The Beatles' Secret Sauce

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karlhourigan
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Re: The Beatles' Secret Sauce

Post by karlhourigan » Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:26 pm

I use the Abbey Road Chambers plug-in and I also like it a lot. If you're an Abbey Road fan like me (I got to record there for a day on July 4, 2019 in Studio 2), and you were going to get just one Waves Abbey Road plug-in, I would go with the Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain. It's very useful and I use it all the time now when I start my final mix, it's brilliant, and I haven't even plumbed all its depths yet. I also like the RS124 compressor, but be warned it's not an all 'round kind of compressor, it's very distinctive but is an excellent tool for certain situations. I've used it for helping out a lead vocal track to sit in a mix, and also for big drum sounds. I also bought their ADT plug-in; it hasn't been as useful as I thought but I'm liking it on electric guitar. I also got Waves DBX160 and a CLA compressor, both useful. So in my opinion, Waves make some pretty cool plug-ins.

After listening to Steve Barden recently on TAXI TV I checked out Spitfire Audio. Their "Labs" sample library is free to download and there is some very cool stuff there. I was struggling with a track recently (still a work in progress, kind of funky blues track) and I used the Spitfire Labs drum samples and wow, salvation! Easy to work with and helps the track sound alive. I'm looking forward to using some of their warped acoustic samples of pianos and strings.
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MJLeeman
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Re: The Beatles' Secret Sauce

Post by MJLeeman » Tue Jun 29, 2021 1:43 am

mojobone wrote:
Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:39 am
If you're like me, you can get kind of obsessive about certain vintage recordings and their associated capture and mix techniques. If so, you should probably just go buy this, while it's on sale for $49. https://www.waves.com/plugins/abbey-roa ... udio-demos If you're not like me, you should probably also go buy this, because it has an unique ability to transform obviously electronic sounds into something decidedly more organic.

If that was all it did, it'd be a steal, but when I demoed it, a light went on and I dug out my copy of Geoff Emerick's book about recording the Beatles and yep, he hardly ever used the Abbey Road plate reverbs, as they'd never been installed correctly, at least during his tenure, so it's a fair bet that Waves' AR Plates aren't going to sound much like the Fab Four reverb it's touted as.

This plugin is the real deal, so if you want the effect heard when Lennon sang, "I read the news today, oh, boy...", it's in this one. The single caveat is that it's a resource hog, but in my opinion, it's very much worth it.
Thank you @mojobone for your post. I saw it this morning (Aus time), did some research, and bought the Abbey Road plugin which you refer to. This is indeed a gem, not because of its association with the legendary Abbey Road studios, but because of the analogue warmth which I believe it can provide to a mixer's ears with subtle use.

Cheers
Michael Leeman

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mojobone
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Re: The Beatles' Secret Sauce

Post by mojobone » Mon Jul 12, 2021 3:26 pm

shanegrla wrote:
Sat Oct 03, 2020 1:06 pm
Wait, I'm a little confused. Your link was for the Abbey Road plugin, but you said in your post that Emerick didn't much use the Abbey Road reverbs for that sound.

Or was I not paying enough attention (which is certainly possible given my lockdown brain right now)?
There's a slew of Abbey Road plugins from Waves; I spoke specifically of the AR Chambers.
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