In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers looks at how easy it is to navigate and control your session’s plugins using the Avid S1.

Using Plugins With the S1

When using plugins there are many tasks best achieved using a keyboard and mouse. Some plugins are very complex and some rely on rich graphical feedback, many are still much like using hardware outboard equipment and offer a much more intuitive experience when controlled with two hands using hardware.

In this video an example of an 1176 is used. When controlling the input and output simultaneously the 1176 design makes sense in a way it doesn’t in software. Perhaps a better example would be using a Pultec EQ to perform the famous bottom end trick where dialling in a boost with a cut at the same time gives a lovely deep bass but only if dialled in just right, with the two interdependent controls complementing each other. The best example of all would be to fire up a resonant filter. Controlling the cutoff and the resonance to get the setting just right is so much quicker using two hands!

Navigating plugins has been thought through on the S1 with accessing plugin windows, and more importantly toggling their bypass state, easily accessible in normal view using the encoder In and Sel buttons. Getting into tweaking parameters is as simple as pushing on an encoder and crucially when learning a controller, backing out through layers of parameters is quick and easy.

While we’re not yet incorporating the Avid Control App, controlling plugins is possible and possibly simpler just using the S1 without a tablet. See how simple plugin control is when you know the basics in the video.