So what about convolution reverbs? Waves has one in one of their bundles. ReaVerb (REAPER’s plugin) has a decent convo verb. I am impressed with the sounds there, esp with some pretty decent impulses I’ve been able to pick up. Would love to hear peoples’ thoughts, though, on the use of these? I’m under the impression they are not used heavily. Is it cuz of CPU hit? Are there certain sounds they should not be used on? Why are they not used more. What do y’all use for verbs?
I have kind of a lot of reverbs, at least compared to how many total plugins I have haha. The ones I go to quickly are usually SoundToys Little Plate, and the one in iZotope Nectar 2. I just think that these sound great in general; sort of plain but beautiful. I also have Waves H-Reverb and Abbey Road Plates, and a couple from Native Instruments called RC-24 and RC-48. I also have this plugin from NI called Replika XT. It’s a delay plugin, but it has this “diffusion” mode which I freaking love the sound of. I probably over use it, haha. SoundToys EchoBoy has some great reverb-like effects as well, even though it’s a delay plugin.
I guess I also have a bunch of reverbs in NI Guitar Rig Pro. And honestly I do use those sometimes if I want something special. There’s this cool “ice” one.
In general… for the most part I filled out my plugins with bundles. I have iZotope Music Production Bundle 2. (A little out-dated now, but I don’t care.) Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate 9. (Also out dated, but I got a great deal on it used. And it’s still a heck of a lot of great stuff.) These 2 bundles gave me basically everything I needed. I bought SoundToys 5 because I love effects, and that’s been super fun. Celemony Melodyne for vocal tuning. Waves Classic Compressors at Jonathan’s recommendation. I do use these all the time, so it was a good buy!
Anyway I’m no expert in plugins. I understand wanting to have good tools, but not being experienced enough to know a good tool from a bad one. I’m sort in that boat, haha. I just trusted reviews and recommendations and then stuck with what I’ve got. I read the manuals for the iZotope plugins, and they were very helpful. At this point I am certain that if my mixes aren’t good, it’s in no way the fault of my plugins. 
1 Like
Hey @Tesgin… if you wanted some quick practice mixing, we used one of her songs “Wasteland” for a contest we held on this site. I think the link to the multi-tracks and stems are still downloadable on the forum. Its a really fun song.
If you get a Waves Convo verb, I’d do the IR-1 full. The reason is because it comes with a free 5gb library of highly usable stuff. I also like the H verb because of its enormous flexibility. I wouldn’t say they’re not used heavily - But I never really thought about it… now that you mentioned it, I guess I do use more algo verbs at the moment, but I was really big into convo verbs before the last couple years.
I keep seven verbs set up on my aux busses when doing music. My template loads with Waves Abbey Rd Plates, EMI Plates (Those convo verbs by he way), Softube Tsar, Exponential Phoenix, Liquidsonics Bricasti, Relab LX480, and the Valhalla Vintage Verb.
My go-to for special effects verbs are AudioEase Indoor, Vienna Mir, Waves H verb, R4, and Eventide Blackhole.
I took a quick peek at my plugins… here’s some other ones I have that I think are really great:
112 db redline
Aegean Spirit
Fab Filter Pro R
Anything by Izotope
Everything by Lexicon
PSP Piano Verb
The Slate Verb (Whatever its called)
Sountoys Little Plate
Sonnox Reverb
And any of the UAD stuff
you know, I think I’ll check that out. Won’t have time this next few weeks to mix, but over the holidays I will. Will hold off until I upgrade my plugs next week!
So, any thoughts on the plugs in the Waves Gold bundle?
I mentioned above I’m a less is more kind of guy. I don’t wanna have a million plugs that I don’t really use (and so don’t really know well).
It does seem there are some decent plugs in there: I’ve heard great things about the renaissance compressor. H-Delay stands out to me. So, it includes the IR-L Convo that Jonathan mentioned. TrueVerb any good?
I already have Vitamin (which is awesome, btw) and Doubler (which I don’t use as much as I thought I would).
V-Comp, Tune LT?
Okay, so …
On another note (off topic!), as I’m writing this post, I’m listening to the winning mix of your Wasteland piece, Cristina. Wow. What a beautiful song! The arrangement just works. And the winning mix was, wow. I’m blown away, honestly. The emotion in your voice has a wonderful synergy with the “emotions” of the instruments (can instruments have emotion? I think so).
I absolutely love the percussion at 1:25 and the build especially starting with the decrescendo at 2:32. Perfect. The dynamics in this song are so powerful. The electrics. I could go on. I just lose myself in this song! It just works.
End of off-task!
That’s an amazing bundle at the pre-black Friday $99 price. In addition to ones you already have, highlights to me are the MV2, H-Delay (which has been my to-to for years), PS22 (Which can take a mono signal and make it stereo), R Axe, and R comp - which are two excellent digital comps, and imager which is really good at making things wider. I would LOVE to see you pick up that set. Many of them compliment those Classic Comps, so don’t think of it as a replacement for those, but rather something adds to them.
Both are really good. I used both for years.
I agree! That winning mix was killer.
Reverbs:
Let Black Friday begin: Was looking over your list and I just checked the Lexicon site. It looks like their entry level plugins are on sale for $29 through Nov 30. * (Note: iLok required.)
https://lexiconpro.com/en-US/products/mpx-native-reverb
I don’t own anything by Lexicon, but I can definitely recommend Valhalla Vintage Verb and SoundToys Plate.
Also, the Melda free pack now includes a convolution reverb. I haven’t tried it out yet, but re: Melda plugins - if you can get your head around the UI, they are insanely powerful and versatile. Could certainly be worth checking out.
If you get it from AudioDeluxe.com, it’s only $74. I just put it in my cart to check it out. Heck, I don’t even want it and I’m tempted.
With Black Friday coming up though, there will be a lot of good deals! I’ll mention this in case no one has yet–some companies make it easy to buy used software. Native Instruments is one of the best I’ve seen here, which is a main reason I went with Komplete. And always check eBay–back when I bought my iZotope bundle I got it for over half off on eBay. You have to be careful if anything is too cheap because it’s probably a hacked version without a real serial number, but there are some good deals to be had.
Another thing I’ll mention is that sometimes it’s handy to have a popular plugin because then you’re more likely to see people using it in their tutorials. That can make it easier to follow along. If you have a favorite mixing “guru” that you like to watch, it may be useful to pick up some of the plugins that you see them use all the time. Not because the plugin is the silver bullet or even the best plugin, but because it will help you to learn from them more easily.
I got my UAD licenses used. A lot of my BFD expansions too. Plugin Alliance sounds pretty reasonable - $20 per plugin with a $50 cap per account transactions for multiple plugs. Never tried to buy a Waves license used.
BTW, that Lexicon Reverb is $23.95 in the cart at AudioDeluxe.com.
re:Waves Gold - don’t forget to check your Upgrade price in your Waves account or with everyplugin.com. It gets even cheaper if you already own some of the plugins. I’d bet AudioDeluxe could do it as well.
I was thinking about this after the reverb post above. IMHO one of the most underrated bundles in the Wave catalog is the Manny Marroquin Signature Series bundle. There’s not a stinker in the bunch.
The EQ is a hi-brid of his favorite EQs and settings. Each frequency you select is modeled after a favorite setting off one of his units. Here’s a graphic of how it’s set up. (Only in the digital world!)
All of the plugins sound pretty good and they cover a lot of ground. You could do a whole mix with just this package. It’s currently $52.82 in the cart at everyplugin with discount code “YNY23”. That’s just over $8 a plugin. It’ll probably get even cheaper closer to BF.
1 Like
Okay, Jonathan. I did it. I picked up the gold bundle from Waves!
Dude…you don’t even know how amazing this bundle is. You just picked up some of the most insane pro level tools that I have on my entire mix system. These are some of my all time favorite plugins. We’ll work with you on learning how to use them in time. That was just an unbelievable price, so congrats on that steal!
The C4 - multi band compression is super amazing when used correctly, and the C6 (which isn’t much different that the C4) is my primary multi-band compressor tool. Here’s a good video that gives a clear demonstration of what it is and why engineers love it.
The Doubler is amazing at vocal thickening, but it takes a little practice to get used to. All doublers aren’t the same. This particular one gives you more extensive control over the aspects of the doubled sound than most do, which is why I love it.
That H-Delay is one of my all time favorite plugins. Its beauty to me, is in its simplicity and how fast and easy it is to dial in.
MaxxBass is another that is insanely powerful but simple to use. This thing makes sure your bass tracks translate and cut through on smaller speakers without disrupting the mix on larger more detailed systems. I use it to make sure that when people put the mixes in a car, or on a church stereo system thats wired in mono, that the bass and kick still hit evenly.
PX22 Stereomaker - You can use this to take a mono acoustic guitar and make it stereo.
Vitamin is a multi-band auralexciter. It lets you pinpoint ranges of a source (like a vocal or snare drum) that you want to thicken then thicken only that range without disrupting anything else on that source. This is a very good tool.
The R-Axe and R-Comp are great sounding compressors.
Additionally, all of those Reverbs, (R-verb, True Verb, and IR) are old and dated looking, but still sound amazing. I don’t use them anymore but I did for years, and they’re still on my system. I’d have no qualms about mixing a track if those 3 verbs were all I had to work with.
Here’s a pretty insane crash-course where several of us went all-out on the details of what we did to a mix from a guy here to posted one.
Nice. Now, I’m getting excited! Thanks for that, Jonathan.
But wait, there’s more! 
For less than $20 more I was able to add the RenMaxx bundle to the deal!
Thanks for sharing that video. He makes it seem so easy [sigh].
Okay, so next on my list is my FET/Opto comps. Probably going to go with the Waves Classic Bundle, unless Black Rooster or Overloud or something comes up with an amazing Black Friday package. I don’t think they can beat the Classic Bundle price though.
So, a question: what is the lowest we’ve seen the Classic Bundle go for? IDK cuz I haven’t monitored it. So, I know the Omni has been as low as $29, so I’ll wait till I pull the trigger until it gets back to $29.
What’s the “pull-the-trigger-price” on the Classic Bundle?
(Hey, I like that. I just created something that I think will be helpful: the “PTTP”)
No thoughts on this one, the PTTP on the CCB?
Thanks for the link. This is awesome. I started reading it and thought, no: this one warrants a good block of time to listen and learn. This is impressive.
I think anything below $60 is a go. I really doubt you’ll see this pack go to $29, but hopefully the difference between $30 and $60 isn’t a big deal to most people. Waves has it at $100 right now, lets see if it drops more in the next few days.