The Pain and Pleasure of Plug-ins

By Joe Gore

Part 2
This month's installment is a continuation of last month's topic: Things that are great about plug-ins, and things that are — um — challenging. And of course, some techniques you can use to tilt your plug-in experiences in the former direction.

I strongly recommend that you work through last month's workshop before tackling this one. You can download the whole shebang here.

The story so far: We started with a very raw excerpt from a track by the obscure Southern space rock combo Lynyrd Nymoy. It sounded crappy. We made it sound a bit better by manipulating the audio files with an assortment of downloaded plug-in demos. We fattened the rhythm section sound with Waves' MaxxBass and Renaissance Compressor and McDSP's Analog Channel. Then we breathed some pseudo-Marshall stack fire into a flat, direct-recorded guitar track with IK Multimedia's Amplitube. Finally, we printed the Amplitube effects in order to free up some processing power.

This time, instead of doctoring the individual audio tracks, we're going to experiment with using plug-ins on aux channels and the master fader.

Here is the Lynyrd Lymoy/Plug-ins PC (9 Megs) | Mac (7.5 Megs) Pro Tools session that includes all the edits and routing we worked through last month. It wasn't posted last time — you had to do all the work yourself. It's only for those of you who already did the work last time, or those of you who, like me, can't resist a good cheat. But do pay special attention to last month's warnings about downloading demo software — otherwise, don't blame me for harshing your happy little hard drive.

Note: if your plug-in demos have expired, see "Super Double-Cheat" below.

Fit to Print
Once you've massaged the tracks' plug-in settings to make them sound as good as possible, print (that is, bounce to disk) the effects so we can remove the plug-ins and preserve processing power. If you were working on a hotshot Pro Tools|HD system you could probably skip this step, but we Pro Tools LE peasants have to get used to such digital belt-tightening. Just remember: You're not erasing the original material — you never are in Pro Tools, unless you're doing it on purpose or just screwing up.

Let's walk through those bounce moves again:

1) For safety's sake, save the session with a new name: "Lynyrd Nymoy_Printed" has a nice ring to it.
2) We previously lowered the Master 1 fader because the collective tracks were frying the output. Return it now to the default setting of 0.0dB (unity) by option-clicking on its volume control. The reason: The master fader level controls the bounce level. If it's pulled down, say, -10dB, your bounce will be 10dB quieter than you probably intended. Lower you monitor level as needed.
3) Solo the "drums" track. Select File>Bounce to Disk. Since this is a stereo file, select the "multiple mono" option. (Pro Tools LE thinks of stereo files as a pair of matched mono files. If you select the "Stereo Interleaved" option, you'll just have to convert them into multiple mono later to use them in the session.) Make sure "Convert During Bounce" and "Import After Bounce" are selected. Leave the other settings where they are.




4) Select Bounce. Name the track something like "Drums Bounce." Press Save. You'll hear the drums play through the plug-ins in real time.
5) Repeat the move on the "bass" track. But since this is a mono track, set Format to "Mono (summed)."




6) Drag the bounced tracks from the Audio Regions list, replacing the originals. Since both parts roll from the top of the session, there's probably no need to mess with the "Spot" mode like we did when bouncing the "gtr 2" track last time.
7) Deactivate the plug-ins on the tracks' insert columns. (Secret trick: Sneak a listen to the bounced track before removing the plugs. Once in a while you stumble upon a cool double-processed effect this way — though here, it sounds pretty lame.)

Whew. Now we've cleared all the plug-ins, freeing up processor power to make all sorts of horrible new sounds.

Super Double-Cheat: Here Lynyrd Nymoy/Printed PC (9 Megs) | Mac (7.5 Megs) is a copy of the session with all the bounced audio files and no plug-ins. I don't mean to imply that anyone is lazy [yawn]. It's strictly for those whose plug-in demos have expired.

The Drag Factor
A word or two about plug-in-induced delays: They exist.

In some cases, running a track through a plug-in, either in real time or bounced, can introduce a delay of tens of milliseconds — enough to ruin a groove. You can find the exact DSP delay factor in the documentation accompanying most plug-ins, though I recommend just doing what every good producer/engineer does: Listen. To my ear, the bounced bass and drum tracks sound fine as they are, but "gtr 2" sounds a little sluggish after running through all that Amplitube stuff. Remedy: Enter "Slip" mode, set the nudge value to "Min/Secs/10 Msec," select the "Tasteless Guitar" region, and tap the minus key four or five times till it feels good. In the real world, of course, Pro Tools operators never use this technique to remedy lazy or rushed singing and playing. [Chortle]

You Send Me
    
   
Now let's try warping the track with more freeloaded demo plug-ins. Snag the RTAS demo version of Altiverb, a super-cool sampled reverb plug-in profiled as Plug-In of the Month in the last issue of DigiZine. Follow the install instructions, and try to ignore the fact that this demo beeps every few seconds.

Altiverb is a first of its kind among reverb plug-ins: it samples the acoustic properties of actual spaces, lending a character and complexity to the sounds that you generally don't get from conventional digital 'verbs. But Altiverb's amazing sounds make it an insatiable DSP hog. You're not likely to get more than one instantiation of Altiverb in an LE session.

But we can work with that. Enable the Edit window's Sends view (Display>Edit Window Shows>Sends View). Next, create a new track (Command/Ctrl + Shift + N). We want a stereo aux input. (Instead of clicking on the pull-down tabs, why not learn the key commands? Command/Ctrl + left/right arrow toggles between mono and stereo tracks; Command/Ctrl + up/down arrow tabs between audio, aux, master, and MIDI tracks.)

Set the "Aux 1" channel's input to "bus 1-2." Click on one of its insert buttons and fire up an Altiverb Stereo-Mix to Stereo plug in (which is a little easier on your processor than the Stereo-to-Stereo version). Click the "low latency, high processor load" option and the "mute direct sound" button.

Now click on a send button and select "bus 1-2" for each one of the audio tracks. Your screen should look something like this:

    

click to enlarge

  

Let's listen to the drums first. Solo both that track and "Aux 1." Then click on the drum track's bus 1-2 switch and set the fader that appears to 0.0dB by double-clicking on it.

Chances are you're hearing a big, sloppy mess at this point. Dialing in the correct sound on an aux send involves several variables: the send level, the volume of the aux track, and of course, the plug-in settings themselves. It only gets more confusing when we start listening to many tracks through the same aux plug-in effect.

 

Start Making Sense
    
   
First, lower the level of the Aux 1 channel by 10dB or so — low enough to sound vaguely realistic, but loud enough to hear the effect and evaluate its settings. Next, try dialing through some of the reverb presets by click-holding on the triangle icon near the center of the plug-in graphic. If none of these presets work for you, you can download others at http://www.audioease.com/IR/index.html. But before ruling them all out, experiment with lowering the "reverb time" settings via the big dial at the left.

The likeliest approach here would be to use a medium-sized space rather than something cathedral-like — anything that adds some mass and dimension to the dry drum sound without obscuring it. (I was digging some of those staircase settings myself.) Once you've settled on something, mute the aux track to determine whether it really is an improvement — it might not be! Then fiddle with the Aux 1 level till it sounds cool.

Next, try sending some of the other instruments to the effect by clicking on their bus 1-2 buttons. Note that you can open and view multiple faders simultaneously if you hold down the Shift key while clicking them open.

Try adding guitars, bass, and Theremin to the mix. Note that as you start sending more channels to the effect, you will probably overload it. When this happens, lower all the send levels and make up the volume on the Aux 1 channel. While Altiverb has no input level control some plug-ins do.

You can also experiment with using demos of other RTAS- compatible reverb plug-ins, such as Waves's Renaissance Reverb and TrueVerb (http://www.waves.com) and Kind of Loud's RealVerb (http://www.kindofloud.com/welcome.html).



Minor Mastering
Finally, let's see how we can upgrade the emerging mix with a few master fader plug-ins — gizmos that specialize in tweaking the EQ, compression, and limiting of the overall track.

One fun mastering tool is IK Multimedia's T-RackS (http://www.t-racks.com), which lets you adjust your mix's EQ, compression, and multi-band limiting from a single plug-in. Of course, you can also use combinations of plug-ins to do the same trick: your favorite EQ and compressor, followed by, say, a single- or multi-band limiter from the likes of Waves or McDSP. In all cases, the presets make pretty decent starting points.

Adjusting the EQ and compression of the final mix is a complex and ultra-sensitive task for which top mastering engineers earn upward of $300 an hour. Many of the same specialists would hasten to point out, with great justification, that he who masters his own tracks has a fool for an engineer. Bad amateur mastering usually hurts more than it helps, and it definitely makes a real mastering engineer's job more difficult once you realize how badly you've screwed it up yourself.

But it would be difficult to screw up this track any worse than the members of Lynyrd Nymoy did for themselves, so go crazy.

Click here to read previous columns.