Basic "Go To" Effects?

[djgel]

Hi Dennis,

First of all, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to do a Q & A with us. Been a fan of your stuff since the work you did on EXperimental in the 90's!


I'm curious as to what your "go to" plug ins for basics:
EQ, Compression/Limiting, Reverb, Chorus, Delay, etc.

It would be great to find out what you use for "character" plugins vs. more "functional" or "surgical" plugins for the basics.



Also - Is there anything that you feel needs to go through hardware, rather than plugins to get the sound you want (excluding mic pre's of course).


Thanks!

[dennis f]

Every one needs to find their own "colors" that appeal to their personalities in production. That being said you always need:

1 modulation plug
1 reverb plug
1 delay plug
1 go to surgical eq
1 go to Comp/limiter plug

the above plugs should be clean...surgical versions. One's you can trust to get your point across without working to hard. They should be the get me to a to b plugs.

This is what I commonly see wrong with producers....they buy/get bootlegs(tsk tsk!) of everything under the sun yet they're lousy at working any one particularly with any proficiency. You need to learn how to rock one and then begin to experiment with different colors only after you've got your go to's.

My goto's wouldn't necessarily be someone else's. It's all in your ears and how you manage your approach to using the different colors you've made available to yourself.
I for example love Sonnox's Eq for precision, surgical eq.....but I find myself most of the time using Waves SSL eq's. Why? I have no freakin' clue! I just do...they seem to rub me the right way. LOL! I mean I have tons of eq's ...but those are the ones i'm diggin TODAY. Thing is tomorrow could be a different story!

df

[djgel]

I hear ya. I was just curious about what tools you used to get your particular sound. It's always interesting to hear what a big-name producer uses to achieve what they do.

I bought all the Sony/Sonnox native plugs (except for the limiter - I prefer Waves L1/L3 & UAD's Precision Limiter) and agree that they do a great job at the clean/surgical stuff, without sounding harsh/clinical. I just wish that the lo-pass on the EQ went higher than 400 Hz!

I started out with Waves Native Power Pack (upgraded to Platinum bundle later on), as they seemed to be the best sounding plugins on the market at the time. They were pretty much the only plugins I used, when I worked at a local recording studio (did mostly hip hop/r&b and some gospel). I later purchased the URS EQ's (A, N & S series) and compressors (1970 & 1980), based on recommendations from others. But they really didn't "gel" with me at all, I don't use them and I kinda' feel like I wasted a chunk of money. Can't afford to spend any more money on Waves now but love what I've heard of their SSL & API collection.

For the most part these days, I'm only using stuff from UAD (for character), Sony (for precision), Altiverb (for convo reverb) and a few random Waves plugins. Nothing too exotic, but I know them inside-out & they get the job done for me.

Thanks for sharing!