I’m self recording 60/70’s influenced rock/blues/folk. I have been recording with Schep’s 73 and Omni Channel and a good collection of free compressors, delay, reverb, gates, and utility plugins that come with DAWs. I record drums from an edrum kit into Superior Drummer. My DAW is Harrison Mixbus 32C and I’m pretty happy with its built in compressor and EQ also.
I decided the Abbey Road bundle would be a good addition and now can choose an additional 2 plugins. I was thinking of Vocal Rider and H-Reverb but those aren’t offered in the promotion. I’m looking for ones people find most useful.
Man, I am like a kid in a candy store. It’s really hard to just limit myself to two!!
It would seem you have quite a few options in terms of “flavour”, especially if you factor in the Abbey Road suite. Perhaps what you may be looking for now is more control for those hard to tackle parts…
Maybe something like the C4, Center, MaxxBass, MaxxVolume, MV2, Q10, S1, Smack Attack, Submarine to name some examples.
Think to your self what is “missing” from your current toolset, what could streamline your workflow, what problems do you have that may be difficult to fix. Go from there.
Thanks for the reply, agree it’s hard to pick just two. MV2 has come up a lot as something you pop on the end of the fx chain with light settings to “finish” a track. As I’m doing what in the old days would be called the portastudio thing I’m interested in plugins that can quickly improve a track. I don’t mind if it’s a black box. I might go for the Greg Wells VoiceCentric.
I’m not great at laying down vocal tracks - would Waves Tune LT be practical for fixing a couple of flat notes transparently or does it take more time than just singing the part over and over and then cutting and pasting together a best take?
Waves Tune and Waves Tune LT can indeed assist you in the process. However in case you are not certain about its efficiency - simply try the demo version of the plugin prior the purchase.
It’s one thing to sound good in isolation, its another thing to “play well with others”. When testing plugins I always find it a good idea to drop them in a mix, possibly alongside like plugins so you can do an A/B comparison.
The idea isn’t necessarily to find something superior, that’s subjective, the idea is to see what it brings to the game that is “different”. How does it compliment your current set of plugins?? What unique qualities does it bring to the game?? How does it improve your workflow and speed things up??
If it’s not too different to something you already own thats a sign that there’s a very good chance you don’t need it. You can then try looking at another plugin.
@simon.a.billington - interesting you recommend finding something different rather than better than what your have already. I decided to get Greg Wells VoiceCentric and RVox. I thought it would be fun to have a producer’s vocal processing “black box” and RVox for an easy to apply dynamics improvement.
For the most part “better” is a matter of context and opinion. It’s mostly subjective. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” kind of thing.
Something that sounds great on acoustic piano doesnt mean it will sound as good on the same piano within a mix because now it has to play well with others. It 's also one thing to sound great on an EDM piano, but how about jazz or classical. Then there’s personal tastes and preferences, project direction. Perhaps you want something hifi maybe you want lofi.
So, yeah, better is highly subjective. A thing that is all too often overlooked.
