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  • Thread starter Thread starter HeavyMusic3000
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I invested in waves and izotope last year and have been pretty happy with them. Check audio deluxe .com for sales. Waves has sales all the time. Some of my favorites have been neutron 2, ozone 8, get the advanced o8n2 bundle on sale or standard to upgrade later. For waves ns1, vocal Rider, the tape emulation from Abby road, LL-16, and API stuff. Just picked up the elevate bundle which is on sale now. I demoed it a while back and liked it alright. Wait for stuff to go on sale and then it's worth it i say. You buy them once and then feel good about it and are more invested in seeing what they can do. Oh and h-reverb is a good one too. Hope that helps.
 
HeavyMusic3000 said:
Or maybe a Neve 1073 pre?
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What? No. Just no. No reason you can't get a good mix with just EQ, reverb, panning, volume, and compression. "Really good plugins" aren't going to save your mix unless you know what to do with the other stuff to begin with. But, you know, go ahead...
 
"things" covers a lot of ground. Getting a good recording is where it starts. You can make a MicroCube sound big without expensive plugins.
 
I was just thinking maximizer plugins seemed to be what he was asking about. I don't claim to know everything about these but they help for different purposes.
 
Stock plugins...no worries. Focus on recording the best signal you can, complete with the exact tone you want, think about mic distance, the room, what you can do to deaden or liven the room, proximity in vocals. Stuff recorded to the best of your abilities takes a lot of the hocus pocus, myth and legend out of mixing. You get decent stuff going in and you'll be wondering why mixing just isn't that hard.

I got to tell you, I'm a beginner and things don't always turn out for me like this. But I'm getting closer. Take a listen to these two songs...the first one is an older mix from almost a year ago...I threw the kitchen sink of plugins at it...it took me an age to mix...it resembles a song, but it's terrible.

The second song is a recent one I did...I paid really close attention to getting the right sound tracking...once I started mixing in I was surprised by how little I did to it apart from panning, setting levels, a little eq, super mild compression and reverb:

First one:
Doctor by The Fish Tanks | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Second one:
Better Me Better You by The Fish Tanks | Free Listening on SoundCloud

The second song is one I can listen to. The first one just sounds frustrating.

This is just my uneducated opinion. One man's good mix is another man's vortex of shit. I just point out that the results you're after come in the tracking stage of production, that you only need stock plugins, that less is more and that arrangement of the song is important...(i.e. what tonal/ instrument choices are you making? What are you trying to achieve?)
 
What are those "things" and why would you suggest that making them sound bigger would also make them sound thinner?

If you were to ask, "how do I make my vocals sound bigger?" Then an answer might be to compress the track more than you usually would and use very little or no reverb, delay or other time-domain effect. Then set the level of the vocal track higher than all the others.
 
I an curious as to what you mean by "bigger". I have always had the opposite problem of trying to get small enough to fit with other elements.
 
I have the same question. Define "bigger".

Some people think wider is bigger, some people think deeper is bigger...

What are you really looking to do?
 
Did Andrew use it on the master buss, or did he use it on groups of instruments?

If you use it on the master, you will be de- emphasising anything panned center, which will take away the heft and punch. However, if you use that on a group which has instruments that are panned, that can get that stuff wider, while not messing with any of the centered instruments. (Usually bass kick snare vocals...)
 
HeavyMusic3000 said:
I was watching a vid of Andrew Scheps and he mentioned the Ozone Imager as a plugin that makes your mix sound "bigger" and so I tried it on the master buss and it does make a mix just get larger, like if it went from being a medium to a large. The issue was that this made the whole thing sound kind of empty, too. I then tried to compensate with all sorts of other plugins to get the heft back, but alas, no dice. Pretty sure the plugin is still free, so it's no pain to try it and you'll see what I am trying to describe.
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I feel like the trick with a lot of these fancy plugins is that they're mostly a shiny wrapper around standard FX. And while you may get some decent results just slapping it in there, you're much better served by understanding WHAT the plugin does and dialing in a more precise version of it that matches your project.

In this case, it seems like the imager is a stereo, multi-band delay. So the L and R channels each have a slightly different, possibly-variable delay applied to about 4 EQ spectrums, which offsets the sound from each other. This gives a mono, centered sound the feeling of being "wider" and a stereo sound might become more "full" or "lush" with the increased slapback.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
I feel like the trick with a lot of these fancy plugins is that they're mostly a shiny wrapper around standard FX. And while you may get some decent results just slapping it in there, you're much better served by understanding WHAT the plugin does and dialing in a more precise version of it that matches your project.

In this case, it seems like the imager is a stereo, multi-band delay. So the L and R channels each have a slightly different, possibly-variable delay applied to about 4 EQ spectrums, which offsets the sound from each other. This gives a mono, centered sound the feeling of being "wider" and a stereo sound might become more "full" or "lush" with the increased slapback.
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If that is the case, then they would only apply that delay to the upper mids and highs, otherwise the low mids and bass would turn to mud very quickly. This is probably why the mix gets 'thin' when you add too much.

Either way, any widening plugs should really be applied to actual stereo instrument groups, leaving the the centered instruments alone. The stuff in the center is generally what gives the mix its foundation and solidity(?). You can apply the widening to the other parts all you want without the mix getting transparent and wishy washy.
 
Playing around with plugins like that seem to give a 'hollowness' to the sound.
Besides, your stereo field is always limited by how far your speakers are apart from each other. So how much 'wider' can it get?
I've found the widest mixes come from simple LRC mixing. And they still sound fat in the center.
 
"bigger", is really just mix decisions.

what do you want bigger?

drums?
bass?
the vocals?

think about this...

it's like ian gillan says on made in japan:
"Yeah, can we have everything louder than everything else?"

so, if everything is bigger,
nothing is bigger.

it's a mix decision,
not something a plug can do.

you can compress stuff in and out, you can eq stuff in and out, again, a mix decision.

bigger typically means closer.
eq for extended lows, etc..
 
HeavyMusic3000 said:
I was watching a vid of Andrew Scheps and he mentioned the Ozone Imager as a plugin that makes your mix sound "bigger" and so I tried it on the master buss and it does make a mix just get larger, like if it went from being a medium to a large. The issue was that this made the whole thing sound kind of empty, too. I then tried to compensate with all sorts of other plugins to get the heft back, but alas, no dice. Pretty sure the plugin is still free, so it's no pain to try it and you'll see what I am trying to describe.
Click to expand...
Ok the imager is affecting the perception of the "soundstage" which is why you are losing low mid information as you would moving a band from a smaller stage to a larger using the same amps, etc. So as has been mentioned it is better to use an imager on specific parts and not on others. A good way to learn how it works best on a particular mix is to set up a couple of Aux tracks and send varying amounts from each bus(Guitars vocals, bass drums etc.) I would use this in parallel meaning don't output any busses or tracks directly, only sends. You can set up 2 auxs this way with different "widths" dialed in and feed each different parts. So you may end up with no kick or snare, very little bass guitar sent to your aux while different amounts of keys, guitars, BV give you the desired width. The way these imagers work can also be done (sometimes better) using delays, reverbs, panning of delays and reverbs and eqs so keep that in mind. Perhaps you just need a bit more predelay in your reverb to give the sense of space, or a longer RT time, or an opposite panned low level verb setup. This to me is the fun stuff, if you try different things you will learn more of how you can achieve what you want without too much thought the next mix.
 
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