Mix Down tools

[erol1988]

Ableton is my DAW of choice and been using in-built eq's for most stuff. I am looking for some other 3rd party plug-ins.

What does everyone else use?

I was looking at Izotope Alloy, seems quite interesting, any one used this before?

Cheers Erol

[River]

I use the sonnox EQ a lot in live to roll highs/lows and tweak, its nice sounding, good UI and CPU friendly.

[lugodaniel18]

alloy is good for kicks.u can get the phattest kicks with alloy.what are you looking to do wih the eq?

[Kristoph]

Alloy is pretty good, has some useful presets and is very tweakable - I think the best thing to do is just grab a load of demos and see what works well for you... most of the products out there have 14 day demos. a good buss comp I can reccomend is "the glue" by cytomic - very good to stick either across all your drums or your master channel, and is only $99.

Other good EQs are the PSP MasterQ, UAD Cambridge (but requires a UAD card), UAD Manley Massive Passive is supposed to be really good (but requires a UAD2 card!). To be honest, most of the time I use the Logic Channel EQ - it's really transparent. You only want to be using "special" EQs when you want to add character or warmth to a sound.

Other good tools for mixdown are the softube tube tech compressor, PSP VintageWarmer 2, Camel Audio Camelphat (just for the best sounding resonant bandpass filter you can get!).

Good ones for the master strip are iZotope Ozone, Abbey Road Brilliance Pack, BBE Sonic Sweet / D82 and the glue as I mentioned earlier... just don't overdo it with any of them or you'll kill it! :)

[TheSqueezer]

In my opinion a digital EQ is a digital EQ!! it doesnt matter if its from Logic or Sonnox or FabFilter...they must work the same way cause the algorithm for a EQ its the same. Now, things like the analyzers and etc can be diferent or have diferent responses. I just love Logic EQ, i love the analyzer, the Gui and everything.
U must allready know that Logic plug ins are amazinnnnnng, but if you want 3rd party ones, i could recommend Vintage Warmer2, excelent compressor..and the name says what it does better :D , FabFilter Pro C (another excelent compressor) and IK Multimedia T-Racks plugs( if you are on short budget this is an superb choice..its like WAVES and UAD Fairchild emulations) Limiters i recommend Voxengo Elephant and PSP Xenon ( i have tryed the demos from this ones and they sound fantastic). Izotope Ozone is a pretty good plug too...i will have to try Alloy to see how diferent is from ozone.

[Kristoph]

In my opinion a digital EQ is a digital EQ!! it doesnt matter if its from Logic or Sonnox or FabFilter...they must work the same way cause the algorithm for a EQ its the same.
....kinda - things like the cambridge and the massive passive are modelled on the analogue hardware - and they're modelled so as they exhibit the same "musical weirdness" that the hardware does.

an important thing to realise about mixing down in digital is that you very rarely want to be boosting anything on an EQ. You want to be removing the sound you don't want, rather than adding what you wish was there!

When you're wanting to refine a sound, and take away unwanted bits, you want to be using a generic, transparent, easy to use EQ - just like the ones in logic or live.

When a sound is lacking in warmth or character is when you want to be rolling out the fancy pants expensive, analogue modelled EQs...

...So I'll agree with you to an extent - that it's not really worth having a bunch of digital EQs that all do the same thing, but it is handy to have some that have their own colour or character for enhancing the sounds that are lacking...

[nikmis]

You want to be removing the sound you don't want, rather than adding what you wish was there!
why is that? isn't boosting one band the equivalent of reducing the others? but with added volume

[Kristoph]

why is that? isn't boosting one band the equivalent of reducing the others? but with added volume
cutting out what you don't want, and might not be able to hear, means you can get much more level out of the sound without it clipping... near enough every track in my arrangement will have an EQ with a lowcut and a highcut on it...

you want each sound to sit in its own frequency range, so you end up with something that sounds full. :)

I should point out, these are not rules set in stone, end of the day always do what works for you - this is just what works for me, and everyone I've ever worked with!

[TheSqueezer]

why is that? isn't boosting one band the equivalent of reducing the others? but with added volume

What Kristoph wanted to say was that u can remove something or all of it from a sound, but u cant add anything its not there in the original sound, u can just make more noticeble something that is allready there...!

For example, if your sound is lacking a lot mid range and if you boost it too hard on the EQ you will end up fu#king the sound and the harmonics of it..and end up introducing distortion. Its better to shape the original sound inside the synth to make it sound good.

[TheSqueezer]

DAMMM...Kristoph was faster than me replying :p:p

[erol1988]

Nice discussion going on here since I last visited.

I think i've got a lot of demoing to do.

[J-Bone]

Erol,

The Waves SSL bundle has a great 'musical' quality. Well worth the investment IMO.

[Alfonse]

Alloy is pretty good, has some useful presets and is very tweakable - I think the best thing to do is just grab a load of demos and see what works well for you... most of the products out there have 14 day demos. a good buss comp I can reccomend is "the glue" by cytomic - very good to stick either across all your drums or your master channel, and is only $99.

Other good EQs are the PSP MasterQ, UAD Cambridge (but requires a UAD card), UAD Manley Massive Passive is supposed to be really good (but requires a UAD2 card!). To be honest, most of the time I use the Logic Channel EQ - it's really transparent. You only want to be using "special" EQs when you want to add character or warmth to a sound.

Other good tools for mixdown are the softube tube tech compressor, PSP VintageWarmer 2, Camel Audio Camelphat (just for the best sounding resonant bandpass filter you can get!).

Good ones for the master strip are iZotope Ozone, Abbey Road Brilliance Pack, BBE Sonic Sweet / D82 and the glue as I mentioned earlier... just don't overdo it with any of them or you'll kill it! :)

OMG! I just downloaded the demo version of the camelphat filter and with a bit of automation it turned a fairly ordinary sounding ES1 string patch into a MASSIVE lead! It's only £54 as well. Purchasing right now! :D

[Alfonse]

Got the camel phat and camel space bundle for £94. Well worth it IMO. Only played with it quickly but the Camel Space makes some crazy sounds!

[Kristoph]

cool - glad it's working out for you! I'll be honest, camelphat ends up on each of my sum mix busses and quite a few of the individual tracks in every project...

One thing to note is that if you fire a hot signal into it, it will limit the output to 0db, so it's a good idea to bypass it every now and then and make sure you're not firing too much level into it...

[Alfonse]

cool - glad it's working out for you! I'll be honest, camelphat ends up on each of my sum mix busses and quite a few of the individual tracks in every project...

One thing to note is that if you fire a hot signal into it, it will limit the output to 0db, so it's a good idea to bypass it every now and then and make sure you're not firing too much level into it...

Thanks for the tip. I remain very impressed with both plugins. They are simple and easy to use and sound great. Seems really easy to get interesting sounds!

[TheSqueezer]

cool - glad it's working out for you! I'll be honest, camelphat ends up on each of my sum mix busses and quite a few of the individual tracks in every project...

One thing to note is that if you fire a hot signal into it, it will limit the output to 0db, so it's a good idea to bypass it every now and then and make sure you're not firing too much level into it...

Uhmm, interesting...are u saying this have some kind of built in limiter?? even if you push it hard on the distortion section and etc?

[PMF]

the waves renaissance eq's are the one I use most. Very clean sounding and easy/intuitive to use.

[dramirez]

The Camelphat Filter is simply the best plug-in i have ever used! I've been caning it on all of my productions for years now and i couldn't do without it. AMAZING AMAZING filter!

[Alfonse]

That's good to hear as since I have had it I have used it on anything and everything! Was starting to think maybe I was over doing it!

[Yuroun]

I use Maximus from Image-line a lot.

[tomflynn]

I second the camel phat goodness, my life evolved around camel space for about a year, then i decided i needed to finish a track Ha! :p

I'm a big fan of the psp Eq pack, i forget its name, but it comes with about 6 eq's, some of which are very nice, you don't even have to boost or cut in some cases, they just provide a nice 'warmth' to the sound.