Re: Paul999 - So what Waves plugins are you guys using these days?

Recording, Mixing and Producing
#1

I thought this was interesting in the other thread. I know some of you guys have been collecting Waves plugs as they’ve popped up on sale. Was curious to see what all you guys were into at the moment from the Waves group :slight_smile:

Paul shared some of his ideas, and I’ll jot some quick notes on how and what I’m using these days. @blairhall1974 has been raving about the new PRS sims! Would love to hear what other Waves stuff you all have found works for you!

For dynamics, from the waves family I use:
Ren comp, the R vox, R comp and R de-esser. Oh Yeah, and a cool trick I learned from @ColdRoomStudio…The MaxxBass. Has changed the way I check and monitor the lower spectrum for laptop/iphone translation. There’s no real ‘science’ to that one. I run it towards the end of the chain, then just fish for a nice crossover point and raise the synthetic harmonics until it sounds good.

For emulator dynamics:
I think of digital clones as an entirely different genre of compression. For LA2A, 1176, and Neve, I tend to use the UAD stuff a little more, but if I didn’t have them, I’d be perfectly confident mixing on a rig that had the Waves classic compressors.

For transient stuff, I use the smack attacker religiously

I use all their surround metering stuff along side Izotope and hardly anything else but those two.

Hmmm…verbs:
I use the surround version of the H verb and the IR 360. And when mixing music, the Abbey Road.

I do use the H delay as my first go-to because I’m really familiar with it and its so simple to maneuver around. But as soon as I need to start building a more complex verb, I switch to Fab Filter or pull a specialized UAD verb. And I love that little Lo-Fi button on the H Delay.

As far as Imaging: I do really like the doubler. In the instances one of the 3 presets on the SoundToys micro shifter doesn’t match, I can usually get what I need out of the Doubler. I also really like the Center and sometimes for guitars I pull the CLA guitar and deactivate everything except for the “widener” knob. To be honest, when I open this plugin, that’s my default.

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#2

It’s amazing that we own all these plugin and still use very few. Its like food for most people. People have their 6 go to meals that feed them 99% of the time. The rest is a treat.

#3

What a great observation.

#4

In my case with processing, I use a fair bit of hardware.

For compressors I have

Manley Vari mu
UA 1176
3, DBX 160a
2, DBX 560a
API 525 (Reminiscent of an LA2A But very colored)
Empirical labs Docderr (1176 ish)
4, Lindell 1176
2 odd ball fuzz 500 series units
4, tonelux compressors (can do the 160 thing, 1176 ish and La2a ish)
Fatboy Tube buss processor (watered down version of the manley)
1 8 channel presonus compressor/gate. (surprisingly useful clean non-aggressive compressor)

EQ, 64 channels of console eq.

A large room chamber. (Most fx are ITB)

Basically my compressors fit into 3 categories.

  1. The tret transients well and can make them snap.
  2. They can crush things without getting too nasty (great in parallel)
  3. They can smooth things out (manley)

I think about which “category” I need and then choose from the available hardware.

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