Those 'Secret Weapon' Plugins
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 6:48 am
If you already know where to stick the mike, odds are the only plugins you need are EQ, compression and reverb, maybe a gate, and to save time-versus singing on pitch in the first place, maybe Autotune/Melodyne, but what about the audio ninja stuff that doesn't quite fit those categories? What are your favorite 'impossible' processors? Here are some of my latest discoveries:
Waves' Vitamin is a phase-aligned, zero-latency multiband exciter/de-esser with control over width and punch for each band. That doesn't sound very exciting, 'til you hear what it can do, and it can do a lot, in both corrective and creative applications, subtly or otherwise, using the mix knob. You can fix nearly any recording mistake or make your mix punch through walls like the Kool-Ade man, which also goes for this next bit of wizardry:
Sonnox' Envolution is an evolution of the transient processing that began with SPL's now-legendary Transient Designer, from the folks that brought you the TransMod plugin; this version has envelope control, (hence, 'envolution') and it's a game changer. Great for transforming/mangling drum loops, but the "difference" button allows you to send say, just the transients from a bass track to a reverb processor, so you get the effect without any 'mud' whatsoever. It can also 'de-reverberate' with finer control than SPL's De-Verb. Miked your acoustic guitar too close? Banish that weird pick attack forever! Turn that picked passage into fingerpicking! No bottom mic on the snare? No problemo! A skilled user can change the apparent mic distance of a recorded track after the fact. I have this one, and it's my new favorite.
Noveltech's Character seems to do a similar thing, though their site is cagey about how they're doing it exactly; (time-variant filtration, saturation and transient shaping would be my guess) with three algorithms and two knobs, it might be the simplest to operate.
Sonnox' Inflator has been around a while; all it does is make your mix sound louder without altering the crest factor, which you gotta admit is still a pretty neat trick. I love that they named it 'Inflator', cuz that's exactly what too much of this process sounds like: a balloon, about to pop. It's easy to overdo and it can be finicky to adjust, but in the right hands, it's indistinguishable from magic.
Waves' Vitamin is a phase-aligned, zero-latency multiband exciter/de-esser with control over width and punch for each band. That doesn't sound very exciting, 'til you hear what it can do, and it can do a lot, in both corrective and creative applications, subtly or otherwise, using the mix knob. You can fix nearly any recording mistake or make your mix punch through walls like the Kool-Ade man, which also goes for this next bit of wizardry:
Sonnox' Envolution is an evolution of the transient processing that began with SPL's now-legendary Transient Designer, from the folks that brought you the TransMod plugin; this version has envelope control, (hence, 'envolution') and it's a game changer. Great for transforming/mangling drum loops, but the "difference" button allows you to send say, just the transients from a bass track to a reverb processor, so you get the effect without any 'mud' whatsoever. It can also 'de-reverberate' with finer control than SPL's De-Verb. Miked your acoustic guitar too close? Banish that weird pick attack forever! Turn that picked passage into fingerpicking! No bottom mic on the snare? No problemo! A skilled user can change the apparent mic distance of a recorded track after the fact. I have this one, and it's my new favorite.
Noveltech's Character seems to do a similar thing, though their site is cagey about how they're doing it exactly; (time-variant filtration, saturation and transient shaping would be my guess) with three algorithms and two knobs, it might be the simplest to operate.
Sonnox' Inflator has been around a while; all it does is make your mix sound louder without altering the crest factor, which you gotta admit is still a pretty neat trick. I love that they named it 'Inflator', cuz that's exactly what too much of this process sounds like: a balloon, about to pop. It's easy to overdo and it can be finicky to adjust, but in the right hands, it's indistinguishable from magic.