Dark Label Studio - Waves Platinum Review

Dark Label Studio - Waves Platinum Review

For most people, those are one of the best mastering and mixing plugins actually available.
Togheter with the Universal Audio bundles, Waves Platinum (or other versions of it), are the most used plugins in the whole audio and music industry.
The range of their applications can space from the professional users, to the common audio amateur, since their reliability and ease of use interfaces and controls.

The Waves Platinum contains all of the Gold 3.2 Bundle plus it adds more.  You get the Renaissance Channel (along with other plugins that were formerly in the Renaissance 2 collection) and the Masters bundles. They key question: is it worth it to upgrade to Platinum or is Gold enough? 

Of course the answer to that depends on your current system.  If you absolutely need an ILok authorization so you can painlessly use Waves on both a Mac and your PC or on your studio and home computer then I think you should go Platinum.  This put the authorization of a USB key that you can plug into whatever computer you want.  Those upgrading from a PC to a Mac g5 in particular have ample motivation to upgrade to Platinum.  You can use your plugins on either system.



You get the new Renaissance channel with Platinum.  Is it cool?  At first, i was skeptical.  Then I finally tried it.  It's like a channel strip in some ways, with stereo eq, compression, gating.  Ok. its a track insert, I thought. But I tried a whole mix through it and found more--phase reversal, stereo imaging, sidechains and even overload protection.  Very impressive, with some well-crafted presets designed to add "punch".  

You can improve a mix using the Rchannel alone rather substantially.  On the other hand, you can get almost the same result by effectively chaining eq-->compressor-->Maxx Bass-->S1 imager-->L1 in the 3.2 collection.  That's a combination i used a lot.  The Rchannel just does it all in one plugin.  Hence it is really convenient.  Now that I have it, I will use it more than chaining up a lot of stuff.  

Other plugins Platinum adds over Gold are the Masters linear phase eq, multiband, and L2 Ultramaximizer (the gold has earlier versions of eq, the C4 multiband and L1 Ultramaximizer).  Big difference here? Depends on who you are and what you are doing.  A Mastering engineer will find and appreciate the difference.

These plugins are called the "Masters" not because the programmer likes golf, but because they are designed for people who are purists about audio and who master people's material for a living. The Masters are plugins that give you a GUI that allows you to make an exacting small difference.  What's this "linear phase" thing? The Waves Linear Multiband manual goes into great detail on "masking", "smearing" and phase shifts that happen with typical eq and multiband processors.  And how their software saves the day for you here. 

The Platinum version adds the plugins from the Renaissance Collection 2 (not to be confused with the original  Renaissance collection, which is already in the 3.2 set).  This gives you the Renaissance Vox, R-bass, R-De-esser.  You already have the Renaissance reverb, R-eq, and R-compressor in 3.2).  How important are these?  The R-Bass is very very good at bring out the low bass subwoofer tonalities, better than the Max Bass in 3.2 which is best at getting a big bass sound out of a small speaker.  

Waves discontinued the Renaissance Native and Renaissance 2 collection and merged them into the Renaissance Maxx collection.  So if you already have the Waves Gold and want to get the Renaissance channel should you get the Renaissance Maxx?  Well, Maybe Not.  You already have 3 of Renaissance plugins in the Gold 3.2.  You should go all the way to Platinum, because in Platinum you get the whole Renaissance Maxx, the whole Masters plus the 3.2 Gold.  Whew, it requires a genealogist to keep all these inbred lines straight.  But I think we have it straight here.   

One of the FAQs that is commonly read in forums and sites is : are really Waves Plugins worth it?
Well the answer is not that easy, since it depends on personal taste, but with objectiveness i cas firmly state  that we are in front of a really good plugin suite which can make your mixes sound like the ones in which analog equipment is used.

Anyway

If it's worth it, depends on so many factors, most subjective, and the state of your financial well being.  I think the Ultramazimixer L1+ is worth a lot. While there are many loudness maximizers out there now, none seem to do it as transparently or as simply.  The multiband and reverbs totally sweeten the deal.  If you work with samples, the eq is a must have.  The Native Gold set is one of those things that makes you shake your head and pace around the room before you buy, but once you work with them. hear them, regrets may vanish. 

Let us know what you think about just writing a coment or sending a mail to darklabelstudio@gmail.com.

Steven Slate Drums 4.0 - Review

Today we'll talk about one of the most used and most famous drums VST in the audio production industry: The Steven Slate Drums 4.0 .
With 100 kits to choose from, your possible overall drum sound is endless. Mix and match drum sounds to make your own User kit presets, then record a nearly perfect sounding kit using a MIDI keyboard or another form of triggering. The Steven Slate Drums 4 software covers all it’s bases by including features such as a built in mixer, room & overhead mic emulation, and the ability to split out your recordings to 16 individual outputs (8 mono/8 stereo.)

Sound Quality

The samples used within the Steven Slate Drums software is what makes it stand out from any other sampler. Being able to operate a sampler is important in the creation stages, but the end product is what musical productions are judged on. With over 100 kits ranging from classic Led Zeppelin styles to current pop style kits, as well as the option to mix and match your favorite sounds, you can choose the perfect hits for whatever style track you are working on. I would like to see more of the electronic influenced kits for House, Hip Hop, and other styles, but 808 samples are plentiful enough in other programs for SSD4 to break away and add new sounds to the market. For me, kick drums and snares usually end up being the easiest thing to find, but cymbals really sell a kit if you can find good sounds for them. The Steven Slate Drums cymbal samples were recorded using various Soultone cymbals, a legendary cymbal manufacturer used by hundreds of professional drummers. The Steven Slate team put together an assortment of tones from dark to bright cymbal hits which add tons of color to each kit. Adding these natural sounding cymbals to the kit add realism to the kit, especially when mixed well within the new Steven Slate Drums plugin environment.

Mixing drums with SSD

Within the SSD4 plugin, you have to option to change almost anything about how you trigger the samples, how they sound, and where they’re going. Each piece of the kit can be edited using individual controls for Attack, Sustain & Release, as well as the drums tuning, panning, and volume. On the right hand side of the interface, you have MIDI control options to decide the curve of the hits dynamics, velocity, and range to ensure your hits are as consistent or extreme as your track calls for. The mixer allows you to choose from 16 outputs, which is great for printing stems for each part of the kit. You can control how much bleed each piece has into the room and overhead mics; a nice touch to add a sense of realism to the kit. You can also add a groove to the performance from within the plugin which functions much like the Beat Detective Grooves found within Pro Tools. Finally within the plugin, you are able to assign parts of the kit (and up to 20 additional samples) to be triggered by any MIDI note. By default, this is set up as most traditional samplers are, starting with kick samples, followed by snare, toms, then cymbals. The plethora of options fills a good 3 octaves for most kits, so if your space is limited, it’s nice to be able to move hits around to accomodate your workflow.

Variation

I think the variation found within each kit largely creates the feeling of realism without an actual drum set. With programmed drums, music creators are usually limited to a single sound, or the tedious process of selecting dozens of samples and choosing them independently. There are more options to choose. Most notably, I enjoyed the realism of the hi-hats as they were split out to several keys (open, semi- closed, closed, etc.) and had various samples based on velocity. These two layers of depth to such a specific piece of the kit gave the program what it needed to sound as if the drums were being played on a real kit. Though I most noticed it in the hi-hats, most kits in SSD4 had multiple hit types for each piece of the drum kit, as well as velocity changes on everything.

Samples in Steven Slate Drums 4 are simply awesome, and for what it costs the sampler almost just seems like an added bonus. It’s great to see the group at Slate Digital put so much time and effort into the detail of these kits. Every sample sounds clean and works well in any environment, so feel free to add your jazzy kick to an otherwise metal setup. The combinations of sound and style are endless, so you really just need to get your hands on the software and see what you can make.