Question about plugin order on individual tracks

Recording, Mixing and Producing
#21

I think in most cases you can get rid of distortion too, limiting your plugins to just two per track. Then a reverb for the whole bus. Or am i being too minimalistic here? Edit: for the whole bus, i mean eg. vocals, guitars etc.

#22

I wanted to say this at the facebook group also, then i forgot: Optos are still peak compressors. They tend to have slower reaction times, but they are still peak compressors.

Sincerely,

Arber

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#23

I sorta wish I had started using the channel strip approach much earlier, because it probably would have saved me a lot of spinning my wheels trying to combine disparate plugs to get the desired end product. But then again, using individual, unrelated plugs probably forced me to learn more of the nuts and bolts than I would have if Iā€™d done channel strip from the outset. You pays yer money and takes yer choiceā€¦

#24

If you have a chance, check out the URS Console Strip Pro. It has a lot of flexibility, modeling a ton of comps and eqs and the ability to put a preamp in front of it (again modeled).

As to getting rid of the distortion, that can be tough to do and still get the sound you might need on certain instruments. A little distortion on a snare or guitar or vocal can really make a mix.

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#25

Yes, absolutely. I think sometimes on things like snare it can serve a practical purpose, turning the dynamic peak level of the transient into high frequency energy instead.

#26

Hi Big Al
Youā€™ve gotten plenty of good responses already including what was to be mine. That is : Try it out and see for yourself. But Iā€™d like to take it a step furtherā€¦
Put an eq and a comp and maybe even a saturation on some tracks. Try swapping the order around and take note of the results. Thenā€¦ try bypassing each plugin and youā€™ll get a pretty good picture of how they interact. A side benefit to this is that you may be able to ascertain if that plug is actually needed. Contrary to popular belief, not everything needs eq, compression and suchā€¦ :slight_smile:

As for reverbā€¦ I donā€™t much care for it on a track insert. I use it as a send. If I feel that verb is needed at a track level, I will print/render it in and move on from thereā€¦
have fun
rich

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#27

The general guideline for me is Subtractive EQ > Compress > Additive EQ. But then again there are no rules, try messing around with the order and do whatever it takes to make it work

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#28

For people who are experimenting with chain order, thatā€™s actually very good rule-of-thumb advice in just a few words. Yay. Well said.

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#29

ROFL!!! :joy_cat:

#30

I like Panning and levels first try and get a ruff mix going then maybe eq a bit.
Then iā€™ll start with bass and vocals and try and eq them to sit together then usually it ends up all out stupidity adding compressers, gates, etc until i loose track of what iā€™m doing, it sounds bad and i turn it off.
Then i come back to it and try something someone else sugested and faff and try and faff and try.
Basically i cant mix to save my life!
But iā€™m determined to dedicate more time to it this year.

#31

Funny, Graham Cochrane from the Recording Revolution must be reading my mind.

#32

Thatā€™s where youā€™re going astrayā€¦ youā€™re supposed to keep turning knobs until it stops sounding badā€¦ :grin:

#33

Wellā€¦ there you go then. :slight_smile:have fun
rich

#34

Maybe this is interestingā€¦ maybe not.
But if you think of consoles like the SSL or old mixcraft/mixcrafters with built in dynamics, they had comp first by default. You had to engage one or two buttons to change the order of filter/eq. Maybe it has more to do with going to tape and controlling dynamics being more important in that case. But it seems like that was the workflow envisioned by the manufacturer. Then you hear about engineers that ā€œalwaysā€ had those buttons pushed in and CLA slamming the compressors with hyped EQ moves even with tape. So maybe all bets are off.
When it comes down to it, the logical side of me says to eq before compression for reasons stated above and in the RR vid. But itā€™s that logical side that gets kicked to the curb when I find myself eqā€™ing before compression when it didnā€™t need eq in the first place. and when I compress and then find that it needs eq nowā€¦ :slight_smile:
have fun
rich

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