Every day there is a new plugin that promises to take your mix to the next level. From AAA developers to bedroom producers, purchasing plugins is gear collection for the modern age (except now your significant other can’t complain about the space it takes up!) Worse still, everyone and their bassist has a list of the top 10 best VST Plugins embedded on a blog somewhere, so who can you trust?
Well, we’re not here to tell you about which is best, for that you’ll have to find what works for you. However, with the Plugin Toolkit, we’ve put together out favourites and top picks that cover all the essentials for nailing your next mix.
At the beginning of the chain, you always want to start with an EQ. It doesn’t matter what kind of modulation or effect you want to put on your track, making sure that the raw stem sounds the best that it can is a necessity, and the EQM-01 does just that. By combining analogue modeling and DSP, this plugin has become a powerful, musical tool for shaping sound.
The EQ comes with a Low Cut Filter (High Pass), High and Low Shelves and 2 Mid-Range bands, as well as two separate circuits which adjust the shape of the curves, as well as the type of saturation used by the Transformer.
Use it to instantly sculpt a sound to better fit a mix, or add pleasant analog-style saturation and bypass the actual EQ part.
It’s a little known secret that to get natural yet powerful sounding compression, using multiple compressors in series is the easiest way. FirePresser offers you four of the most iconic analogue compressor emulations in a simple interface, which lets you blend all of them easily and get lush analogue compression to any material in no time.
FirePresser’s Rainbow Pad gives you control over the amount of presence of every compressor in the chain. Drag just one parameter to achieve the best results. Quick, simple and creative.
With the turbo knob adding more presence, and the detector function allowing for even closer fine tuning, the FirePresser is a well rounded force to be reckoned with.
Ah, the delay. The beautiful feeling of soaking your stem in luscious echo, and literally feeling it bounce around the mix. It can also be a pain in the backside, and an easy way to waste time as you frustratingly try to figure out which stem is making the mix muddy, and which stem is echoing in the wrong direction.
K7D is a fantastic solution to this. It mixes great quality sound with a great set of controls, for a truly unique experience with distinctive results. From vintage pre-amp/pre-gain saturation, to the ability to tune the delay with MIDI pitch information, everything is easy to access via its stylish, intuitive display. Spend less time searching for parameters and more time designing your sound.
A ‘perfect algorithmic reverb’ is often considered the holy grail of digital audio effects. In fact, the idea can be traced all the way back to research papers from the 1960s.
Throughout the 20th century, algorithmic reverbs evolved thanks to companies like EMT and Lexicon. But limited computing power forced manufacturers back then to work within narrow constraints.
Fast forward, and we now have the resources to do things that couldn’t be done during the golden age of studio reverbs. Both in terms of sheer sound quality, but also in terms of adding creative features that weren’t possible in the hardware days.
Crystalline stands on the shoulders of 60 years of chasing ‘the holy grail of DSP’. They’ve asked themselves what the pioneers of legendary digital reverbs would have done if they had the resources we have today – and then they’ve made exactly that plugin. With all the bells and whistles a modern engineer would need.
Need 31102 Console EQ - NoiseAsh Audio Tools
Channel strip plugins emulate how a signal would be processed if it was being recorded in a live console. As nice as it would be to have access to a studio desk during those late night mixing sessions, if you’re like us and not as fortunate, a channel strip is a must have.
This is where this emulation of the iconic 31102 comes in. This console has been used to mix many hit records for years. Guns N’ Roses, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Metallica, the list goes on.
Now you can get the same sound, with this true analogue emulation of one of the best-sounding class A mic pre/EQ modules ever produced.
Need 31102 Console Eq, with same character, detail, and true vintage tone as the original, now with an enhanced modern workflow.