Professional Mastering - Analog & Digital
Professional Mastering
249K+ subscribers
There are thousands of audio plugins out there - some of which you might use once or twice and then go back to your tried-and-true processors.
However, every once in a while, an affordable plugin comes out that’ll stay useful for years if not decades.
Traditional panning, the type that’s included in just about every DAW, uses 1 psychoacoustic principle to create its effect.
To make a signal sound like it’s coming from the left, the right channel’s amplitude is lowered, and vice versa. This emulates how a signal will sound louder in one ear than the other if the sound source is closer to that ear.
Virtual Stage uses this principle, and combines it will delay based panning to emulate the time differences between a signal reaching the left or right ear, early and late room reflections to simulate how a sound source would behave in a room relative to the listener’s position, and frequency response variation between the left and right channels again to emulate effect of the head’s position relative to the sound source.
Typically, this would take a lot of processing and fine-tuning to achieve realistically, but Virtual Stage does all of this, and in a way that’s just about as simple as possible.
There are 3 room sizes to choose from, an input, and an output. Then, drag the sound source’s position to any point to introduce the effect.
Even if you know how to introduce this effect with multiple processors, the amount of time this plugin saves makes it incredibly valuable. More importantly, it sounds realistic.
So if you’ve struggled with creating realistic placements for your instruments in a mix, this is a fantastic option. At its full price, it’s only $17 - but I see it’s on sale now for $9.
Let’s take a listen to the effect on some drums.
Watch the video to learn more >
dime[mb] lets you take any plugin you have and use it for frequency-specific processing. For example, if you have a favorite compressor that doesn’t have multiband functionality, and only want to affect the vocal’s 3rd formant, you could isolate that range and insert the compressor.
Or maybe you only want reverb on the highs; again, you’d follow the same concept by adding whichever processor you want to a specific frequency range.
In short, it’s a wrapper that turns any plugin into a multiband plugin.
Now, like the previous plugin we covered, this can be done manually, in this case by setting up auxiliary sends, introducing individual equalizers to isolate the ranges, then adding the processing. But in addition to that method taking a lot more time, it runs the risk of introducing destructive phase interference.
The linear phase mode in this plugin fixes that issue, allowing you to use multiband processing on stems and the stereo output without phase interference. Furthermore, you can use the mix amount - again, without phase interference.
Now, some other plugins offer something similar, but they are either more expensive, don’t offer linear phase processing, or make the process way too convoluted, which, at that point, you might as well just use your DAW’s routing.
dime[mb] is arguably the best option for this type of processing, and it sells for a reasonable $59.
Let’s take a listen to a drum stem affected using the plugin’s linear phase mode. I’ll include compression, saturation, and other forms of processing to improve the drum’s detail.
Watch the video to learn more >
The Oxford Inflator is well-known by this point - it does a fantastic job at amplifying quieter details in a signal without introducing significant or unwanted distortion. It’s basically a waveshaper, but one that affects the lower amplitude aspects of the waveform while leaving the peaks unaffected unless its clipper is enabled.
Strangely, this plugin’s price is all over the place. I’ve seen it on sale for as low as $19. At the time of writing this script, I see a sale on Plugin Boutique for $39. But then it’ll jump back up to $150 or more with different versions - so, I genuinely don’t know what the original price of this plugin is anymore.
That said, if you can’t find a version of it on sale, there’s always the free JS Inflator - a community-built clone on GitHub.
It’s the same plugin but with added linear phase processing and oversampling, which is a nice addition if you want to use it in parallel or aggressively on a high-frequency signal.
I had trouble getting it to open on my computer for this video, but I’ll still leave a link for it below in case you want to try it.
For now, let’s listen to the Oxford Inflator on the drums and notice how it greatly increases quieter details.
Watch the video to learn more >
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Waves Audio - most of their plugins haven’t been updated in a decade aside from compatibility updates, which of course they charge for.
Regardless of how I feel about the company as a whole, Kramer Tape has always been and continues to be a fantastic tape plugin.
It’s not realistic, it’s not all that complex if you look behind the scenes, but it very quickly adds enjoyable tape saturation.There are multiple ways to introduce saturation here as well - there’s, of course, increasing the input.
But increasing the flux increases the simulated magnetic energy of the tape heads, which, if set high enough, results in additional saturation. Bias is similar - it affects the frequency response, but both higher and lower bias affect saturation points and the harmonic formation.
The monitor input can be disabled, which creates a much cleaner sound, or you can keep it enabled to affect all of the parameters we just discussed.
But perhaps my favorite aspect is the feedback and slapback options in the top right. This is perfect for classic vocal slapback or for automating creative feedback effects.
All in all, I would not recommend this plugin for mastering despite the plugin’s name; however, it’s a fantastic tool for mixing whenever you want aggressive saturation, a classic sound, or tape-inspired delay.
For $29, I think you’ll get a lot of use out of this plugin - again, not the most realistic, but it’s an undeniably fun and good-sounding plugin. Just keep in mind that they’ll likely charge you for an update in a couple of years.
Let’s take a listen.