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CA, USA

What plugins or effects do you find yourself coming back to time and again? Or any specific efx chains that help define your sound?

For reverb, especially vocals, after trying out tons of plugs and hunting through tons of impulse files I find myself coming back to Fokke van Saane's, Master Room MR-II, 3 MR-II (Brilliance 50%), impulse file with Fruity's Convolver. It isn't the widest reverb, but it is an actual stereo spring reverb and the Convolver allows to adjust the wet stereo separation. Its about the closest I've come to that early 80s / late 70s style reverb that I'm after. Though Fokke van Saane's Lexicon 200 impuse files are really good too, but have more low end so need a little filtering.

For compression on instrument / vocal tracks when I need a little bit extra, I seem to always fall back on the Waves LA2A, but I'm also really impressed by Softubes FET Compressor. Softubes CL-1B is really great, but the level / make up gain knob seems a little wonky. I find if I adjust the compression then turn up the gain (makeup) I have to go back and tweak the compression settings again, since the pumping seems to change.

On snare I keep coming back to the Waves API550b, sounds great on toms too. Just don't forget to turn off the analog noise switch, or else your mix will be full of hiss BS.

Using tape or a tape emulator as a limiter is a big part of my master buss sound. The natural dynamics of tape was a huge part of the 70s / 80s sound so I feel personally that you can't really get an authentic synthpop / disco sound without hitting tape at least once in your process. Its pretty difficult to find a decent real tape machine thats in good order let alone tape to use in good condition. So I've been using the Waves Kramer Master Tape plugin which gets pretty damn close. Although one thing thats kinda cool about tape, like tube amps, is each deck is a little different tonally.

I've tried using cassette based recorders, but I've always run into problems with jitter / speed distortions. But if your making one shot samples, like for example drums or bass guitar, something your going to chop up anyway, then you can definitely get that compression / tone by hitting a hifi cassette deck then recording it in and making sample patches. I did that with my Pbass and it turned out pretty good.

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Sydney, Australia

Sausage Fattener > Sausage Fattener > Sausage Fattener > Sausage Fattener > Limiter > Reverb

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NL

I like Glitch, it can do all sorts of crazy shit to your sounds. I've never used it for anything, but it's just good fun playing with it.

There's a Glitch 2 that's most likely better, but you can get 1.3 for free, though it's only 32-bit windows.

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St Louis

had fun putting the spiral stretch vst on my vocals in week 1... also liked the avocado glitch in reaper (under JS: remaincalm_org)

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Brisbane

I really like guitar rig for a lot of things except guitar. Quick and easy to pull up altered sounds.

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MJP

I just cracked my Space Echo out of storage, so I'm looking forward to overusing it again!

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Portland, OR

Guitar Rig is ridiculously useful for all sorts of things, I don't even play guitar.

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1000 delay pedals...

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Vegas

My go to FX

Last edited by HEADERRASE (April 11, 2019 9:35 pm)

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chicago, il, usa

I probably use Parametric EQ 2 most over all other plugins. Recently though I've been using Guitar Rig, Permut8 and RP-Delay, among others, for morphing and reshaping sounds.

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germany

i overdosed on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxrc7ne3c5s

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The future

CK: why you not submit any songs?

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Saskatchewan, Canada

NastyDLA MKII seconded, love that thing.

FerricTDS is a big one for me. use it on nearly all mixes. (also free, definitely get it)

Last edited by DrumurBoy (January 20, 2014 1:20 am)

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When Live works (it's crashing like a son of a bitch now) I like this fx chain:

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Louisville Ky

I'm a big fan of the Fabfilter plugins.  I've also been getting some good sounds out of the Rough Rider compressor, but in general I usually use the stock Ableton plugins for most things.

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vrss.co.uk

really loving collision/corpus lately