most goodies (plus you get to use each module as an individual plugin). Prices start at $129 for Elements, $249 for Standard, with Advanced coming in just under $500. For a breakdown of what features come with each version, visit https://www.izotope.com/en/products/ozone/pricing-options.html
Enhancements
A new version comes with new improvements. One of the great things about iZotope is that they realize their software suites are living breathing bundles. They also realize that the people who use Ozone every day have valuable opinions. They take their user’s feedback seriously and incorporate it into new versions. On top of a slight UI facelift and performance boost, plugin windows can now be resized. With this new addition to screen real estate, metering has been improved with smoother visuals and increased responsiveness.
Master Assistant
Version 8 brought the Master Assistant, which uses machine learning to dial in a suggested starting point for masters. One of the suggestions made in our Ozone 8 review was to incorporate the Vintage modules in Master Assistant. Now in Version 9, we’re proud to report that Mastering Assistant has a “Vintage Mode” selector to use those great old-school-inspired modules.
Match EQ
What once was a feature inside of the EQ section is now its own module. Match EQ takes a snapshot from another track and utilizes up to 8,000 separate bands to create an EQ curve you can apply to your mix. The track can either be a part of your session or from the Reference section of Ozone 9. Boundary controls can be set only to alter the frequency of a certain part of the source audio. Once created, your favorite snapshots can be saved as presets. Owners of Advanced can even use Match EQ as a standalone plugin.
Imager
The imager adds two Stereoize modes to either bring mono signals to stereo or widen existing stereo signals. “Stereoize I” creates a classic sounding image, with more color applied to the signal. “Stereoize II” is used for more transparent stereo widening. Imager adds extra bands so you can widen only portions of the spectrum.
Tonal Balance Control 2
The TBC plugin is the common link for all iZotope plugins. This plugin “hub” goes at the end of your chain on the master or mix bus and analyzes your EQ curve versus standards. This indispensable tool also can be used to control the EQ curve of other tracks. Additionally, each band in the GUI can be soloed, so you can hear how each section of your track fares against a reference. As an upgrade with version 2, 10 more genre target curves have been added to the 3 previous curves in the selection window. In addition to previously controlling Neutron and Ozone track EQs, Tonal Balance Control can now control the EQ and gain from any, Neutron, Nectar, Relay, or Ozone plugin the session.
New Additions
Aside from the various upgrades to existing features, Ozone 9 also comes with all new improvements and modules. NKS support has been added for Native Instrument hardware, complete with easy preset integration and macro controls. As far as modules go, two more have been added with Master Rebalance and Low-End Focus.
Master Rebalance
This module uses Source Separation technology to pick specific parts of a track and increase its impact on the overall mix. Master Rebalance accomplishes this in real-time with either a session in your DAW or with bounced stereo files. This is especially ideal for mastering engineers who have a stereo WAV file and would like to change certain aspects of the mix. The module is pretty simple, load it up, select one of the three focus areas (Vocals, Bass, or Drums), and turn the gain up to taste. This control can also be automated in the DAW to push certain Focus points during the mix.
Low-End Focus
The foundation of a solid mix lies in its lower frequencies. Conversely, this area can sometimes be the toughest to establish. Low-End Focus lends a helping hand by allowing specific frequency bands to be selected and tailored to suit the source material. While most plugins that assist with the bottom end of the spectrum only focus on adding more transient response, Low-End Focus goes beyond “one-trick pony” status and works for various issues.
The Contrast control works both positively and negatively, with positive adding the punch and Negative smoothing out lows for a more analog compression vibe. Two modes work in tandem with this control. Punchy is the more aggressive mode by exaggerating low-end impact. Smooth is more subtle and transparent. Think of Punchy being used more for percussive and smooth for a nice push to the whole spectrum. To assist in dialing in the right amount, a Listen control shows the difference between the processed and unprocessed, and Gain allows for better level matching between raw and processed tracks.
What I’ve Liked
The Master Assistant has been a constant go-to, especially when I either need to hear how my mix will roughly sound after the mastering engineer is finished or when I need to send a rough idea to a client. In nearly every case, the results got me right where I needed to be.
The Low-End Focus is a great plugin, especially with bass-heavy tracks. I had an artist who wanted four separate bass tracks on a song, mostly playing simultaneously. Dialing in one bass track is a challenge enough, but tacking on three more was a challenge. The Low-End Focus helped meld all of the lows in
Because inevitably, you will end up putting something from Ozone on mixes, using the iZotope Ozone 9 plugin at the end of your chain is a no-brainer. The Reference section is a great way to check your mixes against multiple reference tracks. You can set specific areas to loop and trim the level to match your source audio, giving you a better picture of how your mix holds up versus similar tracks.
What Has Withstood The Test of Time
So far, Low-End Focus has made a spot on the Mix Bus, and I’ve even found myself using EQ Match when I’m stumped on just exactly what it is that makes my track differ from others. The Imager is in semi-regular rotation, given that you can choose multiple frequencies and widen each differently. As always, the Vintage Tape and Limiter are in heavy rotation, not just on the main bus. Vintage Tape takes a little of the harshness out of a drum bus, and the Vintage Limiter evens and pushes bass tracks a little harder.
Since version 1, Tonal Balance Control has a permanent spot on my mix bus, and the added target curves make dialing in genre-specific music to similar songs. I’m regularly soloing bands from TBC to check against my reference and use both the Broad and Fine graphs. Each has its specific use when checking different aspects of the mix. TBC is one of those plugins I don’t think I would want to go without. Plus, the more you use other iZotope plugins, the faster fixing issues are by expanding TBC’s bottom and adjusting right from the plugin window.
What I’d Like to See Improved
Even though I love Tonal Balance Control, I do have some gripes about how it operates. I want each of the four bands to be sweepable, meaning I can set custom frequency ranges to solo. I get the plugin now has the overall bands covered, but why not let me move them around?
The Reference section needs some updates as well. I feel like this area possesses a lot more potential than its current version. I want to use iZotope’s incredible metering in a grander sense than I can currently with reference mixes. Right now, you’re only able to see a narrow strip and compare frequencies between your track and references. It would help to be able to create several bands and solo both the reference and the track to see differences in frequency content. Maybe even add the reference section to TBC or vise versa. My resolution to this issue is to piecemeal a similar setup using another Ozone multiband compressor after the Ozone plugin and only use the solo bands to check versus the reference. It’s very convoluted, and I have yet to see any current reference plugin get this totally right.
Lastly, Master Rebalance seems to have a bug (or maybe this is how it operates) where when you switch from vocals to a different area to rebalance; it resets the previous setting. It seems you can only rebalance one element.
In Conclusion
Ozone is a staple of audio mastering. iZotope keep pushing the boundaries in every new version. They’ve found a way to link all of their plugins in one ecosystem within a DAW, and that’s no small feat. With so many other plugin manufacturers coming up with new tools daily, it’s great to see iZotope doing similar things, all while staying in the vein of what makes their plugins so great – the interface and the feedback. Given I’ve waited over a year to do this review, it really shows Ozone 9 has made tools that have withstood the test of time. Believe me; I’ve reviewed countless products that seemed indispensable when I initially tried them but fell by the wayside months later. Ozone 9’s new tricks do not fall in that category.
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- Low-End Focus, EQ, Match, and Vintage Mode on Master Assistant are welcome additions.
- Ozone 9 serves to further cement the iZotope ecosystem within any DAW by making their plugins communicate and adjust quicker and easier
- Updates to Tonal Balance Control give more targets for other genres
Cons
- Reference Section needs more functionality for metering and soloing both reference track bands and your own mix
- Tonal Balance Control 2 needs the ability to move the set solo frequency bands around and maybe even a button to turn on the reference track too.
Summary
Ozone 9 is a massive upgrade from version 8, easily justifying the upgrade fee. If iZotope keep pushing the envelope further each version, who knows the possibilities!
Yes, Everything Recording is a little tardy to the Oeksound party, but we’re a small operation over here. Better late than never, right? Either way, huge names in mixing have been singing Soothe’s praises (then probably using it to correct the harshness in said praises). Either Oeksound has some serious dirt on several well-known mix engineers (we know how NAMM is), or Soothe2 is the real deal. Let’s get to it.
Expensive Hardware Can’t Fix It All
Every person creating and recording music knows the pitfalls of audio all too well. This is why Everything Recording exists – you are on an existential “Eat Pray Love” virtual trip around the world of audio, and we are mere tour guides. If there is one thing my journey has taught me, it’s this – expensive hardware can’t fix everything.
A vintage Telefunken U 47 run through a Neve 8068 and into a Rev H 1176 can’t fix a nasally singer or someone strumming too hard with that drink coaster they call a pick. How do I know this? Well, I’ve recorded on that very signal chain, and when I hit certain notes, sounded a little harsh. I was also nervous being at a world-class facility and strummed way too hard tracking acoustic guitar. Yes, the dream signal chain will make the audio easier to tame, but sometimes even the best can’t fix your problems. On the opposite end of the spectrum, that MXL mic run through your red budget interface is going to pose its own problems for even your best performer. Either way, sometimes you need to bring in a ringer, and Soothe2 is just the man for the job.
What Is Soothe?
That’s a rather convoluted question. Coined by Oeksound as a “dynamic resonance suppressor,” it seems to be part EQ, part dynamics processor, and part spectral shaper. The goal of Soothe2, however, is simple: to quickly and easily take the problematic frequencies out of your audio while minimally affecting the rest. Taming these problem areas is no simple task; many times, EQ and compression aren’t enough. Alternatively, the current lineup of advanced tools employs an airplane cockpit worth of dials and controls, leaving you mentally exhausted digging through the operation manual and tutorials. For the record, Soothe keeps the primary controls in the single digits.
Repeat After Me, “This is not an EQ.”
Boosting is the new cutting!
Although the interface looks like it, Soothe is not an EQ. Rather, it has commissioned “EQ-like” controls to impact the problem audio. Soothe 2 comes with six bands, or “nodes,” as they call them (high pass, low pass, and four parametric bands). When you select each node, controls at the bottom appear for the different types. The filters have specific slopes, and the four remaining nodes have six additional types from standard, shelving, notch, to tilt bands. The frequency and q do the same things that EQs do, but this is where the similarities stop.
To understand Soothe, you have to take the concept of EQ and flip it on its head. Turning up a band on EQ will boost the frequency, but with Soothe, it does something slightly different. Turning up the “sens” control increases the resonant suppression and, therefore, decreases the harsh stuff for that specific band. Basically, when you see the band on the graph turned up, it’s handling more of the problem areas. While the knobs at the bottom are great, you can just as easily grab a node and adjust that way. You can even tweak the q by Command (control for Windows) clicking the band, and pulling up or down on the node. You’ll see exactly what Soothe is removing in the spectrograph. The gray notches in the blue show what’s being taken out.
Repeat After Me Again, “This is not a Compressor.”
Yes, the interface has “compressor-like” controls but is not quite a compressor. The above-mentioned nodes work in tandem with the five knobs in the depth and speed section to control just how Soothe will handle your problem frequencies. The depth knob serves as the main control for how much overall processing should be applied to all boosted nodes. Just above the depth knob are two choices for different modes of processing. These two modes determine how the depth control will affect the audio, with each name being pretty self-explanatory.
Sharpness and selectivity expand on the depth control and help dial in the perfect amount of suppression. A higher sharpness will make for narrower notches, and a lower will work for more broadband control. Selectivity makes Soothe more choosy, and a higher value only suppresses the most resonant of frequencies. Finally, the attack and release work similar to a compressor with the attack controlling how long it takes for the suppression to reach its max value, and the release for how long for Soothe to return back to nominal.
Extra Tools
Soothe has additionally packed a few more tools to further assist with both understanding exactly what the plugin is doing to your audio as well as cater to more particular situations. Soothe comes with the usual side-chain, blend control, mid-side operation, and trim; but it’s the delta and quality control that break the mold.
The quality control is a Godsend for your CPU meter, with a separate mode for online and offline operation. If your session is taxing your CPU, you can set your realtime oversampling and resolution lower, while leaving the offline to higher settings. That way, when you go to bounce the track, you’ll get the most precise processing while still saving a few overloads during playback.
If you’re still scratching your head on what exactly Soothe is doing, the delta control will shed a little light. When engaged, the delta will let you hear what it is removing from your audio. This is where the “aha” moment of “this is not an EQ or a compressor” makes the picture clearer. Things will sound fairly washy but you’ll get a clear picture of what Soothe is taking out of the equation. Using the delta while adjusting settings also helps to tweak reduction to taste and in some cases, can even work as an effect in itself. Try it, it does sound cool pushed really hard.
In Use
Using Soothe 2 is like having cheat codes. What used to take a chain of plugins and hours of listening to looped parts of audio is fixed within minutes and very few mouse clicks. In most cases, the default preset will get you 80% there. If the default preset is not enough, Soothe has an impressive library of tailored presets by engineers like Jaquire King, Greg Wells, and Dave Pensado. The one trick to learn early on is balance. Sometimes using soft mode aggressively will do the trick and with others hard mode used sparingly gets the job done. Like anything in life, practice makes perfect.
The only small complaint I had involved the preset menu. I wish once you selected a preset, the menu would close; but I suppose that was carefully thought out to cycle between presets. After all, the majority of the time, the presets need very little tweaking.
In Conclusion
Soothe is certainly the real deal. There is a great deal of sorcery going on under the hood of a plugin that at its core is very easy to operate. This plugin will easily become the Franks Red Hot” of plugins – you’ll want to put the s*** on everything! Whether it’s de-essing or a shrill overhead track on drums, Soothe has you handled.
- Very easy-to-use interface
- Extremely powerful tool for removing problem frequencies
- Very transparent
Cons
- None
Summary
No one wants to spend hours fixing a harsh track. Soothe 2 borrows controls from compression and EQ and takes every bit of guesswork out of taming unruly frequencies. Give it your worst - Soothe can handle it.
We all have “that” drum “triggering” software that has dominated the space for years, but maybe it’s time for a change. I can admit that I’ve been lazily set in my ways about my choice of drum replacement, so when UVI gave us a chance to take their new drum exchange plugin, I jumped at the opportunity. I mean, who wouldn’t want a drum replacement plugin that lets you use samples alongside virtual instruments?! Let’s dig in
Interesting Move, UVI
UVI is not necessarily a company known for utility plugins. Their UVI Workstation houses countless libraries from toy instruments to every possible vintage synth you would ever want. I personally own Darklight IIx and Mello and think they’re both dead-ringers of their iconic hardware counterparts. Needless to say, I was surprised to see UVI moving into new frontiers. Drum Replacer breaks new ground in UVI’s up-and-coming lineup of reverbs, modulation, delays, and even a new type of EQ. The plugin comes in all standard AAX, AU, VST formats, and even installs and activates via the UVI Portal, which takes all of the headaches out of getting all set up.
Replacing the Replacer
So, why should you consider switching to a new drum exchanger? UVI’s answer is pretty simple – it does things your current plugin only dreams of. From its machine learning separation tool to the vast options for triggering samples and yes VSTi’s, UVI has housed nearly every single tool you need to quickly get your drums dialed in one window. With every trick placed in one plugin, you can get to the creative bits faster by letting Drum Replacer do the tedious stuff.
Lather, Rinse, Replace
So here we are – the GUI. Personally, I’m a big fan of both the look and the layout of the interface. Even just upon an initial glance, you can tell there is more going on than just your garden-variety functions for adding that spankin’ new drum sample by Mutemath’s former drummer. Don’t let the various compartments and sections intimidate. Everything is laid out logically and you’ll be a master in no time flat.
Starting from the left you have the Central Analyzer, which gives feedback to the various controls from the Detection section. These two work together to ensure only what needs to be triggered, will be triggered. To make things easier, the Detection controls are even color-coded to the visual feedback in the Analyzer.
Just below these two areas is the Parts section, which houses the eight different slots of samples. What sets this drum replacer from others is that both samples and virtual instruments can function as triggers. As you select each slot, the center section caters to the type of sampling and unique parameters appear.
The Separation section breaks down the initial triggered sound to its very bones with machine learning to the rescue to only detect what is useful for triggering your samples. The Browser section expands out to the right and makes loading your sample of virtual instrument easy with tabs for each. Also included are a few UVI samples to get you started. Lastly, we have the Output section, complete with separate wet, dry, pan, and even ducking capabilities.
With the high-level overview complete, let’s get into exactly what makes this plugin worthy of your coveted top spot for replacing drums.
Trigger Warning
With the sections briefly explained, we can dig a little deeper and unearth just what sets Drum Replacer apart from other similar plugins. While triggering is a fairly straight-forward affair, Drum Replacer does have great feedback in the Analyzer. To trigger something, drag the green line below the white line corresponding to the source material’s RMS. Easy right? What about that blast beat section where the kick bleed is almost the same level in the track as the snare? We’ve got some tools for that. Inhibition can limit the time between triggers and Cooldown can set a threshold the source material has to drop below before Drum Replacer can activate another sample. What if you haven’t picked that perfect sample and initially need to make sure your threshold is set right? Drum Replacer has a “Click” button you and can use that will play a click each time a sample would normally be heard.
Keep Em’ Separated
Sometimes the source material won’t play nice no matter how many controls a plugin has. Usually, this results in copying audio to a new track, separating each sample in your DAW, and preserving only the initial transient. UVI has turned to the future to fix this by utilizing “machine learning”. The Separation section breaks your audio down to its very core and separates it into sections based. Think of this as an extremely smart gate. Once analyzed, audio is placed in one of six different divisions, with “Section 1” containing the most energy going all the way down to the “R” for the remainder of the content. To remove each section for better detecting, deselect the corresponding number. Want to hear what you’re removing? Use the Monitor button. Tip: this can also be used to remove mic bleed by leaving the Monitor on and removing the sections that contain the bleed. Usually, all you need to deselect is the “R”.
For further fine-tuning, a Trim knob will bring up your source level and high and low pass filters help to dial in the right frequency’s energy. The most impressive trick Separation has is the ability to using machine learning to match the detection to another file. To use this, drag audio into the “download” icon next to the Learn button.
Lather, Rinse, Replace
The grunt work is over. It’s time to get creative and Drum Replacer has a stockpile of tools to turn those “ho-hum” drums into tracks that would give the A-List engineer “Stank Face“. The bottom section of the UI is where greatness is obtained.
Eight slots abound with countless options for how samples will trigger. Drag and drop is the name of the game. Want eight samples? Select them and drag them into the slot area and each will populate in a slot. The mode selector at the bottom gives you the power to choose how they will play. The All mode plays every sample loaded at once, Sequence goes in numerical order, Random does just that, and Velocity will play sample based on how far the source hit goes over the threshold.
For visual feedback, when each sample is played, the corresponding green dot will illuminate along with the level meter.
Choose Your Adventure
Once your samples are loaded and the Mode is set, clicking on each slot will transform the area just to the right of the slots into an area full of extra features, depending on whether you have a sample or a Virtual Instrument loaded. These controls cater specifically to the source material and offer a few unique tricks to add to your bag.
Sample-Based Controls
Clicking on a slot with a sample will reveal the window below.
Aside from the bevy of controls, you also have great visuals of your sample (pink) overlayed with your original (cyan). Using the arrow on either the left or the right, you can drag the sample to more closely match the phase between the two hits. The Normalize control helps to match the Waveform size as the original for better comparison. As you can see, there are also some unorthodox controls for each sample. For instance, maybe you only want the decay of a snare sample but not the initial transient. You can adjust the Attack or drag the Fader control on the left side of the sample. Maybe you just want the attack. You can do the same for the decay.
My favorite feature of this entire plugin is the Tune feature. Each sample can be manually tuned to match the source material or you can click the Ear icon to the right of the Tune control. This will analyze the source material and match the pitch of the sample automatically. Additionally, the Gain Match control will set the volume levels of the sample to the source as well.
Virtual Instrument Controls
Versatility is the name of the game for Drum Replacer and it definitely shows in this section. While most traditional sample replacement plugins allow either WAV files or some proprietary mess, Drum Replacer adds Virtual Instruments to the mix. Add a plugin the same way you would a sample from the Browser section of the GUI. If this is not open, click the Folder icon on the top right to expand. You will see a waveform tab for samples and a plug icon for Virtual Instrument. If you don’t see anything initially in the VI section, you will have to do an initial scan. You may want to grab a cup of coffee or a 5k fun run because it does take a while to load. Make sure you don’t do this during critical path like say, during a session with a client. You scan for plugins from the Hamburger menu to the right of the “Drum Replacer” text on the menu bar. Select “Settings” and Scan.
Once you’ve loaded your favorite Virtual Instrument and selected the slot, the center area will transform with new controls that make triggering your VI a breeze.
To set the right instrument in your VI to play on each hit, select the corresponding key on the keyboard to the right. If you need to tweak your sound, use the “Open Plug-In” button. Lastly, velocity curves can be tweaked with the Velocity section. It’s truly that simple.
Upgrades
UVI has heard your suggestions and already has version 1.1 of Drum Replacer. This free update Brings even more “I didn’t even realize how much I needed that” features to the already stacked deck.
A Ducking control has been added to the output section to sidechain compress your source material based on the samples. A slider next to the clever Duck icon controls how much you want the original to hide behind the sample. If you want further control, the same Settings menu you used to scan for plugins has expanded controls for ducking.
This can be very useful when there are certain aspects of the original source track that you want to preserve while eliminating the rest. For instance, you can hide the attack of the original kick but retain the body by letting the sample’s attack come through while masking the original kick transient.
UVI understands you don’t always need Drum Replacer so it added MIDI recording capabilities. Before, you had to load up an additional plugin to convert the drum hit to MIDI and filter out the hits you don’t want, but now Drum Replacer does it for you. Select the MIDI Record icon, play your track, and when you’re done, the icon will transform to a music note. Click on the music note and drag your MIDI into your DAW.
Thoughts
Drum Replacer feels like it was made by people who have felt the frustration of fixing drums and vowed “never again” to complex chains of plugins and difficult routing. Nearly every tool you could think you need along with ones you never knew you did are housed in one plugin. So much thought was put into this plugin. With this many tools, it would have been easy to create a cacophony of knobs and buttons plastered into a GUI, but UVI really thought about signal flow. I’ll be honest with you, since I’ve installed Drum Replacer, I haven’t touched another Sample Replacement plugin. I mean, who would you? Everything you need is right at your fingertips.
I honestly have no complaints at all about the plugin itself, but the amount of DSP I’m having to use opening a VI for each instrument I trigger. I wish there were a way that I could instantiate a “Master Drum Replacer” on an instrument bus and link each triggering to each part of the drum set. For instance, I could trigger the kick from the kick track but send the sample trigger to the single VI, and the same for the snare. That way I’m not opening a VI for every single instrument. Of course, this is probably insanely complicated and not even UVI’s fault. It’s just really the only improvement I could think of.
In Conclusion
Coming in a $99.00, Drum Replacer is a steal. This plugin is not just for acoustic drums. Layering samples is essential in electronic and hip-hop too and UVI has made it simple to get the perfect sound very fast.
- Virtually any tool needed to dial in perfect drum sounds
- Easy to use despite the sheer number of controls
- Can trigger Virtual Instruments from inside the plugin
- Can even record MIDI straight to your DAW
Cons
- None
Summary
Even if you love your current triggering software, I strongly encourage you to at least try Drum Replacer. I'd stake my reputation on it any day.
It’s been years since Avid has spruced up their lineup of interfaces. A whole new subset of engineers has emerged, with different needs than the “old guard”, whose card-based systems unlocked the true power of recording and mixing in Pro Tools. Suddenly, the audio world was filled with rack-mounted, all-in-one solutions with onboard DSP, headphone controllers, and preamps for days. The “Prosumer” home studio couldn’t fathom the amount of Louis Vuitton purses they’d have to buy to get out of the dog house for buying a full HDX system (believe me, I tried). All the while, not much was heard from Avid. Little did we know they were quietly building hardware to bridge the gap.
Behold. Pro Tools Carbon! A system that brings HDX capability to both a rack-mountable chassis AND both Pro Tools Standard and Ultimate. No longer do you have to buy the cards, the I/O, and even a headphone and monitor out. Carbon does it all. This 1 RU chassis packs all of the punch of an HDX system but geared toward that zone right between “I’ve outgrown a standard interface” and “I don’t quite need HDX”. Carbon has 8 preamps with the ability to expand to 8 additional line ins, and yes, up to 8 more channels via ADAT. Top it all off with a footswitch and 8 outputs to send to summing or various hardware pieces, and you have a one-stop for nearly everything needed to create audio. Carbon also comes with a Pro Tools Standard Perpetual license with the option to upgrade to the next version after a year.
And yes, you guessed it, Pro Tools had to be upgraded to accommodate Carbon as well. On top of added “Dark Mode”, with Carbon, you have the ability to pick which tracks use DSP and which do not. Now, you can track with stacks of AAX DSP and switch seamlessly between versions without losing your presets. The sky truly is the limit. Let’s see what Avid has to say about Carbon.
Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) today announced the launch of Pro Tools | Carbon™, a new generation audio interface that empowers artists, bands, engineers and producers to record every detail of every performance with the utmost clarity and precision. Built to capture brilliance, this hybrid audio production system features incredible sound quality and intelligent Pro Tools® integration that combines the power of the user’s native CPU with the unparalleled performance of HDX DSP acceleration. The result is the smoothest, most inspiring tracking experience Avid has ever designed.
Building on Avid’s heritage of making high-end studio technology more accessible to all music creators, Pro Tools | Carbon brings the power of its HDX technology to anyone who records and produces music.
Darrell Thorp, nine-time Grammy Award-winning engineer for such artists as the Foo Fighters, Radiohead and Beck, commented, “With onboard HDX DSP, Pro Tools | Carbon puts low latency power at your fingertips. I can have AAX DSP plugins on my tracking channels at the ready and access them whenever I want. I work extremely fast, so the fewer steps that I need to think about, the better. Pro Tools | Carbon really speeds up the recording process. Plus, its transparent converter and preamp design sounds amazing.”
“With Pro Tools | Carbon, Avid brings groundbreaking, innovative tools and technologies like HDX DSP to a new generation of music creators around the globe to capture their best performances,” said Dana Ruzicka, General Manager of Audio at Avid. “Pro Tools | Carbon is a complete project studio solution that has immense capability without the complexities that bog down music creators. It has onboard HDX DSP, which lets you record through effects in real-time, virtually eliminating latency, along with some of the highest quality I/O we’ve ever delivered to record a whole band and dial in individual low latency cue mixes for each player.”
The all-new Pro Tools Hybrid Engine lets users push their CPUs to the limit when working with virtual instruments and mixing. It simultaneously allows users to access on-demand, low latency channels to record through AAX DSP plug-ins in real time—with sub-1 ms latency monitoring performance. With the ability to easily toggle a single DSP Mode button per track in Pro Tools, users have the flexibility to simplify their workflow for recording and mixing, so they can focus on the music they’re making—not what they’re making it with.
AAX DSP is at the core of the Hybrid Engine and is the only plugin architecture that offers true hybrid capabilities. AAX DSP delivers the same sound quality in both native and HDX DSP Acceleration domains, enabling users to toggle in and out of DSP Mode while maintaining equally exceptional sound quality. This also enables music creators to easily disconnect Pro Tools | Carbon and take their mix on the road or collaborate with others who don’t have the interface.
Featuring pristine converters, double resolution clocking, and Avid’s most transparent mic preamp design yet, Pro Tools | Carbon has been meticulously designed so that with the push of the record button every nuance of every performance is captured with the greatest depth, dimension, and clarity.
Pro Tools | Carbon is ready to record any session—from solo artists to full bands. With four headphone outputs to send individual monitor mixes, eight pristine preamps combined with 16 channels of ADAT inputs and an onboard talkback mic you are primed for tracking a band. Pro Tools | Carbon also delivers a super-fast, high-bandwidth Ethernet connection to the host computer, that preserves the highest possible sound quality from input to output, as well as supporting future workflow enhancements.
In addition, Pro Tools 2020 introduces a new dramatic dark themed UI that’s sleek, inspiring, and easier on the eyes—especially in lower light conditions. It also provides new ways to create and advance ideas with the ability to analyze audio and render it as MIDI notes. For audio post professionals, Pro Tools 2020 includes native integration to export ADM files for Dolby Atmos®, a new space clips function that lets you arrange a multitude of clips in a fraction of the time, and it reintroduces the ability to bounce sessions to QuickTime formats in macOS Catalina.
Pricing and availability
Pro Tools | Carbon is available TODAY at resellers, starting at $3,999 USD, which includes a one-year Pro Tools subscription and highly respected partner plugins from Arturia, McDSP, Plugin Alliance, UVI, Native Instruments, and Embody at no additional cost. Please consider our Affiliate Link (Here) to support our site. It doesn’t cost you any more and helps us keep the lights on!
As I edit this, the online engineer cognoscenti are prattling on about “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish being available as a Logic Pro template. I thought it might be a good time to have an unwanted, unwelcome “expectations management” session for those who think 10 million SoundCloud plays are just a point and click away.
STATING THE OB(li)VIOUS
People who produce and engineer music are competitive. Yes, we all like to speak in communal platitudes about “rising tides raising all boats” but the truth is that we seethe with anxiety whenever we hear somebody else do it “better”. Friendly competition as it might be, every one of us – whether we’re bedroom neophytes or established professionals – are looking for any way to get a leg up. And lest we forget, we are customers of an industry whose very business model is predicated upon providing a scratch for every possible itch.
This first appeared to us commoners as “celebrigineer” plug-ins and presets. Want CLA’s super up-front guitar sound or Jack Joseph-Puig’s signature vocal chain (and maybe that sweet blazer he’s wearing)? You could study their technique, read articles and watch interviews, or even take the time to (gasp!) LISTEN and reverse-engineer their mixes. But who has time for all that “learning” nerdery, right? Especially when you can simply download their signature edition plug-in or presets bundle. Just slap “Grammy Winning Mix Bus Comp” on your audio and assume your rightful place among the tippity-top of “who’s who in audio engineering”.
But in many cases those celebrity-endorsed plug-ins and presets were somewhat of a mirage. Your mix still oozes with ‘meh’, but with a shiny dollop of processing clouding things up further. What’s an aspiring engineer to do? I mean, you could revisit the idea of studying up, experimenting and developing your critical listening but again – time waits for no man. God forbid you develop your own thing here, you want to do “that Billie Eilish thing” and dammit, you’re gonna get it.
Again, the industry has heard your cries and, the benevolent capitalists that they are, now offer mix templates from these engineers. I mean, if you want “that mix”, no problem. They’ll just take the session, scrape out all the actual audio and leave the framework. Just add your own sounds and rejoice! Right? If it sounds too simple to work because it is too simple. The logic, flawed as it is, makes sense to anybody wanting to step up their game: If you just had their levels, their bus and send assignments, and their processing chains, you would in effect make their Grammy-award winning sessions YOUR Grammy-award winning sessions.
Let’s just take a second to ponder just how little sense this makes…
Get excited, because we’re taking a field trip today. Log off, power down and pack a lunch because we’re going to your kitchen. Today’s mental exercise: You’ve decided to whip up a batch of cookies for a loved one. Your mom, your girlfriend, that co-worker you’ve been stalking on Instagram, whatever. Though you’ve managed to make the occasional microwave burrito without starting a fire, you’ve admitted to yourself that maybe the culinary arts are a bit elusive. So you do what every other internet-connected person would: You download a recipe.
This is not my best analogy. Noted.
I’m sure they taste good, though. You followed the recipe, right?
You preheat the oven. You start combining ingredients. Oh, but this recipe is calling for chocolate chips and you’ve got raisins. You don’t have baking powder, but you DO have baking soda. Same difference, right? You don’t have a mixer, but you DO have a blender. They both do mash stuff together as far as you can tell. To be honest, you get a little confused a few places along the way but, in the guiding light of this recipe it should still come out pretty good.
Eight minutes later, you pull your piping hot creation from the oven. They don’t look much like the images you saw online but they ARE round. So you snatch yourself up the first one and they taste like hot hockey pucks rolled in clay. What gives? You did pretty much everything the directions told you to. Yeah, maybe you had to substitute some ingredients but that was just a “pinch” of some spice. A mere pinch. Betty Crocker laughs her evil laugh and you settle into a cookie-less hour’s worth of dishes. Deflated. Beaten.
MAKING AN ASS OUT OF “U” AND “MPTION”
You crack open this mix template and start dragging in audio files. Pretty much everything on their input list matches up to yours. A couple of kicks and snares, a pair of drum overheads or room mics, several pairs of instruments, keys and three different vocals. Spiffy, this should be easy. You drag, you drop… and then you hit play. What was once a “not bad, just lacking a certain something” mix has metamorphosed into a metallic caterwaul that even Yoko Ono herself would disown-o with an “oh no”. Where’s the punchy drum mix? Why do the guitars sound like they’ve been run through a broken bass amp? And what’s up with the vocals? You can barely hear them and at the same time, they’re way too loud.
The point of failure is not the plug-ins or EQ – but the act of assumption. If you assume things “are” when they are not, the rest falls apart quickly. Let’s grab any one of those problems and take a look. Let’s say… vocals. Unlike the famed engineer who created said template, you recorded the vocals in your home studio with a few moving blankets draped around the singer. The microphone and preamp weren’t as good as theirs but you used a little compression to make it ‘punchy’, especially since the singer tended to move around a lot. Well, you’re right – Mr. Four-time Grammy Winner DID do things a little differently.
Yes, there will be a slight difference in quality.
First of all, the vocalist was recorded in an iso room with virtually no early reflections. And though your MXL and interface recorded at just about the same level, the studio’s pristine Neumann FET47 through an API 512c preamp didn’t just sound “better”, but considerably different. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that the vocalist in question had incredible mic technique – leaning into the quiet parts for intimacy and back again to belt out the big notes.
“No big deal”, you steadfastly maintain with your arms crossed. “They’re using an LA-2A into a doubler plug-in, that should even things right up.” That’s what compressors do, don’t they? So why are yours cutting out all over the place? (Because there’s a gate on it and yours aren’t as loud) Why is the sibilance on mine so harsh? (because the singers have different mouths and faces) Where’s the big-chested authority on the low notes? (because their vocalist sings about an octave lower).
So you adjust. You tweak. You EQ. You try different compressor settings (hey, they’re from the same engineer who made the template). For lack of a better term, you begin to panic. You know what, mute the vocals for now and let’s work on the drums. Drums are easy.
NO. THEY AREN’T.
Okay, both your track and theirs are using sampled bass drums. Just like your kick, there are different elements combined to create their sound: one track for lows and another for attack, plus a third for a low sine-wave “808 effect”. “Voila!” you exclaim, realizing that you had something backwards before. So you do a little cleanup and now, somehow, you’ve made it even worse.
Print this out. Tape it somewhere. Fundamentals matter, even (especially) on drums.
Let’s talk about the kick. First of all, their song is in the key of D and yours is in F. The lower kick and the 808 on the template are pushing 37 and 74hz which are a ways off from 44 and 87 (down here in the lowest registers, 5hz of difference can feel like a mile). Oh, and their samples were normalized to -3dbfs and yours aren’t. Their kicks are sending a key input to trigger a compressor on the bass track, but on yours it’s pushing the track into a messy pumping effect. It seems like for every one thing you fix, two more problems appear.
WHY MIX TEMPLATES DON’T WORK
The crucial flaw of mix, eq and routing templates is that no two sounds are truly alike. Just a bass drum can be soft, round, hard, chiseled, hollow, wet, chesty, thumpy… to say nothing of being several bussed tracks at once versus being single elements. They can either be very compressed or have a wild amount of gain. And that holds true for virtually any instrument you’ve got – be it cello, cajon, castrato choir or otherwise. Spaced pair recordings aren’t always perfectly aligned and in phase. Something as simple as an SM57 close-miking a guitar cabinet changes drastically with so much as a ½” inch or degree of difference.
If this is your “chain”, start over. (Photo: Audio Issues)
When it comes to tracking and mixing, there are very few standards anymore. Maybe back in the 2” tape and analog console era, you could assume that the kick drum was on track 1 and time code was on 24, but that’s really about it. As processor and hard drive speeds have become lightning-fast, the newer breed of engineers seem determined to press the limit with track counts often going into triple digits (a big part of this is printing numerous layers of the same track with different sounds, or printing bus effects like reverbs). Much of that is due to a seeming inability to commit to any mix decisions until the final, final, final mix is uploaded.
We are also assuming that any recording matches any recording. In mixing, a matter of 1-2db is the difference between just right and all wrong, how can you do that if you’re using different instruments recorded with different mics in different spaces? When that mix template was created, the idea was to provide some general channel settings, routing groups and effects chains. But you may not need, or even necessarily want “that sound” on your mix. Maybe you don’t need an expansive hall reverb on your drums, or a complex time-delay chain recombinating the more ethereal elements.
THE OTHER REASON MIX TEMPLATES DON’T WORK…
At the very fundamental level, we all got into doing this because making music sound great, artists happy and their fans blown away, are just as much a creative exercise as they are technical ones. And while, no, not every engineer out there today can rattle off the time of a dotted quarter note delay at 140bpm in milliseconds, we all try to get to the same place by facts or feelings. Experimentation, even for the most graph-paper-brained among us, is still one of the absolute joys of this craft.
Yes, we all have those mixes, albums and engineers who we look up to, even emulate a little bit. But that’s not to say we want to sound exactly the same. Audio’s always been about putting on our own spin or our own unique touch. That’s been the very core of what’s propelled the art and science of this forward for almost a century. And again, we are all competitive by nature and even the most turnip-truck of upstarts sets out to make their work sound even bigger than the big names in this nutty business.
So while it’s understandable that people might want to take a shortcut or two, these are the sorts of sidesteps that not only deprive you of learning and honing your technique, but likely trip you up as you try and reverse-reverse-engineer your way out of a mix that was never right for your recording in the first place. Just because Andy Wallace uses a 10ms slap delay on an ambient room mic doesn’t mean you should, too. Try it if you must, but do you really need a preset or a template to do that?
KEEP YOUR BEER MONEY
For as long as I have been doing this, I have never once seen a viable substitute for rolling up your sleeves and really putting in the work. Question every mix decision as they pile up, don’t be so hard-headed as to keep something that’s “good enough” or “not important”. And always maintain the intellectual curiosity to wonder “hey… what if I did this instead?” A LOT of classic sounds that are now “the way” started unintentionally. There’s one good use for templates and presets and that’s building your own – particularly if you are doing multiple songs for the same artist.
This could be yours, but you’re buying templates.
I know we all want to stand out and create mixes that make our competition itch with jealousy. And in our race to achieve relative insignificance in the world of music, we’ll turn over every rock looking for a way to stand a few inches taller than the rest. That’s to be expected. But putting on Michael Jordan’s famed #23 jersey won’t help you with your jump shot and putting Tony Maserati’s lifetime of experience on your mix will most decidedly not turn it into Beyonce.
Tips and tricks are great. They’re everywhere. Some of them might even be relevant to what you’re working on. Maybe even the occasional preset might give you a good jumping off point for a particular situation. But whether the knobs were turned by you or Eddie Kramer himself doesn’t matter. We’re all working with the same tools, the same potential and the same intent of greatness. So make your own.
A few months back, we did a fairly comprehensive review of STL Tones’ “Tonality” – which now offers a layer of Chris Lord-Alge-ness with a selection of his own “pre-mixed” presets. Though we universally praised both its ease of use and staggeringly solid emulation, a frequent remark was that without more granular tone-tweaks like mic placement and a more robust effect assortment, some might find themselves left wanting. And for those people, they’d be much better served by Tonality’s “big brother”, ToneHub.
WELCOME TO THE PROMISED LAND
STL Tones’ ToneHub (Mac/PC VST/AAX/AU/Standalone $199) takes the same excellent amplifier and cabinet modeling heard with Tonality and literally blows the lid right open. It’s not just a bigger selection of amplifiers and cabinets and effects – it’s accessing ToneHub’s modular “tone engine”, which now offers approaching two dozen-worth of well-known producers and engineers contributing their secret sauce collection of sounds and their sources.
Yeah, it’s kind of like that.
Pardon my middle-age here, but do you remember the Atari 2600? Long before gaming’s current state of hyperreal movements and textures, the Atari was a gargantuan sea change in home entertainment. For the first time ever, you were no longer limited to the game being hardwired to the system, its whopping 4KB of proprietary data was instead affixed to a removable cartridge. The same system could go from Frogger to Space Invaders in a matter of mere seconds (add a few if you had to blow on the card connectors).
Similarly, that’s what’s going on here – STL Tones have a huge (and growing) collection of new amps and cabinets from all corners of the guitar world. Some are specific amplifiers like the timeless Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier or hallowed Soldano s100 (which has become quite in fashion since the late 80’s), and still others are complete recording chains from engineering and performer luminaries as Will Putney, Andy James and Dan Korneff (we did review the sounds from Howard Benson and CLA in our previous Tonality review).
Producers, guitarists and famous amplifiers make up the selection of add-on “packs” to make ToneHub complete.
JUST A FEW WORDS MORE ABOUT TONEHUB
I have several guitar amplifiers and a robust collection of amplifier-modeling, ranging from the original anodized red Line 6 Pod Pro to the emulations from Yamaha, IK Multimedia, TwoNotes, Waves and more. And though I like having the variety and ability, ToneHub is the most versatile, the most expandable and (to my cynical old ears) the best sounding of them all.
STL Tones’ proprietary “Tracing Amplifier”. This is where the magic starts.
Is it as fun as plugging into my VHT Pittbull CL, turning it up to 4 (you really can’t go higher than that without being arrested) and letting a drop-C power chord rip? Well, no. The excitement four moving 12″ cones create when you push 100W of power through them is extremely visceral and god-like. And that’s all well and good until you want to capture all those moving molecules with a metal membrane, send the vibrations down a wire and into some sort of recording device. Recording guitar… I mean REALLY getting and recording a killer amp tone can take hours, if not days to do. Oh, and once you move a knob, bump the mic or steal back the bedspread you’ve draped over the amp? That’s it. That’s the last time you’ll get EXACTLY that. In life, there are no presets and there is no undo function.
With your favorite fiddle plugged into ToneHub, you’ve got an entire Sweetwater catalog at the end of the cable. And yes, let’s remember Sweetwater sell some pretty effing nice amps (complete with matching price tags). Even if you never buy a single expansion, its proprietary “Tracing Amplifier” will not only give you the “greatest hits” like Marshall, Orange, Fender and Vox… but can also add boutique offerings from Friedman and Framus. How do they sound? Jaw-dropping. Face-ripping. Bone-crushing.
Controlling the microphone’s angle, distance and placement is absolutely key.
Oftentimes in recording with a tone that’s “not quite there”, the amplifier and instrument are just fine. Changing the microphone’s position, angle, distance (or the microphone itself) is really the kingmaker of recording. ToneHub’s killer tones aren’t just thanks to the amps themselves, but a solid collection meticulously-modeled cabinets, microphones, effects and an EQ. The “3d Cabinet Mixer” lets you control the distance, angle and placement of the microphone with fantastic realism. Record a phrase via DI, put your guitar down, loop it and get to work. Far more often than not, that crucial point of “there, right there” is just an inch or a degree away. Once you’ve found it and save it, it’s yours to keep forever. That was my chief caveat in our review of ToneHub’s little brother – and for that and that alone, makes ToneHub more attractive to those of use who want to tinker.
Yes, it has pedals, too.
And though I suspect (and appreciate) that many will bring their own pedals to the fracas, ToneHub has a very solid (and yes, expandable) selection of compressors, boosts, delays, phasers, flangers, FM modulators and god-knows-what-else-erators to please all but the most finicky of players (all of us who have that one friend in a wizardstonerdoom band who’s pedal collection is even heavier than his 1976 Sunn o)))) amplifier… and we accept and love them for who they are… so long as they shower). With their “producer pack” upgrades, additional pedals also become available – not just for the presets themselves, but for building your own Frankenstein recording chain monsters.
So, look. If you haven’t taken ToneHub for a test drive, you really owe it to yourself to download the demo and hear it for yourself. You’ve got a cavernous collection of tones at the end of a 1/4″ cable with an easy-to-navigate UI and unbelievably good emulation.
BUT, WHAT ABOUT JOSH?
Josh guitars good. Bonus points for the nosepicker reverse headstock. (photo: Guitar World)
Josh Middleton is the person bringing us here today, actually. ToneHub’s been out for a minute but Josh’s new ToneHub pack ($59) is the actual news. First of all, Josh plays and endorses ESP Guitars and as such, I like him by default*. As the guitarist for metalcore / post-hardcore giants Mechanics and the more genre-bending (but thrashy af) Sylosis, Josh has amassed hundreds of gnashing tones to go with his 21st century playing style. Comparing these bands to their forebears like Megadeth is much akin to comparing a Tesla to a Trans Am. The same propulsion is there, but it’s been taken the nth level of technicality in terms of playing and delivery.
(* Watching a Sylosis video, I also noticed Josh is a Cubase Pro user. Good man.)
While many metal guitarists of yore are happy with the “amp slop” of detuned power chords, Josh clearly is not. His playing is far too technical at times to not have a microscopically clear, transient-rich tone. Where Metallica’s Kirk Hammett or Judas Priest’s KK Downing would put six notes, Josh finds room for ten with his freakishly tight and metronomic playing style. What does that mean? It means the amp has to be able to provide excellent definition or all that flying-finger noodle-ry is going to get lost in translation. But at 2:40 into the track you know what time it is… it’s time to drop into the audience-favorite half-time beatdown, and that’s where the amp has got to deliver the djenty detuned goods.
So with all that in mind, Josh’s contribution to the ToneHub universe certainly puts a central focus on amp/cabinet/mic/effect chains that bridge the gap between a metallic roar and clear definition. To be clear, even without Middleton’s additions to the list, ToneHub can definitely speak to this ask. But let’s have a look at how much more metal we can make your ma’s kettle.
THE AMPS
Thirteen different amplifier heads are on offer here, and they read like a “who’s who” of metal recording history. You’ve got high-gain “seventh wonder” selections ranging from Peavey XXX and the EVH 5150 to the coveted Framus Cobra and Diezel VH4. The Marshall JVM and Laney GH100, though not quite as widely used by the djent illuminati, are also in the mix to give you more crayons to color with.
The Framus Cobra is modeled for the Josh Middleton pack.
Invoking Josh’s favorite amp collection is most certainly going to be focused on super high-gain applications. If the goal is a nice tweedy, spongy Fender country clean – or an “Oasis” of Beatles-esque VOX AC30 sparkle you’re… well, the “sir, this is a Wendy’s” meme applies. Not to worry, ToneHub already provides those applications right out of the box and they are outstanding. But let’s be sure, you’re standing in the “METAL/PUNK/HARDCORE” section of the local record store right now. If you’re not wearing your Ride The Lightning shirt, shuffle away nervously.
The holy grail of metal amps – the Diezel HD4
Just the sheer walls of terror these amps are capable of creating make Josh Middleton’s addition to ToneHub likely the last guitar amp-sim the metal crowd could ever possibly need (though I’m sure you’ll no doubt want to try others after using this). The astonishing realism and exacting emulation contained here is nothing short of staggering. Whether you’re more inclined towards the cushier glow of a half dozen ECC83’s or the scalpel-sharp response of a JFET solid state preamp, ToneHub delivers in spades.
THE CABINETS
The good news? You’ve got seven different cabinet models to choose from with the Josh Middleton pack. The even better news? They’re ALL Mesa-Boogie. Correction, there’s a single instance of a Marshall 1960B. No, but in all seriousness, I can appreciate the “if it ain’t broke” mentality of using these legendary boxes. You’ve got a mix of slant and straight cabs in different configurations (closed and open, I should assume), primarily miked by the venerable Shure SM57 with occasional help from a Sennheiser MD421-II. So, if that’s YOUR thing (and who among us hasn’t recorded a guitar amp and only brought a 57 with them?) you’re set. The 57 is the de facto standard for a reason. It just works.
57 + Cab. Sure there’s other ways to do it, I guess? (photo: Guitar World)
Now, as it is my job here to poke holes where appropriate, adding ambient mics like a Coles 4038, or recording the rumble of the cabinet’s backside with a Neumann FET47 would most certainly add an additional layer of “hot damn!” to this package. But you’re welcome to mix all manner of cabinets and mics from the provided ToneHub stock arsenal if you crave more options. Thing is, these presets sound so good right out of the box, the temptation to tweak it may not even dawn upon you. Having a second mic placement output? Well, now that would be gravy.
The cabinets absolutely roar with clarity, handling the amplifiers’ “everything on 11” ultra high-gain pressure. Woofer excursion and cabinet resonance can be dialed in with the microphone placement easily – getting just a little (for those math-metal, technically mind-blowing passages) or a whole lot (BREAKDOWN! CIRCLE PIT!!!) is a point and click away. If you’re looking to be able to mix the two, you’ll either need to automate the placement or run two separate instances. Worry not, ToneHub is lean enough on most processors that stacking up four copies will likely not push your CPU meter in the red.
THE PRESETS
If you’re just a Preset Peter, you’ve got almost one hundred ready to call into battle. Whether you’re cutting thrash, hardcore, metalcore, mathcore, djent, doom, gothic metal, power metal or… well, am I putting too fine a point on this here? With so much crossover in influences and so much of that every-annoying and pervasive subgenre snobbery, it’s best to just put it this way: If you make metal records, you’re set. Want super bright, cutting tones? We gotcha. Prefer a more growling, girthy low? No worries. Somewhere in-between? Clearly.
The vintage Maxon OD-808 is a booster of choice for many Djentlemen.
Josh Middleton’s presets also call in a little help from TS-808-styled pedals like the legendary Maxon version of the Tube Screamer, the snarling mid-range sneer of the VFE Focus and the coveted Kartakou Warmer. You can head on over to the pedals tab to add a little more or less of course. Using a TS9 (or any other FET-type) pedal to give the signal pre-amplifier continues to be done to this day, even with modern guitar pickups pumping out enough current to power a toaster.
This does bring up one thing I noticed in use that does bear mentioning. The presets themselves are absolutely enormous. Super huge amounts of value-meal-sized gain are the big constant as you tab through Josh’s collection of tones. Just one guitar track sounds like a tidal wave – and that’s where you’ve got to be careful with tracking. Whether you do a stereo pair or like to really stack them up four-deep – be careful to not track TOO much gain. One guitar on its own, sure. As part of the whole mix? Keep an eye on those gain knobs and OD pedals, pulling them back a little will keep your guitar tracks from becoming a wooly distorted mush in the mix.
THE WHOLE PACKAGE
If you can’t tell from my guitar collection, I like metal. And I like ESP Guitars. In particular, I like using ESP guitars to play metal.
I won’t be running out of praise for ToneHub any time soon – with the add-on packs or not. While we can talk all day about which amp sim package has the best this or the most of those – none of it means diddly-squat if the software itself doesn’t sound great. There is certainly competition in the space, even in the myopic world of metal-focused tones. I’ve heard plenty of winners (and losers) and I assure you, ToneHub beats them all with one hand tied behind its back.
The clarity, the quality, the usability and options, the ability to modify, tweak and customize… virtually every last way to win the day has been won. Forget about other plugins and other amp simulators for a minute here – because I would challenge even the most die-hard of all-tube-amp purists to try ToneHub in their next recording session and tell me that this package isn’t one of the most incredible sounding guitar tones they’ve ever plugged into.
STLTones’ additional content like the Josh Middleton pack reviewed here add even more artillery to ToneHub’s vast arsenal. Whether it’s a traditionally-tuned six-slinger or one of those extended-scale, ten-string monsters, if you want the complete amp modeling rig that makes your guitar breathe fire? You’ve found it.
STL Tones ToneHub
4.5 / 5Reviewer
Pros
So "real" you can smell it.
The Josh Middleton (and others) "packs" give you endless options.
Exacting control of just about any parameter you could ever need.
Cons
There are, of course, cheaper options out there.
Multiple mics and outputs would be a nice touch going forward.
Wow, no... can't think up a third one.
Summary
Once upon a time, guitarists had to choose between the realism of miking an amplifier or working with the limitations of a virtual amp setup. Well, I think the virtual amp has won.
I know I’ve been somewhat outspoken on this at times, but I can get a little bored with the miasma in the world of plug-ins. Oh, a new 1176 limiter? Much excite! Oh, but wait – NO! There’s a fifth “ratio” button and a variable attack time?!?! Excuse me while I mop up all this liquid excitement that’s pooled up around my chair.
That’s why, in this redundant world of clones (and clones of clones), tripping across developers who are hellbent on journeying beyond the self-imposed boundaries of this business keep me inspired. Now that we’ve perfected getting the tape echoes and plate reverbs of yester-era just right, it’s a happy day when we can get our hands around a plugin or piece of hardware that does something that nothing else does – even if it’s presented in the most gnarled and psychiatrically-troubling way possible.
Look, it’s okay to be a little bit scared of Freakshow Industries. Fear and apprehension are healthy. It’s actually your brain’s fight/flight instinct letting you know that, after millions of years, it’s still there to try and protect you. I’m sure that this is my iconoclastic and morbid sense of humor taking the wheel, but Freakshow Industries’ fragmented, malevolent innovations are the sort of thing that every plugin folder should have.
(L to R) The hellish iconography of Mishby, Backmask and Dumpster Fire
WELCOME TO THE FREAKSHOW
Freakshow Industries are relatively new to the fold, headed up by two former residents of iZotope Island who left to do “their thing”. That “thing”, such as it is, seems to be creating truly pug-fugly, destructive processes for the often more prim world of audio engineering. To date, they’ve brought three of their little piggies to market (with a fourth somewhere in development) that are just completely bent. Apprehensively peering into the nihilistic netherworld of their site, it’s obvious Freakshow Industries are here to serve up pure audio poison, but not without a self-satisfied smirk and a welcome sense of humor.
Featuring the death-by-tape destruction of “Mishby”, the chaotic reversals of “Backmask” and the dissociative resonant pitch modulations of “Dumpster Fire”, you’ve no doubt already figured out Freakshow Industries aren’t in business to dig up some other 1960’s relic EQ to dangle before your vintage-obsessed eyes. But in chaos, there is order. And having a few plug-ins that exist solely to unleash the hounds of hell on your pristine audio is a great way to kick creative recording and mixing decisions into gear.
To be honest, I would encourage those interested to sit through one of Freakshow Industry’s promo videos first. Imagine a mashup between MemoryHole, Venetian Snares and Tim and Eric, as edited by the BTK Killer on a Newtek Video Toaster and you’re pointed in the right direction. This isn’t the “witch costume” Marilyn Manson-kinda “darkness” here where everything supposedly sounds skawwy through a RAT pedal. This is the real stuff. The single malt. A lot of people are going to turn and briskly walk away, spines stiffened to prove to themselves they’re not scared. But not me, I’m going in…
MISHBY: THIS BIG BROKEN MACHINE
If you had to (and I do mean had to) put some sort of category around Mishby (Mac/PC, VST/VST3, AU, AAX, 64-bit only, $50), it would be emulating the idiosyncratic byproducts of lower-quality analog tape recording and delay with an added block of glitching and downsampling. But, uh… not so fast. We’re not adding .01% to the wow/flutter and daring other engineers to claim they don’t hear the difference. Mishby is beyond destruction… it’s probably more like “rebirth through extinction”. Excuse me while I go comb my Cannibal Corpse LP covers for a better term… and yeah, “Hammer Smashed Audio” is a little too on-the-nose.
Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Mishby’s twisted world awaits.
Yes, Mishby models the artifacts of tape machine playback – that much is true. But instead of subtly changing biasing and adjusting azimuth, we’re melting the tape AND the machine under the hot sun like a sociopathic nine year old with a magnifying glass at an ant hill. You are given a suite of controls, armed with little more than cryptic glyphs and illegible demarcation to invoke Mishby’s chaos. In other words, you’re supposed to run blindly through Mishby’s twisted bloody hall of mirrors until you either panic and run back to the safety of something else – or find something that truly speaks in ancient Sumerian to your tortured soul. Even seemingly pedestrian type controls like sample rate and depth seem to have a particularly haunted quality, though that may be in some small part to the patently disturbed interface.
Just in case this wasn’t abundantly clear, it’s ALL pretty disturbing with Freakshow Industries. Mishby gives you all kinds of dubby-stutters, warped tape modulations and glitchy goodness. Granted, subtlety is not Mishby’s strong suit, although I suppose you could bring it off the bench for subtle pitch warp or downsampling. But why would you want to do that? This is sweet, sweet destruction, provided you have the appetite*. Run it off the taps of a vocal delay or reverb tail and gradually increase the weirdness as it fades, making your listeners go “wait, what was… that?” Or if you have a podcast or voiceover client you don’t like and never pays you? Run this on the stereo bus and destroy their career once and for all.
(*Subtle GnR Reference WIN!)
The glitch-and-freeze function could just as easily be a plugin unto itself. Automating it in for just little bits and bobs while sweeping any (or all) of its four parameters will net you either an effect that would otherwise take hours to create or a flaming bag of unlistenable garbage to be hastily ctrl-z’d out of existence. That is, of course, subjective. You’ll have to earn your pittance deciding which one is which. But it is a very novel and unique way to create the modulations of the damned. If you get a lot of work doing audio post for horror movie trailers, get ready to be happy.
Mishby’s lasting intent seems to be leaving you huddled in a blanket on a cold floor wondering to yourself what it was you just actually experienced. PTSD survivors and those prone to mood disorders are well-warned to lay off this one.
BACKMASK: “LIVE” SPELLED BACKWARDS
Ever since Eddie Kramer and his ilk had the inspiration to flip the tape machine’s reels upside down, engineers have had a long standing love affair with reversing all kinds of things. Be it for a rhythmic effect, creating tension or just plain getting weird with it, it’s one of those bits of studio trickery that, done right, makes the guy pushing the buttons part of the band. Using a DAW to do this is obviously a pretty simple thing to do (as it was on samplers before that), but Backmask (Mac/PC, VST/VST3, AU, AAX, 64-bit only, $20) takes this once-novel idea and puts it on a steady diet of research chemicals.
Again, the controls are intentionally cryptic and the GUI seems more interested in your burgeoning career as a serial killer than telling you how many milliseconds. So you click one of the six parameters and grab the big central jog wheel and start twisting. Thankfully, Backmask does include the wet/dry control that Mishby lacks. Your poor audio is now being reversed in weird, wild and wonderful ways. For all my head-scratching, I was never able to actualize a specific task like “set the reverse to three repeats at a dotted quarter note” – but that’s generally the sort of thing you can do with basic track editing if what you’re looking for is precision. Nay, this is far more in the experimentalist corner: Click buttons and turn knobs blindly until you find that “there, right… there” moment.
Yeah, nothing out of the ordinary with Backmask, right? Everything’s perfectly normal. Move along.
I suppose you could try to bin this as an intelligent-reversing analog-modeled delay, but it would be just as apt to call it a “reversturating cloven-hoofed hallucinaphonic disregulator”. You do get the benefit of an imitation bucket-brigade pitch sweep if changing delay time, so remember to try creating and editing automation passes. Changing out the sample size is going to be the most audible change – that is until you can no longer hold off on that “chaos” button on the lower right.
So the real question lingers here… just what the hell are you supposed to actually use something like this for? And that is a good question. We’re not rolling of 3db at 5.5kHz with a 12db/oct filter here. This is destructive in the best way possible. Of everything I tried in using this “normally”, I had a right good time creating a duplicate clean guitar track with Backmask enabled and randomly sliding notes and phrases into it. Not whole bars, mind you – just little snips to create a “did-you-just-hear-that?” sort of trickery.
Backmask is also quite a fun process to sneak onto vocals – particularly the vocals’ effect sends where you can twist reverbs and delays into boomeranging towards the listener. Not so much a huge, obvious effect – more used with subtlety in otherwise predictable places. Those producing even the most pop-ified of music can still find a hundred ways to work this devilish little critter onto instruments and vocals. Go light if you don’t want to overdo it.
Or, you know, just overdo it. That’s cool, too. Just don’t wind up in court like Ozzy or Judas Priest did.
DUMPSTER FIRE: CONTORTED DELICIOUSNESS.
Trying to properly describe just what the everloving crap Dumpster Fire (Mac/PC, VST/VST3, AU, AAX, 64-bit only, $20) does is pushing the outer limits of my journalism degree. I suppose for the pedants among us, it’s a multi-voice pitch-shifter that reconnoiters the affected signals to create all manner of chorus and ring-modulation. That sounds about right. But I eventually gave up on classifying the Freakshow stuff and created a “WTF” folder in Cubase where all three plugins now reside.
Somehow, this is the most “conservative” of the plugins.
With parameters such as “fire” and “aether”, you’ll be no doubt unsurprised that these nebulous terms all do something, but good luck on Freakshow Industries giving you any tangible, scalable indications of the madness contained within. You grab a knob, wince in hesitation and turn. One clearly affects pitch, another adds additional voices and so on. But this is not for “oh, that one vocal could use a nice doubling effect on this phrase”-type chores. Frankly, you have at least four of those in your plugins folder already.
Dumpster Fire is the most subtle and least freakish of the Freakshow Industries assemblage – at least for those keeping the boat close to shore. You can pull it in for a lush thickening of reverbs or background vocal groups. But give in to your darker urges and you’ll be rewarded with hollowed-out bizarre results from the twisted beyond. Anything you care to throw at it – be it rhythmic, tonal or otherwise – metamorphoses into the HP Lovecraft (or HR Geiger) version of its former self.
This is literally the authorization process for Dumpster Fire. Yeeeesh.
It does bear mentioning that the actual fidelity of the pitch engine is quite good. I’ve heard pitch shifting algorithms that lend considerably less towards experimentation and more towards integrity that fall short. Good luck pulling this in to fix a bunk note, however. Frankly, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Melodyne? You’re safe. For now. Dumpster Fire kills it on the right sound and application – the onus is on you to take the risk.
STEAL THIS SOFTWARE
Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy or a healthy dollop of industry self-awareness, but the deviants at Freakshow Industries have decided that, if you’re going to steal their software, you might as well steal it from them directly. You can pay whatever price you want for a legit license, albeit with their caveat that tech support is “if we feel like it” and you may not be getting upgrades. Seems fair, doesn’t it?
Never without their trademark black humor, Freakshow also launched CrimeHole.com, a none-too-subtle microsite-shaped dig at the internet’s shadowy corners where warez are distributed. In all fairness, all three plug-ins are available as of press time as the “Back Alley Bundle” for $79. Even though I received my licenses gratis (well… I did write this 2000+ word dissertation about how cool this stuff is so… you know… quid pro quo, Clarice…) I still have to order a t-shirt. Support the scene, maaaaan.
Welcome to www.crimehole.com. Yes, this is an actual website.
No, but in all seriousness, if you want to unleash Freakshow’s terror on your audio but can’t scrape the dough together, I get it. Paying gigs in our industry are not easy to come by – and if you think all these reviews I write are for untold riches, you would be wrong. But stealing from a small upstart company like this should fill your soul with shame. Pony up something.
AUDIO FOR THE END OF DAYS
If most plugins are Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, Freakshow Industries is their Syd-Barrett-era “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”. Those who admire the early, technologically-contorted stylings of Brainiac, Ween or Butthole Surfers now have an entire bacchanal of bizarre, circuit-bent gadgets and guitar pedals packed into a single set of controls. Or, if you fancy yourself more a fan of the bizarre corners of electronic artists inspired by Einsturzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle or Aphex Twin, you too will likely be an instant fan of Freakshow Industries’ sonic dementia. These aren’t “effects”…. Reverb is an effect. Delay is an effect. This is running your audio through nitrous oxide in a decommissioned mental hospital. On Halloween. Inexplicably clutching a headless, baby doll for dear life.
So I uh… I made a thing… One self-help tape, two synth drones, and as much Freakshow Industries as I felt like.
My gripes are minor. A wet/dry control on Mishby and Dumpster Fire would come in handy when trying to keep these rabid dogs more easily on the leash. The controls bear no real quantifiable (or discernible) semitones or milliseconds, meaning that you’re going to be trusting your good old earballs to find a sweet spot. And a more “thanks, captain obvious” way to synchronize rhythmic effects to track tempo would be a nice addition down the line. I suppose that these would have been simple to add, but leaving them out reinforces the idea that these are to be used creatively and experimentally. I dunno, I’d ask the guys at Freakshow about this stuff, but I worry about the likelihood of waking up three days later naked (except for a cowboy hat) in the trunk of a limo somewhere outside Reno.
Everything about Freakshow Industries and their software (and their marketing, user-interface and YouTube channel) is a refreshing and much-needed stick in the eye of just how stale production plugins can be. This is like Everything Is Terrible got into pro audio. I suspect some people might do an about-face from their thumbtack-gargling sound design tools and anti-everything marketing. But even if you simply don’t have any use for this kind of insanity, you would still hopefully admire that someone finally took things this far into lunatic fringe.
Freakshow Industries are clearly not here to bring you the latest convolution reverb or Neve compressor clone (though I would love to hear them take on a dedicated compression/distortion box). These are for the psychedelic cosmonauts and I almost resent it being available for mass consumption, same as I could never stand Spencer Gifts selling septum rings and Dead Kennedys t-shirts to preteens in Topeka. But it’s here. The call is coming from inside the house. Stick this in your VST-hole and let the madness find you.
Go, freaks, go.
Freakshow Industries
4.5 / 5Reviewer
Pros
Though intentionally destructive in nature, they sound excellent.
Good luck finding anything else like this available anywhere.
For the right chore, these are creatively inspiring and very usable.
Cons
Lack of ‘real’ parameters makes things occasionally difficult.
No tempo sync. That’s gonna cost you half a star.
The GUI will give you nightmares.
Summary
There’s a time for exacting control and neat-and-tidy processing and then there’s time for venturing into the dark beyond. Freakshow Industries is owning the second category in a really gnarly, inspired way. Those who wonder, “what do you even use this for?!?” may never appreciate the dementedly madcap sounds contained within. Me? I can’t wait to see what they do next.
Rating
POST SCRIPT.
I feel like I’ve made new friends with Freakshow. Sometimes we just talk all night on AIM about which boys we want to make out with at school this year. Also, they sent me my first ever accolade for audio industry journalism. BTW, the sticker pack is too funny to open.
Ten years ago, EverythingRecording launched with our first ever review. The product? IK Multimedia’s “T-Racks” software. In the decade since, we’ve continued to enjoy IK, especially with their dedication to creating great software for the professional but priced for the working musician. Now break us off a slice of that birthday cake while we tell you about their latest…
ANALOG ENVY
As the proud owner of not one, but two, completely full 10-slot 500-racks, many a co-conspirator and client have ohh’d and ahh’d at my garden of boutique preamps, EQ’s and compressors. Being able to go from an actual, analog API to a Neve to an SSL with a single click – routing instruments, tracks and busses through all that gooey old-school circuitry can give an otherworldly punch, crush or snap to an otherwise ho-hum signal.
Mind you, the wayback machine is not without its flaws, namely recallability. Even if you print the results to a new track and take a picture of the settings, it occasionally happens that trying to get the exact parameter back later is never exact (manufacturers without detented pots, I’m looking at you). And given their modular nature, sometimes units get moved, sold or rerouted – leaving you in a pickle when pulling up a session before reconfiguring.
While the “is it real, or is it a plug-in” debate continues to rage on, the DAW has effectively closed the gap to the point that even the most uptight cork-sniffing analog die-hard can’t reliably tell the difference in a blind shootout. And with IK Multimedia now stepping up with a virtual 500-rack of sorts, the temptation to stay all of the way in-the-box is bigger than ever.
The 500 Rack Of Your Dreams. Too bad it’ll run you about $50g to make the hardware version
MEET THE MIXBOX
IK Multimedia’s MixBox is a self-contained single plug-in that allows the user to virtually install and mix up to eight slots worth of virtual processors – either as a plug-in (VST, AAX, AU) or a standalone application. How many processors? Seventy. Right, not seven-teen. Seven-tee. As in ten times seven. As in, “holy crap on a pita, that is a lot of modules.” We’ve all seen virtual amp packages that give you dozens of amp models, complete with matching graphics within the interface, but this is taking things to a stratospheric echelon for the mix engineer.
You can combine up to any eight of these “plug-ins within the plug-in” in series and intuitively drag them to try different chains. Everything from guitar preamp modeling, vintage and modern-inspired EQ’s and compressors to pitch and time modulation, tape and transformer saturation and beyond. To list and review every single slot would be the final nail in my carpal tunnel coffin so let’s just put this another way:
This is the single most comprehensive mixing plug-in ever offered from anyone, anywhere.
I hear some of you out there – at a retail price of $299 ($199 for a limited time), one could cross their arms and proclaim “this is sooooo gimmicky”. After all, pro audio’s previous generation of engineering luminaries said that about the DAW all of the way until they were forced into retirement. At $4.25 per effect, you’d be well within your right to question how well these actually sound. But let’s remember, this is just as much a new release as it is a culmination of IK Multimedia’s twenty-plus years of acoustic and analog-modeling. T-Racks. AmpliTube. SampleTank. They’ve been at this for a long enough to really perfect the process…. And perfect it, I believe they have.
GET AMPED
You want amp modeling? MixBox has amp modeling. Seven (+ a cabinet simulator) to be exact.
It’s no surprise that IK Multimedia have added a vast collection of their amplifier models and distortion pedals. Even if you have no intention of using MixBox on an actual guitar, distorion effects do find a lot of use on sources that need a dash (or a splash) of hot sauce. Drum overheads, synths and vocals have all been given the guitar pedal treatment to interesting and surprisingly usable results (and all that impedance-matching and mono-only nature of using pedals is a bit limiting). With a solid grip of amplifier heads old and new and a cabinet simulator, these are a great jumping off point for adding some hiss and heat to whatever you care to throw at it. Also of note, there are a handful of modules that are clearly inspired by actual pedals (one “Chorus” effect is accurate in sound, PANTONE color and fontography to the Boss CE-2 pedal).
SWIMMING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
From dedicated EQ’s and compressors to full channel strips, MixBox has over a dozen different options for your tone-shaping and frequency-carving adventures. Want to do the classic “double pump” vocal technique? The LA-2A and 1176-fashioned modules await your word. Wish you could put a Neve (-inspired) EQ into an SSL 4K(ahem, again… “-inspired”) compressor with a Fairchild-like 670 to finish it off? You’ve still got five slots left! Mostly focused on the greats, but with some modern models included, you will not run out of creative ways to sculpt a track. Also included here are some great options for saturation – be it by way of tube, transformer or cassette tape*.
Uh-oh. B Church Rant™ Ahead! Yonder be dragonnes! Personally, I’ve always just low-passed tracks at 15kHz and said “there’s your tape saturation” – but I am also notoriously lazy and jaundiced about all the “ohhhhhh tapey tape-ity tape tape tape!” people who’ve never even touched a freakin’ cassette. Okay, I’m done.
TIME AND SPACE
With three delays and (count ‘em!) NINE reverbs, creating space and time is no problem. Working with everything from the curios and relics of digital reverbs and tape echoes to more modern technological advancements like convolution-based rooms, there’s a space for just about any inkling you might have. The spring reverb, though commonly thought of as a guitar amp “sound” can really put a different shade on things for vocals and ambient mics. And if you’re in a particularly 80’s sort of mood, the inverse and AMS-inspired “digital” reverbs would like a word.
GETTING WEIRD WITH IT
Modulator? She’s your date. YOU modulate her!
Filters and modulation effects abound with everything from simple chorus and band-passing for basic chores all the way into the psychedelic beyond. Want to really get weird with it? Don’t threaten MixBox with a good time here, because it will go “there” and beyond. Formant filtering and FM modulators for you Devo-tees, LFO-based and auto-filters for the funk and all the phasers and flangers your acid jam band revival could ever desire. Keep it simple or descend into a hallucinatory netherworld…. And just about anywhere in-between.
UNBOX THE POSSIBILITIES
One of the most faithful 1081 clones I’ve heard, hardware OR software.
Though the selection of available modules most certainly leans at least somewhat towards guitarists on the surface, I turned MixBox loose everywhere I could on a mix I’m currently in the throes of finishing. I really wanted to see if there’s anywhere this can’t stand in for other plug-ins or hardware.
For drums, I used MixBox as a track insert on kick, snare and overheads as well as a general drum submix (including toms, hats and ambient mics). For the kick I set about creating my “usual” chain – landing on the basic “Channel Strip” handling dynamics, then through the 81 EQ to bring out some emphasis at 100hz and 4.2kHz with a nice wide dip around 1kHz. I used my DAW’s gate and transient shaper pre-insert, as those are conspicuously absent from the list. Getting the individual modules and their settings situated was tactile and easy and the sound was very much on par with using similar plug-ins or yes, even my favorite hardware. I then used a near-identical chain for the snare, pulling up some “pop” in the lower-mids by bringing out the fundamental. Again, sounding great without any real fuss.
Being able to assign another track’s output or aux send to the compressors’ sidechain detection circuits could have easily been overlooked in bringing this behemoth to light. Thankfully it’s included. Especially with drums, having the flexibility to key a limiter or compressor with another transient source is of critical importance to ensure everything can come to the front when need be, but without a mushy glob of everything-all-the-time. If you want to key another track FROM MixBox, you’ll need to break the plug-in into two instances at the point you want to create the send, however
If it quacks like a duck. Fans of the Solid State Logic 4000 desks may notice some similarities.
On the overheads, I used the British EQ (modeling the lesser-used “brown”-era of SSL’s 4K 242 EQ circuit) to effectively (but not completely) high-pass out everything below 250hz and patched the 670 compressor post-EQ to pull up some of the resonance between the notes. It wasn’t quite “right” for this, so I switched in the “2A” compressor and was instantly satisfied with the result. But the 670 got its turn to shine compressing the entire drum submix, put in after just an ever-so-slight (about 10%) DigitalVerb plate (AMS RMX fans, rejoice!).
Solo’d out, the drums had a huge presence, with the kick and toms hauling tremendous weight behind the notes, but without losing articulation. The snare transients popped through the onslaught quite nicely, pushing the ambient and overhead mics away and letting them wash back in around it. Pulling the rest of the mix back in, I had to tame the bombast – making a few needed adjustments to keep the drums from owning all of the available sonic real estate, but it was just a nip here and a tuck there. I hate saying this as much as the next guy, but it “sounded analog”. You could literally feel your fingertips pushing “all four buttons in“. while Seriously, it conjured “that feeling” of those classic tubes, diodes, transformers and op-amps giving the transients a good set of teeth, but never at the expense of the drums becoming brash. In a word? “Big.” They sounded BIG.
FIDDLING WITH GUITAR
Turning my attention away from drums, I wanted to dive into MixBox’s capability on guitar. Luckily this session included not only miked tracks – but the raw, DI’d guitar and bass sources: a perfect opportunity to really see what all of these preamp and cabinet models could do. I figured “why not just go from raw track to effects to mix the whole way across in one channel?” We do have eight slots to mess with here – and again, I’ve never needed eight effects in a row on anything ever.
Care for a little Boogie with that Mesa? The MTL module beckons.
Step one, a little bit of line amp saturation courtesy of the very simple 1st-stage preamp that, for convenience here, has been called (rather simply, I thought…) “Preamp”. I have personally found that applying just a little bit of breakup and tone-shaping to the signal first before applying any “real distortion” gives the amp modeling a better foundation than a flat DI input. And besides, what’s it going to do… distort? Isn’t that the point?
Step two, straight to the MTL (Modern Tube Lead) amplifier. I know, I know, I’m predictable. I’ve also been listening to the new Deftones album all week. It’s just where my head is at the moment. My trusty vintage ESP Mirage Deluxe (NOT the reissue) tuned in drop C – C-G-C-F-A-D) lit up with a jagged, djenty girth with just an approximation of the settings I use on my VHT Pittbull or Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier heads. Scooped mids, thundering lows and a ear-level shelf at about 5k, with the low- and high-pass filters taking out any extraneous activity outside. Getting closer. I couldn’t quite get the gain all the way to where I needed it, but adding a bit more breakup from the preamp itself closed the gap. Adding the “Cabinet” module dialed the Reznoresque, buzzy direct-preamp tone into the monster it was born to be. It’s no surprise that the minds at IK would have a solid arsenal guitar tones, as AmpliTube has been one of their hallmark products for almost two decades.
I stacked this up next to one of the already recorded tracks – same guitar, VHT Pittbull CL head through a 2×12 Laney cabinet running 30W Greenbacks, captured through an Audix i5 into an AML EZ-1081 500 series preamp. These were not a direct comparison, obviously, but both recordings were aiming at a similar result – a bone-shaving, heaving, grunting, pummelling, raging bull tone. Though unique, both achieved the desired effect and I found things about the MixBox setup that outshined the actual amp/cab/mic route (to be fair, the way the ‘real thing’ fed back and handled line noise lent a veneer of realism that the MixBox didn’t). Point being, you may likely never need your amplifier in the studio again. What you do with it live is your business. Speaking of, are we playing gigs again yet? The “Standalone” version would be quite good for that.
VOCALS
I don’t mind telling you I used the 670 comp… a LOT.
For the life of me, I can not think of any vocal mixing situation where MixBox would not be able to actualize the sounds in your head. The selection of EQ’s and dynamics offer up everything from vintagey, lush transformer-piqued responses to full-on, tip-of-your-nose presence. I don’t know what it is about the 670 module that had me coming back for more, but it quickly became a go-to*, as did the 76 compressor and 1081 EQ. Not only do they work well as individuals, but building a chain of them and experimenting with the order paid off more than once with the results.
(* I was one of those lucky ones who had ready access to the actual Fairchild 670 for many years. While it’s been a while, this really feels like you’re getting the nuance and transient response it’s so widely hailed for.)
If you’re bussing individual vocal tracks to a subgroup like I do (saves on CPU and time, after all), you’ll find the modulation, delay and reverbs to not only handle your traditional mix chores, but some extremely creative ideas. Again, this is where bringing in a lot of IK’s guitar-based effects is an artistic boon – I often find myself running vocals through guitar pedals for that “something different” and this removes the step of impedance-matching. Want to get “all Sabbath with it” and put your vocals through a Leslie or a phaser? MixBox nods in encouragement.
OBEY YOUR MASTER
On the stereo mix bus, the MixBox most certainly shares some sonic resemblance to their T-Racks software. Whether it’s a dash or a splash of final EQ, compression or saturation, you’ve got a lot to choose from. For those of us who do multiple sub-groups with a bone-dry master channel, this is perfect.
The debate continues to rage from all sides just how much processing should occur in the stereo bus. I have seen effect chains that truly boggle the imagination… and I have seen nothing more than a soft-clipper and a phase meter (conspiculously missing from the former). To me, meaning this is my opinion, if your stereo bus needs that much processing, there’s either something wrong with the mix or you’re stepping on the toes of the mastering process.
But whatever methodology you use, MixBox provides a solid suite of possibilities – everything from a little final polish right down to a multi-stage finalizing-o-rama. Those looking to do more granular mastering-type work like stereo width processing, mid-side EQ or compression or dedicated limiting could likely feel a bit ignored here, but lest we forget this is not MasterBox… to say nothing of the fact that there are professional mastering engineers out there with tuned rooms, dedicated hardware and an objective set of ears ready and willing to help.
A CAREER IN MODELING
The accuracy with which MixBox models their hardware lineage is pretty darn impressive. I know that there will always be those who “harumph” at this and say “well, it doesn’t sound like MY LA-2A” but the truth is there are hundreds of working units out there that are well over fifty years old. Good luck finding ANY two that sound alike after decades of varying use, maintenance and storage. I particularly felt like if I were to build a powder-coated blue hardware controller with Marconi knobs on the front, you would not be able to tell the difference between an actual Neve EQ versus the MixBox version (let the hate mail begin!). I’ve run more than my fair share of signals through those Neve 1081 and 1084 EQ’s and frankly, I can think of many pieces of hardware professing to be a direct clone that aren’t as close as IK’s digital approximation.
Whatever the itch, MixBox is here to scratch.
In the immortal words of one William Wonka, “The Snozzberries taste like Snozzberries”. Sure, a 600x250px avatar is not quite the tactile experience of putting your hands on one of those gorgeous, patinaed relics. Alternately, just using the 670 as an example, being able to have that experience is going to cost you well over $10,000 and gets you one stereo pair at a time. The AMS-esque digital reverb was another particular favorite of mine and I found myself returning to it often – it’s ever-so-chiseled and grainy texture rendered beautifully. The vintage Roland-inspired “Ensemble” chorus is a dead-on lift of those famous 1980’s thickeners. And I’ve got to admit, even as a die-hard lifer of the hardware, the Bus Compressor (an SSL 4000 Quad Bus clone) also gets close, certainly moreso than many of the GSSL‘s floating around out there*.
(*Fellow SSL-enthusiast and esteemed engineer, Chuck Zwicky, once explained to me several flaws on the Gyraf circuit that have unfortunately been bred into the GSSL bloodline. And if you think I get too technical sometimes, he makes my articles look like Sweet Valley High.)
THOSE PRECIOUS CYCLES
You would think that, with so many possibilities crammed into a singular plug-in, that MixBox would gnaw through even the meatiest and mightiest of CPU’s. And you would be wrong. Frankly, I found MixBox to be a dainty “I’ll just have a salad”-type eater. Sure, stacking up multiple instances with all eight slots running is going to make a dent – but comparatively speaking MixBox runs pretty lean and mean, even at high sample rates and lower buffers.
You don’t need the newest, hardest, fastest comp to run MixBox.
I generally run my tracking session buffers at 64 samples and then back that off to 256 at mix. I can think of a few plug-ins that can get downright unruly – MixBox ain’t one of ‘em.
Even with it running in several places, I never experienced lag or got those dreaded “CPU hot-spikes”, dropouts and glitches. Though MixBox could in many ways be considered a “IK Multimedia Greatest Hits” compilation, the plug-in itself behaves as a new software application should – not a ball of band-aids from the 32-bit days of previous operating systems. Put another way, if your system starts glitching hard with MixBox, we need to take a look at your computer or the amount of processing you’re using.
FUTURE VERSION WISH-LIST
I really try to go easy on v1.0 software, especially when it’s clear they’ve got a solid foundation to build upon. Imagine using Pro Tools circa 1995 or Cubase v1 today and remember, these were considered quantum leaps at the time. You’d be pulling your hair out by the clump, screaming at a 640×480 monitor and a 33mHz single-core processor. So to that end, IK Multimedia are off to a very impressive start. Absolutely none of my critiques are at the expense of a five-star review.
“v1” is always an embryonic state with promises of better things to come.
There are a few additions I’d like to see in the next version or so that would “complete” the MixBox universe and not require stepping back out of the plugin, especially as they are processes that tend to happen somewhere in the early-to-middle phase. Mic preamp modeling could stand to make a heftier presence – we can run the track through a handful of guitar preamps, but the same can’t be said for actual console channels. A Helios 69. A different flavor of Neve like the 88VR or the RND Portico. A Trident 80B or API 312. Those are a big part of what in-the-box engineers are looking for. Transient shaping is another “need-to-have” inside this world. While I love the channel strip on Cubase Pro for this very thing, the rest of the world hasn’t woken up to this DAW’s superiority and I feel bad for them.
Another “wish” (it’d be a gripe by v2) is the serial-only design. Being able to modify the block diagram with different configurations of parallel and serial signal flow would open up even more creative doors than ever before thought possible given the range of possibilities MixBox contains. Speaking of routing – a dedicated mono channel version is a big “Yes, please” for me. In Cubase Pro 10.5, placing MixBox on a mono track instantly creates a stereo output and frankly, working with mono sources goes a long way from needing to chase down smearing phase issues down the road.
And as a final, distant “hope, hope, wish, wish”? It would be great to see additional modules become available through partnership, even if at a small additional price. If I could add my favorite McDSP FilterBank or elysia nVelope mid-stream, I would be tickled. That exposes probably the biggest snag of the whole “all-in-one” design (not just for IK, but in general) – if you want to add, say, your own preferred solution for any given task midway through, you’ll need to run one instance of MixBox before and another one after. I know the intention of a plug-in like this is to be the only one you need for a whole channel but sometimes you just “want what you want.”
I’M THE MAN IN THE BOX
We review a LOT of plug-ins at EverythingRecording. Developers are always looking for a new kind of rainy day to sell their umbrellas. To be fair, IK are not the first to the game with the “modular rack” approach, as PSP Audioware’s Infinistrip and Slate Digital’s VMR (Virtual Mix Rack) have been finding fans. But there’s certainly no denying that, even if there are a few pieces in MixBox’s 70 available modules that aren’t as exciting as others, it’s three times as many as PSP’s twenty-four and absolutely dwarfs Slate VMR’s seven.
It’s interesting to me that, with most DAW’s supporting at least ten-plus inserts per track, we are effectively creating racks within the racks. But the convenience of building an entire chain within a single window does have its upsides (as we all know when stacking up multiple plugins of varying shapes and sizes with limited monitor space). Also, storing entire configurations as a single preset will make even the most die-hard of analog revivalists admit that pages full of patchbay and device settings is a living nightmare by comparison.
With any piece of gear, be it hardware OR software, it comes down to the sound, the ease of use and well… yeah, cost does have to figure in there somewhere, right? On the level of pure sonics, the MixBox is twelve out of a possible ten. Not every developer gets the modeling part of a particular piece dead on, but IK’s decades of experience really pay dividends here. With exquisite creation and emulation of dozens and dozens of so many processes, this is a must have for any engineer. It’s tactile, organized and quite simple to understand – the sort of plugin you just install and go.
At a $199 introductory MSRP ($299 for those ‘get-around-to-it’ types who don’t like saving money), it’s absolutely absurd to even consider complaining about the price. You’re buying seventy plug-ins here. And as I said before – you probably will have a dozen-or-so favorites, but knowing there is such a tremendous warchest to experiment with can unlock some creative windows that might otherwise be painted shut by now. Assuming you’re running all 8 modules, you have 722 trillion possible combinations. Let’s just take a moment to contemplate how vast a number that is – and then relax knowing we’ll all likely have somewhere between ten and a hundred home-spun presets that get called into battle.
Seriously? This is what a 5/5 plug-in looks like.
BOX IT UP
With the sheer amount of individual options under the hood, IK Multimedia’s MixBox is an absolute no-brainer. Even if you don’t use every last module or every last slot (I don’t think I’ve ever had more than five plugins on a track in twenty-five years). Even if you don’t need any guitar preamps or have no need for “yet another reverb”. The idea you can build entire processing chains for every possible situation then store and deploy them with ease from a single instance is a real level-up for plug-in technology.
Compared to the idea of building up an actual 500-series rack – wellllll…. Let’s just say I have two totally full racks and I love them dearly and use them often. Many of the modules I use are very off the beaten path – things like Baxandall and APSI-modeled EQ’s, dedicated transformers, relic compressors (like my trusty Aphex CX-1’s) and the inimitable nVelope (hardware edition). But the benefits to doing this digitally are not hard to fathom. You buy one analog module and you get to run one channel (one mono channel), that’s it. Want to try eight $3000 compressors in a row? MixBox can make that happen until your CPU screams for mercy.
The quality of the modeling and effects is impeccable, the ease of use is dead simple and the price is worth every penny and then some. It’s a masterful jack-of-all-trades piece of software that gets better with every single use. Producers and engineers of every style of music and any level of experience will have no problem finding new ways to inspire their mixes. My “v2 wish list” does remove a star, but since I had given it a 6 out of 5, IK Multimedia will have to settle for a perfect score. MixBox really is that good.
Options abound for making truly creative channel effects.
Sparkling sound quality and excellent models throughout.
More "esoteric" guitar-type effects work on more than just guitars.
Cons
Missing a couple modules to be a "complete" solution.
Routing is serial only, can't create parallel blocks.
Mono version for using single sources would be welcome.
Summary
Putting an entire plug-in folder inside your plug-in folder has its benefits. With a massive amount of IK's twenty years of excellent modeling technology in a single insert, this plug-in is sure to find a use in any situation. This is a "must have" for every producer and engineer.
Yes, the interface has “compressor-like” controls but is not quite a compressor. The above-mentioned nodes work in tandem with the five knobs in the depth and speed section to control just how Soothe will handle your problem frequencies. The depth knob serves as the main control for how much overall processing should be applied to all boosted nodes. Just above the depth knob are two choices for different modes of processing. These two modes determine how the depth control will affect the audio, with each name being pretty self-explanatory.
Sometimes the source material won’t play nice no matter how many controls a plugin has. Usually, this results in copying audio to a new track, separating each sample in your DAW, and preserving only the initial transient. UVI has turned to the future to fix this by utilizing “machine learning”. The Separation section breaks your audio down to its very core and separates it into sections based. Think of this as an extremely smart gate. Once analyzed, audio is placed in one of six different divisions, with “Section 1” containing the most energy going all the way down to the “R” for the remainder of the content. To remove each section for better detecting, deselect the corresponding number. Want to hear what you’re removing? Use the Monitor button. Tip: this can also be used to remove mic bleed by leaving the Monitor on and removing the sections that contain the bleed. Usually, all you need to deselect is the “R”.
Eight slots abound with countless options for how samples will trigger. Drag and drop is the name of the game. Want eight samples? Select them and drag them into the slot area and each will populate in a slot. The mode selector at the bottom gives you the power to choose how they will play. The All mode plays every sample loaded at once, Sequence goes in numerical order, Random does just that, and Velocity will play sample based on how far the source hit goes over the threshold.
A Ducking control has been added to the output section to sidechain compress your source material based on the samples. A slider next to the clever Duck icon controls how much you want the original to hide behind the sample. If you want further control, the same Settings menu you used to scan for plugins has expanded controls for ducking.
