A very simple, great sounding plugin to work remotely. Put it on your master fader, log in, copy link and send it to your client.
They can log into a browser and hear the mix in high quality audio.
Number Two: Celemony Melodyne
Best tuning software, tune your vocals, pocket them, make harmonies. It even lets me tune my guitar if I have a string that’s out!
Number Three: Oeksound Soothe
Amazing multi-band de-harsher / compressor. Set it to Ultra adjust main knob. Great on vocals, acoustic guitars, overheads and more!
Number Four: Sound Raddix Auto Align
Auto alignment tool to phase and sample align multiple sources to one. Works great on drums!
Number Five: ADPTR
Meter and analyze every possible facet of your mix and your reference mixes. You can compare your references and gain match them!
That’s our top five favorite Utility / Fixer plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube
Beginner or advanced, these plugins from stellar mixer Manny Marroquin are excellent. The EQ sounds as good as any, the distortion is simple, fast and effective. The de-harsher is so easy and efficient it’s mind boggling. They are usually on sale, so grab the bundle!
Number Two: JST Billy Decker Bus Glue
Nashville’s most prolific mixer Billy Decker has come up with a line of plugins to help him – and us – mix even faster! These ooze character and work quickly to bring your sounds to A-list quality.
Number Three: Waves CLA Guitars & Bass
Simple and awesome! Get it…
Number Four: Greg Wells Mixcentric
One knob gives your mix a great finished sound and kicks up the lower mid perfectly.
Number Five: Waves CLA FX
My go to filtered half note delay throw!
That’s our top five favorite Signature plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube
This EQ allows you to adjust frequencies on the sides of the stereo field or just the center. I always use the stereo spreader to lift the chorus.
Number Two: Plugin Alliance SPL Vitalizer MK2
The Vitalizer is great for stereo widening when you don’t necessarily want to hear a doubling or chorus effect. You can just utilize the stereo spread and process knobs, or you can dig in to all the other great features.
Number Three: Soundtoys PanMan
PanMan allows you to create motion of a sound source across the stereo field. It can be done in rhythmic steps locked to tempo or free of time constraints as you set it.
Number Four: Soundtoys Micro Pitch Shift
Just want the most used doubling effect of all time? The Eventide H3000 micro pitch shift setting! Ken from Soundtoys was a designer for Eventide before starting his own company, hence the super simple best offer – Micro Pitch Shift.
Number Five: Waves Brauer Motion Plugin
Developed with Master mixer Michael Brauer, Motion is probably the most in-depth and flexible sound field plugin. It actually appears to be moving sources behind the listener.
That’s our top five favorite Sound Field plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube
Just want the most-used doubling effect of all time? The Eventide H3000 micro pitch shift setting! Ken from Soundtoys was a designer for Eventide before starting his own company, hence the super simple best offering – Micro Pitch Shift.
Number Two: Eventide H3000 Factory
One of my favorite processors of all the time, the H3000. We had two, but after decades, parts became scarce. Luckily, along came Eventide’s software version. A super versatile sounding processor that oozes character and quality.
Number Three: Eventide Flanger
Super simple, cool and tons of vibe. It brings motion and life to any thing you apply it to in your mix.
Number Four: UA MXR Flanger / Doubler
Thick, chewy, subtle flaming!
Number Five: UA Roland Dimension D
Simple, classic analog chorus emulation!
That’s our top five favorite Modulation plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube
Soundtoys arguably made the greatest delay plugin with Echoboy, then continued with their amazing line of processors. Effect Rack lets you make your own signal paths of all these effects in one instance. We always use Echoboy with Micro Pitch to modulate the delays and Devil Loc for some darkness and grit.
Number Two: Valhalla Vintage Verb
A great reverb at any price, but at $50 it’s a steal. It emulates many of my older Lexicon units with great presets.
Number Three: Valhalla Room
One of our favorite room emulations for guitars & small vocal rooms.
Number Four: Slate Verb Suite Classics
This 480 plate has been my go-to vocal reverb, as well as the small wooden room for vocals and the Sony DRE emulation for drums.
Number Five: Altiverb
Altiverb has great room Impulse Responses to sample their reverb qualities. They are constantly adding new samples, so it’s very versatile and realistic.
That’s our top five favorite Reverb and Delay plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube https://youtu.be/l5P9Y7YO27k
We would love to hear any of your favorites, so feel free to let us know.
Thanks for your support !
The VSC2 has the vibe of an SSL via style buss comp with a little more transparency. It’s like the best of the SSL & Focusrite Red buss comps.
Number Two: Waves Greg Wells Mix Centric
It’s a one knob plug in ! Super easy and affordable, just a little bit gives the lower mid a nice kick in your mix.
Number Three: Manley Massive Passive EQ
This EQ is fantastic for adding clarity and bottom to a mix without ever sounding harsh. It gives the user all the sweet tones of a Pultec, with more flexibility.
Number Four: Brainworx BX V2/3 MS EQ with spreader
This EQ allows you to adjust frequencies on the sides of the stereo field or just the center. I always use the stereo spreader to lift the chorus.
Number Five: Fab Filter Pro L2 Limiter
This limiter sounds the best to our ears on a complex mix. It allows you to protect from overs and glue the mix without any artifacts.
Honorable Mention: Plug in Alliance ADPTR
This plugin is invaluable. It gives you comprehensive metering of level, loudness, stereo image and dynamics. That should be enough, but the really great thing ADPTR does is allow you to load in all your reference mixes and match levels with your mix to compare – PLUS it also allows you to compare all the metering attributes of your mix and reference mixes!
That’s our top five favorite Mix Buss plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube https://youtu.be/8EqPp-SVZyY
We would love to hear any of your favorites, so feel free to let us know.
Thanks for your support !
A great, simple tape emulation plugin. An excellent choice on vocals saturating the high end like tape. Also a very cool sound on drums, rounding out the transients similar to tape.
Number Two: Fab Filter Saturn
A multi-band saturation plugin, enabling deep tonal shaping. It has a lot of great presets if you want to work quickly too. Amazing on snare and pretty much everything else !
Number Three: Soundtoys Decapitator
One of the original saturation plugins. Subtle to brutal and everything in between.
Number Four: Waves Manny Marroquin Distortion
A reasonably priced and simple but flexible saturation plugin. It has a frequency control to help you focus the distortion and a compressor control for some interesting tone shaping possibilities.
Number Five: Brainworx Black Box
This plugin is based on a tube hardware unit. It has a more subtle tube flavor than the others.
BONUS – one more: UA Thermonic Culture Vulture
I couldn’t leave out the UA Thermonic Culture Vulture. This could be one of the best all-around distortion plugins ever. It’s really great on all sources.
That’s our top five favorite Saturation plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube https://youtu.be/KFzFJotm8wc
We would love to hear any of your favorites, so feel free to let us know.
Thanks for your support !
Pro Q is a great tool when you need a precise surgical EQ. It’s also a great high and low pass filter. I have one on every channel when I start a mix to clean out all the unnecessary high and low frequency material that can build up in a large mix. I also usually have another band ready to cut any offensive frequencies.
The GUI is super fast and easy and has a frequency analyzer to help you visually – AND it has a solo button that allows you to solo the band you are processing.
Number Two: UA Pultec EQP-1A
For a sweet, smooth, vintage tube EQ with loads of character, the UA Pultec is the one. It’s great for guitars, vocals, kick and snare … or as mix maestro Bob Clearmountain said- he would be happy mixing with just a rack full of Pultecs!
Number Three: Soundtoys SIE-Q
A great emulation of the Siemans EQ. Super smooth silky high frequency boost and a surprising mid range. Boosting 2.5k on a vocal can create harshness in many equalizers – not the SIE-Q. This brings it right to the front of the mix!
Number Four: UA API Vision
I’m a huge fan of API hardware and have quite a bit of it. This EQ sounds most like my 550b hardware units, plus you get the added bonus of the high and low pass filters and the mighty API compressor!
Number Five: Brainworx SSL E / J channel
It’s a great all-around EQ, with character and the added features of a channel strip!
That’s our top five favorite EQ plug ins . You can check the video for more details on YouTube https://youtu.be/kjXATyy4YtY
We would love to hear any of your favorites, so feel free to let us know.
Thanks for your support !
Here’s a list of our top five favorite compressor plugins we use daily to help craft our sounds!
Remember, these are our favorites (and in no particular order) so let us know yours as well!
Here’s our YouTube video on the same subject as well:
Number One: UA 1176 Blue Stripe
“Bluey” as mix virtuoso Chris Lord Alge refers to it is my go-to compressor for vocals, especially in a rock track. It brings the vocal right to the front of the mix and keeps it there. It also adds an excellent tonal character.
Number Two: UA Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
This compressor is my go-to for any source with low end. I have a send/return with the Shadow Hills comp in every session to glue the bass and kick together. It’s also excellent for beefing up thin vocals and voiceover tracks.
Number Three: Empirical Labs Arouser
The plugin version of the mighty Distressor plug in! I had four Distressor hardware comps, until designer Dave Derr came out with his software version.
It has way too many uses to list here, so get the demo and check it out!
Number Four: Waves CLA LA3A
A great comp for many sources when 1176 may be to heavy. Vocals, bass and always the go-to on electric guitars. It’s seems to always be on sale for
$29.99 too!
Number Five: Brainworx Vertigo VSC2
The hardware Vertigo unit was their take on a VCA SSL buss style comp. The plugin version is great and glues a track together like the SSL, but leaves a little less sonic character, in a good way!
That’s our top five favorite compressor plug ins. You can check the video for more details on YouTube:
We would love to hear any of your favorites, so feel free to let us know.
Thanks for your support !
Here’s a list of our top five favorite plugins we use daily to help craft our sounds !
Remember, these are our favorites (and in no particular order) so let us know yours as well!
Here’s our YouTube video breaking them down:
Number One: Sound Raddix Auto Align
Auto Align will automatically find any phase and sample delay differences for you, then correct them. A polarity flip button on a console or plug in can only flip your phase 180 degrees. Auto Align adjusts sources that are less or more than 180 degrees out of phase. Before Auto Align you would have the time consuming task of moving these manually.
It’s fast and easy. I put one in every part of the drum kit then set one of the overheads as the master and the others to receive. Just play 8 bars of the track and you are done!
In less than a minute your drums sound more focused, have more low end and feel like you have EQ’d them already. I find it helps us get a better drum sound much faster.
We also use it on a bass DI and amp.
Number Two: Oeksound Soothe
Soothe is a multi band compressor that magically finds harsh frequencies in your signal for you and reduces them. It’s a complicated plugin if you feel the need to deep dive into all the parameters, but in 15 seconds you can have it make an amazing difference with just two parameters. Just set the resolution to “ultra” and adjust the one large knob until you feel you have gone too far, then back it off and you are done.
Soothe is fantastic on vocals, acoustic guitars and drum overheads.
Number Three: Fab Filter Pro Q2/3 EQ
Pro Q is a great tool for any situation where a precise surgical EQ is needed. It is also great for high and low pass filtering. I have one on every channel when I start a mix to clean out all the unnecessary high and low frequency material that can build up in a large mix. I also usually have another band ready to cut any offensive frequencies.
The GUI is super fast and easy. It also has a handy has a frequency analyzer to help you visually AND a solo button on each band to hear the frequencies you are processing.
Number Four: Brainworx SSL E/ J Channel Strip
This plugin is really a game changer. You could buy one plugin and put it in every channel and have a super pro-sounding mix.
The actual tone is fantastic, giving the session the glue and harmonic feel of a console. The compressor is true to the console comp and the gate is as good as many of the top stand alone gate plugins. Not to mention a super smooth EQ and the sound of all the hits for the last four decades! We have tried all the other SSL emulations, but this one has it all, it doesn’t burn all your processing and it was on sale for $29.99!
Number Five: Soundtoys SIE-Q
A great emulation of the Siemans EQ. Super smooth, silky high frequency boost and a surprising mid range. Boosting 2.5k on a vocal can create harshness in many equalizers, but not the SIE-Q. This brings it right to the front of the mix !
That’s our top five favorite plugins .
You can check the video for more details on YouTube: https://youtu.be/a27pl17MalU
We would love to hear any of your favorites, so feel free to let us know.
Thanks for your support !
