During the lockdown it was a great time to explore what new plug-ins were out there and grab some great deals whilst we were all being encouraged to keep creative...
With so many on the market it quite often comes down to reading a lot of reviews, testing out demos and then ultimately using your lugholes to make an educated decision on what to buy.
With lockdown boredom fully set in I picked some older tracks to remix using the two companies I had demoed which were Soundtoys and Black Rooster Audio. The Soundtoys effect rack was on trial throughout MAY/JUNE and had some great features including echo boy delay, which was a great addition to my guitar bus and also the Decapitator and phaser which also proved very useful in making the guitars sound as required with that old mod feel.
After playing around with the Soundtoys effect rack for a while I started to test out the Black Rooster Audio plug in bundle which was on offer at a ludicrous price of around £70 for the 'stay at home' package. It offered compressors, pre amps, eq's, tape machines and modelling amps based on some of the classic vintage studio sounds. Using the VLA 2 Compressor I set about re mixing some vocals on a Jasmin Donovan track and was really impressed with how good these compressors were. In my drum and bass remix of Jasmin's track 'Take My Hand' using the VLA comp and the virtual Tape machine the vocals were sounding great and the tape really added a subtle warmth to everything making them very well rounded. For the money this package was a no brainer....
Once I had played around with both of these offerings I decided to keep both and purchase for the studio collection.... but I was not done as I needed to test out the Slate Digital All Access Pass which was also on offer throughout lockdown. Now I've always been a fan of Slate digital plug-ins and with the cloud based system you can log in and access your plugins anywhere via the internet, which is. great. So straight in with some of the classics I loaded up the Virtual mix bus and started to test out these stunning plug ins. From the compressors to the Eq's to the Verb suite this was a truly exceptional set of tools for any mix engineer mixing in the box. Needless to say I signed up to an all access pass which now sits nicely in the collection of studio software. And something else that was great with this pass, Slate have given access to mixing masterclasses which are exclusive to the AAP, so if you are struggling to get the sound right or are learning how to mix different genres its a nice little touch to help you get moving!
I will put the mixes up on the studio Soundcloud in the coming weeks so you can all hear what went down in Lockdown!