In this article Damian Kearns’ rediscovery of an under-used plugin in his folder prompted him to ask some of the Production Expert team what they have in their plugins lists which should get used more often.

We’ve all had our favourite audio toys. For most of us, it’s the new one we saved for or waited for or dreamed about. Maybe we discovered it in a website article and found we could not imagine living without it. Then the next favourite comes along and slowly but surely, times change and tastes evolve. Our ‘once favourites’ sink to the bottom of the toy chest and like in the Toy Story movies, are eventually traded or discarded. Maybe, as in another fanciful animated classic tale, our software makes a one way trip to the Island of Misfit (Audio) Toys. In DAW terms, it’s there in our plugins list but we just don’t see it anymore. 

My recent OS update had me reviewing various pieces of software for potential compatibility issues, then in some cases, searching for updates. This is when I rediscovered this one plugin I’ve never really used, so I used it. 

Damian Kearns - Eventide Ultrachannel

Eventide, to me, is a company I’ve long admired for their multi effects hardware like the Harmonizer series. We used to use one of the Harmonizers for outboard gear and manual vocal pitch correction before the modern era silenced those pieces of hardware. These days, in my post production audio career, in-the-box solutions are heavily favoured over the potentially fraught inclusion of tools outside of the DAW’s ecosystem. 

I’ve always loved the sounds I can get from the Eventide product line and so, in June of 2014, I downloaded the UltraChannel plugin, intending to use it for some of the whackier processing I’m tasked with. In actual fact, UltraChannel does a lot of the subtler stuff well too. I just never thought to look. And so the underuse began.

Years have passed and I found that other than a couple of music mixes, this plugin fell into disuse, consigned to the bottom of my virtual noisemakers toy chest.  It’s easy to forget about something that’s not in regular use so I decided recently I to look once again at this fantastically versatile piece of software.

To start with, there are 8 modules. What’s really cool about this structure is that 4 of the modules can be reordered in the processing chain just by dragging them around in the UI. This alone gives 24 different possible arrangements of the gate, compressor/de-esser, O-Pressor and parametric EQ. There are some great use cases for moving these things around and I’ve seen in other channel strips that this flexibility can come in handy, especially in the age-old struggle between the EQ/COMP and COMP/EQ camps. 

The O-Pressor might confuse the first time user because there’s already a compressor module so why have two? . This one- the big VU gives it away- is a model of the classic early 70’s Eventide hardware so in fact, UltraChannel has two distinct compressors with radically different capabilities. I find the O-Pressor does tend to rob me of the transient content of my sound but this isn’t a bad thing in some cases. It’s nice and smooth and very musical. I wouldn’t use it for dialogue work but for sound design it has its place.   

To round out the top row of modules we’ve got the output module. There’s actually an output transformer module that can be engaged by clicking the box underneath the “XFORMER” moniker. This modelled transformer is post fader and adds some fun saturation to the overall sound. It’s subtle, unless it’s overdriven using the input gain, the significant gain coming out of one or both of the compressors or any band of the EQ. 

According to the manual, the Micro Pitch Shift and Stereo Delays are prior to the Output Module, after the input/gate/compressor/O-Pressor/EQ stage and are in fact, sitting in parallel with one another. These modules are fully automatable, including the feedback sources which shocked me somewhat. I’m not used to being able to automate something as esoteric as this. I would say, overall, the automation available in this plugin is impressive and well ahead of its time. 

The sounds on the Pitch Shift and the Delays are pretty classic Eventide. The delays provide another interesting set of variables in that the tempo can lock to the session’s tempo or you can tell it what you want the tempo to be by simply inputting a number. 

I have to say, I like the EQ sound for music and the O-Pressor definitely sounds a lot more classic than the Compressor module. There are lots of presets built in and I found myself slowly playing through them all to hear the assortment of sounds I could get out of this software. One of the startling presets is called “80’s Fuzz Metal” and really pushes the distortion capabilities to the max.

This plugin is feature-packed. The input provides for phase inversion, the EQ offers up two different filter types, the gate works although it lacks an attack time control, and the compressor will even add saturation of its own.  If you decide to reorder the 4 movable modules, the automation follows the repositioning which is great.

It’s been an educational half day playing around with this old plugin. I’d like to use it more now for sound design. It’s a very inspiring part of my system and one I’ll now find new and wonderful uses for. 

Julian Rodgers - UAD Capitol Chambers

I’m know I’m not the first person to refer to an exciting new plugin as my new “go to”. When I say it I usually mean it too, at least for a while. New things push out the old and there’s nothing wrong with this ‘churn’. However some plugins get forgotten about although they are great. One such plugin for me is UAD’s Capitol Chambers.

I’ve visited Capitol a couple of times and while I’ve never visited the chambers themselves, they aren’t easily accessible and definitely beyond the scope of a studio tour, I have seen where they are accessed from and discussing the role they have in the life of the studio with Steve Genewick of Capitol, he explained that they are still used, and still used because they sound so good. He also shared his “admittedly biased” opinion (Steve worked on the development of this plugin) that the plugin sounds like the chambers, something he is almost uniquely qualified to have an opinion on.

I have Capitol Chambers but haven’t used it since my initial enthusiasm subsided and something newer and shinier distracted me. The thing which distracted me was the Liquidsonics reverbs. I hadn’t used Liquidsonics plugins until shortly after I started using Capitol Chambers and Seventh Heaven replaced the Exponential Audio reverbs I’d been using as my go-to choice for reverb.

In retrospect this was a mistake as while Seventh Heaven is great, and Cinematic Rooms has largely replaced Seventh Heaven for flexible reverb in my sessions, Capitol Chambers is something else and still deserves a place in projects.

Capitol Chambers is a character reverb and it does something different to the flexible reverbs I’ve gravitated towards. On the right thing, and in my case that is usually vocals, it sounds unbelievable. The thing I think I’ve realised on returning to it is that it’s at its best if you treat it like a real chamber. It can be tweaked, though the flashing light on top of the Capitol tower graphic shows how much number crunching has to happen before the plugin updates, but if you were using the actual chambers at Capitol it’s unlikely that you would actually start changing the setup, even if you were allowed to. They are under the building!

Instead I’ve found I dial it up on a vocal using the default setting, and for the right track, where I want the vocal to sound lush and, for want of a better word, “expensive’ it can be absolutely perfect. I don’t tweak. If it’s not right I move on to something else. This feels like what I imagine I’d do if I were to use the real thing. Try the chamber, if it’s not right try something else.

James Richmond - Soundtoys Effect Rack

I’ve said a number of times on the podcast and in articles that I don’t often use plugins, which is not entirely true but rather that I prefer using outboard if given the chance. The workflow of using hardware suits how I think about audio and I enjoy the creative process more too. My plugin use has always been pretty minimal, I have tended to think that if one or two plugins per track can’t get the job done then perhaps there is something wrong with the source material.

So a plugin like Soundtoys Effect Rack, where you can stack multiple Soundtoys plugins inside a single instance always seemed like a waste of time to me. Just another window to negotiate in between me and the music. Until today I never tried it and predictably I’m pleased to report that it is actually excellent.

Rather than being an impediment to creativity I found myself able to quickly reorder different Soundtoys plugins more quickly than if using the Pro Tools mixer channels. The plugin is fairly minimal, at the top there is a master tempo with controls for input, output, recycle and mix. Recycle, in particular, is wonderful as it allows you to create a feedback loop, sending your output back into the effects rack input. It can get pretty crazy or it can be more subtle depending on how high it is turned up and the effects used.

Below the master section you have multiple slots for Soundtoys plugins to be dragged and dropped into an effects chain. As I have the full Soundtoys 5 bundle any of their plugins can be loaded. The effects are chained serially, there doesn’t seem to be any facility to do complex signal routing, such as switching from series to parallel in Effect Rack itself, although some capabilities are available with the use of individual plugin mix controls.
The interface is not entirely unlike the Emote software for the Eventide H9000, although much more capability exists in that machine in terms of signal routing. You cannot, as you might expect drag and drop non-Soundtoys plugins into Effect Rack, which might be another reason why I had not tried it, but this limitation is perhaps its strength. Forcing you to work with a smaller palette of plugins rather than every plugin you own forces you down a path you might not have otherwise gone. It is really excellent and a fun way to spend a few hours.

Also bundled with Effect Rack is a large number of presets. I’m not someone who uses presets very often but these seem to be very well thought out, divided into the usual categories; chorus, delays, filters, modulation etc, plus several designed for specific instruments; drums, guitar, vocals. The Sound Design preset folder is where things get very interesting with some of them yielding very complex and unpredictable results. Great for...er… sound design.

I’ve greatly enjoyed using Soundtoys Effect Rack, and plan to dip into it a bit more often.

Ufuk Önen - TAL-Noisemaker

When the pandemic hit the world hard in 2020, the university that I teach at, like most educational institutions around the world, went to lockdown and took all classes to online platforms, such as Zoom, including my sound synthesis course.

As transmitting high-quality audio over the internet would not be easy, even not possible, for all the students, I started looking for a free synth plugin. The idea was that everyone (all the students and me) would have the same plugin, so we would exchange presets instead of trying to transmit audio.

Since I was going to use the synth plugin for educational purposes, as a tool for introduction to synths and synth programming, I was looking for a soft synth with all the essential synth components (oscillator, LFO, filter, etc.) that are visible and clearly labeled (nothing hidden under the hood and no fancy names). 

While searching, I 'discovered' (or, maybe I should say 'rediscovered') TAL-NoiseMaker. It was right there in my plugins folder! I forgot that I installed it, and I didn't have any recollection of using it.

TAL-Noisemaker is a great-sounding virtual analog synthesizer. It has all the components and parameters needed for a synth class: three oscillators, two LFOs, filter, ring modulator, reverb, delay, portamento... You name it, TAL-NoiseMaker has got it! I think it's an excellent plugin for teaching synth programming. I was thrilled to rediscover this free synth which has been sitting idly in my plugins folder.

What About Your Plugins Folder?

We often say how valuable it is to put some more time into learning the tools we already have. Open your plugins folder and take a look. Is there anything you have overlooked? Share what it is in the comments below.