I went ahead and bought the Voicecentric plugin. Now if I could just find a plugin that made me a good guitar player.
Good deal man. I run the GW voice centric chain like this:
Filter/Surgical EQ
Autotuner
De-esser
Compression/Multi-band compression
VoiceCentric
ā¦then all time, mod, and saturation based effects after it. I keep the Auxes on that channel pre-routed (but disabled) to the Doubler and the MicroShifter incase I donāt like what the doubler does. Then I can default back to my other ones in a couple seconds of auditioning it on the source.
ā¦I also keep this as close to the end of the chain as possible because I found it works best when run mono->stereo, since the doubler is one of the most useful features on that plugin.
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I am pretty sure theyāre watching our conversation here. lol
I just got an email with a code for 25% off, so I guess this weekend Waves plugins are worth $21.75. Thinking about getting the Parallel Particles plugin. Anyone use that?
I used the trial version - and I know it shouldnāt matter, but the GUI of that plugin is so awful. Someone online described it as a WinAmp skin from the 90ās!
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Havenāt touched anything Waves in a long time and the only 2 plugs I miss are the Loudness Maximizer and Retro comp from the vintage series. Quite happy running Studio One Producer stock plugins with some freeware. Havenāt looked at Waves a long time, and was surprised to see the same familiar bundle still at the studio that I recorded recently. Honestly, nothing they ever did impressed me much and their validation schemes were always a pain.
I dont really care about the GUI, but Iām guessing it didnāt do anything amazing sound wise either since you didnāt end up buying it?
Iād definitely recommend demo-ing it first. Iād be curious to see what your thoughts are on it. Iāve had a hard time finding a use for this one, but it doesnāt make it badā¦maybe it doesnāt fit my workflow real well. It is kind of a workflow plugin when you think about it.
Curious to hear @madpsychot 's thoughts but Iāll give ya mine for insight. They added it to the Mercury bundle. I probably wouldnāt have bought it. I played with it quite a bit and tried to get it to work on a number of sources. Its not a real bold in-your-face concept. Some of the āamazingnessā of certain plugins like the Chandler Curve Bender, the Manley Vari-Mu and the Millenia MESQ1 is that they do subtle very very well. And the subtle changes are very difficult to get other EQ/comp plugins to mimic.
The Parallel Particles is designed to be a broad scope middle-of-the-road multi application thing. So its gonna do simple basic stuff easily. For example, if you want to throw a normal parallel compressor on an overhead group, the PP will get you there a lot faster than bussing to an aux, building the chain, and re-structuring your VU meters then sending to your crusher bus. All that happens with one click with the PP.
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I like steampunk but that is awful. I am waiting for a slave from mad max to come out from behind it and finish the mix.
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I was very much in a learning phase at that time, but even at that point I didnāt like the idea of simply moving dials to do āsomethingā to the sound, without actually knowing what was being done to the sound wasnāt appealing to me. But overall, I could feel that an improvement in one part of the sound was doing something else that I didnāt like to another sound. I will say being inexperienced at the time may have had a lot to do with it.
At this moment, I love plugins that do something focussed and do it well.
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Thanks, Iāll demo it first.
Which one?? Are you talking about the Waves V-comp, the R-comp, or the H-comp?
Grey, Blue, or Orange?
Its crazy to see how popular these things still are and how much they continue to be used in modern recordingsā¦just in different ways. I just completed the second half of the Waves certification training in Charlotte NC the other day. The studio I was in had all Waves plugins, and that was about ALL they had. But the place has been cranking out an insane amount of chart topping hits on the international scene. Completely ITB workflow. All digital consoles.
Thatās understandable. Waves used to be my hero on a pedestal until UAD started killing them in the outboard clones department. My thoughts are that if you take any single Waves plugin you can find other stuff that does the job or something similar. However, Waves does have 8 truly unique plugins:
B360, Dugan, and InPhase, PSE, MaxxBass, Q-clone, DTS, and the M360 Matrix Manager.
To my knowledge there is nothing else in the audio world that is capable of performing these functions in a similar manner. Do correct me if Iām wrong.
Sure! I totally get it, and thatās something many people can relate to. Iām like that too.
The simplicity of the Waves One Knobs makes them limited and gimmicky, but sometimes I use them simply because they work. The One Knob driver is my favorite. Its got a certain color to the distortion that almost always works for me on pop/funk horn sections. I just keep going back to it because I could spend hours trying to tune a Fab Filter distortion to do the same thing and accomplish nothing but waste an hour unnecessarily lol.
Me too. I have this problem with the CLA and JJP all-in-ones. What I usually end up doing is deactivating all but the one feature I need in the CLA guitars which for example is the stereo width. Or in the JJP vocals, sometimes I turn everything off and only use the doubler.
The thing waves seems to really do well is have low CPU impact good sounding plugins.
I prefer autoalign from sound radix compared to InPHase.
I personally am not a fan of MaxxBass. I probably just donāt know how to use it. I get wierd low mid build up when I try it.
Q-Clone. Is good and showed me how much of my hardware can be emulated by just using the eq curve. Scary! It is a good teaching tool. A daw eq is easier when you know what you want.
I really like MV2. It is a crazy little plugin that thickens things really well. Very easy to overuse. I should know overuse is my specialty:)
I find a lot of their plugins like gates and de-essers etc are pretty well the same as any stock plugin however they are easier to use with more useful GUI. It may be that I am just used to them though.
I didnāt even realize his was supposed to be steam punk!!! Ha! I guess that makes sense! Wow. I wondered why that Butch Vig thing was such a sucky GUI.
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Waves certification? Ouch, that sound like a gyp. You learn to use what, vst plugins? 
R-Comp I think is the one I liked. MaxxBass - now that got me quite a few rap clients back in the day. I remixed one rap album and then suddenly people discovered that I can make things sound PHAT and talking about staying busy for a while. I was making Expedition speakers rattle out of the door panels to the point of falling off and was quite popular with a certain label rappers.
The BBE outboard used to do the same thing, I remember using a plugin too. Aphex also had some kind of similar outboard.
Personally, I weaned myself on most paid plugins, Iāve decided to explore freeware options and what comes with my DAW and have been very happy. Why that happened? Lets say I had a very important session and my system took a dive. I lost the client as I couldnāt keep the deadline and ended up doing 3-4 days of plugin validations (happened Friday evening so no support until Monday and some of these were email support only), which really ticked me off. So I went for super simple.
Now only things that I have paid are synths and guitar plugins, both of which I can do without if needed as I have enough outboard to cover in event of a failure.
I donāt think its a gyp. I wouldnāt have signed up for it if it was a āhow to use a compressorā class. Its Waves equivalent of an Audinate cert. It basically tells your clients that you know enough about hardware configuration, IT communication protocol, and system management to have an intelligent conversation with their in house IT guys in order to get a Waves proprietary LAN system installed, running, and how to troubleshoot. Like the Audinate Certification (which I did the first 3 levels of at NAMM, but havenāt passed the test yet) you have to show that you can read real basic command line scripting and that you understand real basic web and network security concepts too. It also teaches you what you need to know about Waves gear in order to patch Waves hardware into a 1000+ channel broadcast rig thatās using a Midas, Avid, Studier, Harrison, or SSL media network.
ā¦if you have an IT background youād be rolling your eyes through most of this, but pro musicians and studio guys donāt really know this end of the computer world inherently by trade. Wish I did though!! Thatād be cool.
Yep, I have an IT degree, Iāve seen some of these courses and it is like networking for dummies.
Yeah, unfortunately audio has gone that route too, for the most part the creative is gone out of the profession.