In this article, with help from some of the Expert contributors, Julian discusses the desire for the analogue experience when mixing in software and some of the preferred ways of getting the analogue experience in software.

We need only look around at the plethora of saturators, tape modelling plugins and “character box” emulations of valve outboard to see that the accurate, linear recording medium that the designers of audio equipment through most of the 20th century aspired to build for many was one of those cases of “babies and bathwater”. The imperfections weren’t all bad and while most of us are happy to leave the hiss of analogue back in the old days, the harmonic distortion and different transient response of analogue was good. To the frustration of many of those designers who spent their careers trying to eradicate imperfections, as soon as we managed to remove them we wanted them back again!

So given that so many of us, particularly those of us in the music community, want our recordings with healthy dollops of vibe and mojo, which of the many options out there are our preferred means to perfect imperfection? In this case we’re going to look at processes which are applied across the entire mix, either on every channel or on the 2-bus. We ask some of the Production Expert team.

Mark M Thompson

HEAT is enabled in new sessions by default on my system and the only time I’ll ever bypass it is if I’ve opted to use Waves’ NLS, normally for no other reason than “why not?”. I’m a big fan of the “mixing-through” method, and I’ve found using HEAT in conjunction with an SSL style bus comp on the master to be a technique that really does help get your mixes feeling solid from the off. I'll use either Avid's own (and often overlooked) Impact, Brainworx' bx_townhouse, Waves' classic SSL Comp or their genuinely brilliant CLA MixDown. Regardless of genre and whether you’re aiming for a vintage vibe or pristine digital, using these tools really will help bring your mixes to life... You just have to be careful not to push any particular component too hard from the start, as subtlety is key!

William Wittman

I will invariably use some sort of console emulation (most often Slate VCC, which is now part of the Virtual Mix Rack) on sub groups and always on the master stereo bus, but I rarely add it to every single track. I will say that I think a large part of what makes an analogue desk sound different from ITB mixing is the randomness introduced by each channel having something unique about it (whether intentionally so or not!). So with that in mind I think there is something to the idea of introducing those random elements in a digital simulation version, as both Waves NLS and the Plugin-Alliance TMT plugins try to do. If Plugin-Alliance offered just the console channel emulation without the ‘channel strip’ aspect I’d be all over it. Lastly, I do tend to have a tape simulation on my master bus as well, as I like the subtle overall ‘gluey-ness’ it adds, although I only very rarely add that to other channels.

Luke Goddard

For the uninitiated, the Console 1 ecosystem from Softube partners the company’s well regarded channel strip plugins with a dedicated hardware control surface. I think Softube’s decision to add a dedicated saturation algorithm for most flavours of their strips with a pair of controls on the hardware is for me the icing on the Console 1 cake. 

After using various saturation plugins including offerings from PSP, Avid and Softube, the latter’s (free) Saturation Knob was the first one to hit the nail on the head for me, and it was Softube’s transplanting of their Saturation Knob sound into Console 1 that convinced me to buy into the system. 

The channel strips for Console 1 that have saturation have two controls: Drive and Character. Drive is just that, and happens downstream of all other processing including the strip’s input gain. Character to my ears sounds like a continuous version of the “Keep Hi/Lo/Neutral” switch found in Saturation Knob which is so much more useful than just being a “flavour” control. 

Fully clockwise gives sources anything from a subtle crunch which keeps the low end intact at sensible levels, through to an overtly trashy fizz which is firmly in sound design territory. Fully left is the inverse of this where the bottom begins to break up as Drive is increased. This latter setting does something magic; I find that it works wonders on sources lacking in low end, adding a bump that just cannot be summoned with EQ. With Character in the centre, I find that Drive can be used to subtly fold the peaks over in a very pleasing tape-like way that sounds fantastic on drums.

Console 1 doesn’t do per-channel randomness; that would be nice, but for everything else I find its saturation is highly involving, musical, and above all for me, indispensable.

Steve DeMott

I use a console emulation plugin on every track, though not the same one on each track. I go between an API style channel strip and an SSL style, depending on the source. This includes effects auxes. I like the console emulators by Plugin Alliance because they introduce randomness through their TMT (Tolerance Modelling Technology) feature. To me, this is the real secret to achieving the “analogue” feel in digital: having each instance slightly different than the others. From there I tend to have everything coming back on one of 4 busses: [1] Drums & Bass, [2] Instruments, [3] Vocals & [4] Returns. The first three are self-explanatory. “Returns” is an Aux bus for my effects returns that I can process together. Each 2-bus has an instance of Black Box HG-2 and a compressor and EQ that both add some “analogue” colour & glue (though I don’t tend to have a compressor on the “Returns” bus).

My master bus sums all these submixes through a tape emulation plugin inserted as a multi-mono insert. My current favourite tape emulator is the McDSP Analog Channel AC202. While it’s an older plugin, I love the flexibility to choose different tape machine characteristics. Though, I will admit that I have been using the SPL Iron compressor with the “Tape Roll-Off” setting engaged on a few mixes as an alternative to the tape emulation. The jury's still out as to whether SPL Iron will replace AC202 altogether. 

The guiding premise for me is to add little bits of character in many places, rather than trying to add a lot of character in just a few places. What that means from a practical standpoint is that none of these plugins are doing a ton of colouring to the signal, but adding just a touch. Much like seasoning a great meal.

Brent March

Console Shaper is one of the many reasons I fell in love and switched over to Studio One. I have a number of different templates and CTC-1 is always at the heart of the mixer. PreSonus recently released Retro Mix Legends, giving Studio One Professional users 3 new console emulations that they can mix into. I think that’s a crucial part about using Console Shaper, you MUST mix into it – don’t add it at the end of the mixing stage, as everything will just fall apart. PreSonus’ Mix Engine FX are unique to Studio One and the technology doesn’t exist in any other DAW. Mix Engine FX include a mix and sum processor inside of one single plugin. In comparison to typical plugin inserts, Mix Engine FX are capable of processing every channel of the mixer independently with just a single plug-in instance on the master fader. All the faders/channels that are routed to the master allow the Console Shaper to transform the ‘in-the-box’ sound into something a lot warmer and more characterful. Implementing a little bit of crosstalk, noise and drive really does change the way a mix takes shape. Although I didn’t grow up learning on analogue consoles, to me the use of mix engine FX is an absolute must in Studio One.

James Richmond

Decapitator from Sound Toys. I don’t use it for an obvious distortion effect that often at all, just a little bit of lift and crunch on most channels in a mix- you don’t really notice it is there until you bypass all the instances and the mix loses its punch. It isn’t just me either - Allessandro Cortini has said ‘I put Decapitator on everything… I would wear Decapitator if I could’. 

Over the years I’ve tried a load of different tape emulation plugins- Slate VTM was used for quite a while, before that Massey Tapehead. I sometimes use UA’s Studer A800 across all the channels too, but it isn’t on every mix. Unless I am doing something that needs to be super clean then I just keep going back to Decapitator. I just love it.

On my 2 Bus I have an analogue chain which is Manley Massive Passive into a Crane Song STC8 into an SSL Fusion. None of those devices are especially crunchy (although the SSL Fusion’s vintage drive can get that way if overused) but the three of them in series produces a big sound. One more product I’d like to talk about is Brainworx Blackbox. If I don’t use Decapitator then I will probably use that plugin. It sounds excellent, enough that I am seriously considering getting the hardware equivalent.

Julian Rodgers

I’ve never settled on one approach but I do have a UAD-2 Satellite Octo DSP accelerator as I really like the tape plugins available on UAD. As a Pro Tools user I should use HEAT as I have no issues at all with the sound, I think its excellent but in truth I don’t use it much. I do think that these kinds of built into the DAW solutions are best in terms of workflow. It is on every channel, just like a console.

My preference for the 2 bus is analogue. If I want something I can really hear giving some 2-bus “munge” then I insert my 2 channel BAE1073MPF across the mix and drive the transformers a little, or a lot on submixes. On the subject of bus processing, I have used the inductor-based HPF in this preamp as a useful widening effect on guitar groups in the past. Because the filter affects phase differently at different frequencies, if you set it up with a 50Hz HPF on one side and 80Hz on the other, although the frequency cut makes little difference, the different phase rotation between the channels widens things nicely.

I’m sure I could get similar results from a plugin but there’s something nice about using hardware and I tend to find I don’t get stuck in “option paralysis”. I could use any of many plugins but I only have one hardware 1073.

Diminishing Returns

Will we ever arrive at “virtual equivalence” the point at which there is absolutely no difference between plugins and their analogue counterparts? Inevitably it’s a case of the more you look the more you find to model. Plugin Alliance have attracted positive attention with their TMT (Tolerance Modeling Technology) which goes some way towards recreating the natural variance which exists between identical components. Channel 1 of a console doesn’t sound exactly like channel 2 etc. This helps but in the spirit of drilling down and chasing diminishing returns, as one of our contributors pointed out, even in this situation a plugin’s channel 1 will always be the same. This doesn’t happen with real hardware, performance changes with temperature and with time. Analogue is a moving target.

Whether this matters is of course questionable and even if a plugin company were to go to the effort of accurately modelling all the ways a capacitor changes over time, wouldn’t we inevitably end up modelling bad days when the pedantically accurate modelling we thought we wanted actually works against us? Many of us roll our eyes at modelled tape noise, I recall a Fairlight model which threw up disk error messages (I assume that was a joke) but would someone really accept lovingly modeled failing capacitors or dying valves in the spirit of an accurate modeled analogue experience? What do you think?