Review: Ignite Amps Emissary 2.0 and NadIR 2.0 (with video sample)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to talk about the new version of 2 free plugins from our friends of Ignite Amps (click here to read our interview), a producer of amps and stompboxes that offers them in Vst version as free plugins.

After having won the KVR Developer Challenge 2018 with the Pro F.E.T. and having had a nice booth at Namm 2019, the company is already back to action with the version 2.0 of their 2 most popular plugins: the Emissary virtual amp and the NadIR impulse loader.

The Emissary features the same characteristics as the version 1.0 (reviewed here), plus it adds a completely rewritten tube simulation engine (and it can be noticed by comparing the 2 versions side by side, the new one has more harmonic richness), an improved power amp section and now there is a preset management system, which was not featured in the previous version.

Speaking of NadIR instead the improvements are even more: the impulse loader features a new user interface, a preset management system and two new controls, the resonance control, which simulates the interaction between a power amp and a speaker (for the IRs captured from a solid state power amp), and the room control, which acts as reverb.

All I can say is that these plugins kicks ass, and they keep getting better and better, so make sure to download them and to follow Ignite amps, because I think this company is one its way to become one of the best in the industry.


These two plug-ins will be released in the next few weeks, together with many other surprises, so make sure to check out their Facebook official page and the official website.



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Review: Naughty Seal Audio - Perfect Drums (with video sample)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are reviewing a new drum sampler from Naughty Seal Audio: Perfect Drums!

Perfect Drums is a software that sets itself immediately in the high end area of the market, on par with illustrous cometitors such as Slate Drums and Superior Drummer, offering 13 kick drums, 12 snare drums, 29 toms (8 full sets), 9 hi-hats, 11 rides, 31 crash cymbals sampled on different position, 13 china cymbals (5 on the left side and 8 on the right), 8 splash cymbals, 2 custom stack cymbals, 2 bells and 1 jamblock instrument, all organized in 12 Perfect Kit presets.

The mixer is particularly interesting, since the samples are already processed, but the amount or processing can be reverted: the mixer doesn't feature a full internal fx suite to work on the samples from zero, but it lets us control (besides the classic mixer controls) the amount of overhead, room, reverb on each track, and there is also an FX knob that is the actual thing that sets this virtual drumkit apart from the others: it features several types of processing integrated (eq, comp, blend with another oneshot sample...) so that if you turn it to zero the sound is almost unprocessed, and if you crank it the drum part is fully processed and ready to cut even through the most dense mix.

Another interesting feature of Perfect Drums in the integrated Sampler: it is not common to find a virtual instrument that features an internal one on which to add other samples to fatten the drum tracks (you can also get creative and add different samples, for example a hand clap on the snare track, and so on).
This gives us a lot of flexibility, allowing us to blend together samples with extreme ease.

All in all I have been positively surprised by the quality of Perfect Drums: it's easy to use, it sounds great, it's packed with features and above all, all the presets are mix ready and very usable, without additional processing.
It's very easy to create your own kit by choosing your favourite drum parts and blending them together, and the sounds are all perfectly balanced, so I do really recommend it.

Two final things that are worth mentioning are the fact that there is an online community for sharing presets and collaborating, and the fact (which is great) that with the PD Purchase you get all the future library expansions and updates for FREE.

Perfect Drums comes also in a FREE version, called Perfect Drums Player, which I suggest you to try, to check out this cool piece of software for yourself!

Thumbs up!


Specs:


- Extensive sound library, containing 67 meticulously sampled instruments

- Parallel processing Sample Group

- High End Reverb Sample Group

- Smart Instrument Loading Algorithm

- Intelligent Sampling Engine

- Also available on TCI Files for Slate Trigger Compatibility

- Cloud support of Community Sharing and Collaboration

- With the purchase you get all the future library expansions and updates for free


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How to mix a song with free plugins part 5/5: Keyboards and Extra Arrangements!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Now that we have taken care of all the basic elements of the classic rock band it's time to work on the additional arrangements (which sometimes are the most important part of a song, for example in case of orchestral music, edm, jazz or piano driven pop music).

Let's start by saying that those additional arrangements can be done by using real instruments (for example click here to see how to record a real string ensemble), or with MIDI instruments (click here to read our article about virtual orchestras), and within the MIDI realm we can use sampled instruments or synth instruments (click here for an article that explain the difference between the two), but no matter what those additional instruments are, the important thing is to apply the same process of carving space in our mix to accomodate them, the same way we did in the previous parts of this tutorial.

The good thing about MIDI instruments is the fact that most of the times they are pre-processed, so it's mainly a matter of finding the right sound and fitting it in the mix then a real sound processing, but on the other side if we are microphoning a real instrument (like a piano) we will have much more control and leeway when working on it to adapt it to the rest of the song, using our hammer and chisel: the equalization and the compression.

In order to process our instruments there is a variety of free software, most of it in form of Vst plugins; some of them are bundled directly in our daw (click here for an article about how to mix only using stock plugins).
If we're not satisfied with the stock plugins, here's our ultimate list of the best freeware Vst plugins sorted by type.
And here's our top ten 2018 Vst plugins, if you don't want to bother with trying and choosing among them :D

After we have processed properly our additional arrangement tracks, it's time to put the icing on the cake: we need to listen to the song very carefully, and we'll inevitably find out that regardless all of our volume balance and compression there will still be parts which are too loud or too quiet, too effected or too dry, therefore we will have to write automations until the song will flow perfectly smooth.
Now, if we feel that some track is still a bit too weak and lifeless we can route them into a console emulation plugin and let it do its magic in fattening the signal and making it more "round".
Finally, we can add some cool effect if we want to keep the listener's attention high, like inserting a reverse sound effect.

Once we have all of our tracks in place and well integrated in our mix there is still some final check to make. A good starting point is to make sure we have avoided the biggest mixing mistakes listed HERE.

After having cleared our project from the most common mistakes, it's time to do some A/B (actually this is a good habit to do at all steps of mixing and mastering, to keep our ears fresh and our perspective right) with a referencing track, so that we can rebalance our mix if we find out some major problem. You can read more about how to mix with referencing tracks in this article.

Now the last step before passing to the mastering phase is to make a test run of our mix through various playback devices (click here for a dedicated article) in order to find out whether there is some unbalance (for example some instrument can be too loud or too quiet when listened through some specific device); this will make the mastering phase faster and less frustrating. 

Let us know in the comment section if you found this serie of articles useful!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4: VOCALS!



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How to mix a song with free plugins part 4/5: Vocals!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Now that with the previous articles of this serie we have built the walls of our mix, it's time to work on the focal point of our mix: the vocals (click here for an article abou the focus of our mix).

Most of the times the vocals are in facts the staple around which the whole song revolves, therefore is important to carve in the eq of the other instruments enough space for it to be heard properly; 

it's not easy to tell exactly where to carve since vocals are very different from singer to singer and from style to style, so the best thing to do is to locate the frequency area where the bulk of the sound is and to cut a couple of db in that area especially in the guitars and bass tracks, in order to prepare the stage for our vocal part (click here for an article that explains how to do it).

The first thing to do is to prepare an FX Track with the right effects (e.g. Delay and Reverb), and insert there an eq that makes them effective only from a certain frequency range up (we don't want to soak completely our vocal track also in the low end area making it sound like in a cavern), the process is described HERE, then we can proceed with the real mixing phase: 

Click here for the complete article about how to mix our vocals. 

Now that we have our vocal tracks mixed, it's worth mentioning the fact that there might be chances that our track is not yet sitting perfectly in the mix, for example there could be some part that is still too loud, or some part that gets covered by the other instruments. 

We might still need some additional step, which can be found here:

Click for an article about how to make vocals sit better in the mix. 

Once we are satisfied with the result we can move to the last step: keyboards and extra arrangements.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!



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How to mix a song with free plugins part 3/5: Guitars!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Now that we have laid down our rhythm section, it's time to work on one of the most versatile instruments of a mix: the guitar.
A guitar can play almost every role in a song, according to the genre: it can do just some lick here and there as arrangement, it can be like in metal a pillar of the rhythmic section, it can substitute the vocals in a solo part.
As you can see, there is a lot to say and a lot to do.

Let's start by saying that a guitar track can be acquired by microphoning an amp or by going straight into a d.i. box and then reamping the sound, it can be acoustic, electric clean, distorted, and all the shades in between.
The guitar sound can even be virtual: there are virtual instruments that recreate the tone of a guitar, and that you can mix like real guitars (although they obviously will never have the realism of a real one).
About reamping with guitar amp simulators, here are the best free ones, and here is a comparison article with samples of the most populars among them.

- Do we need a strong rhythmic sound? Then we need to record two guitar tracks and pan them one left and one right (around 80% left and right should be fine to give a good sense of width, click here for an article about panning);
we might even consider quad tracking our guitars if we are confident that we would be able to record precise enough.


Click here for an article about how to mix rock/metal guitars.

Click here for an article about how to mix guitar solos.


After mixing our guitar tone we need to put it in the context of the mix, to make it sit perfectly among the other instruments, and sometimes we don't want to change too much the eq of our guitar sound: here's a way to make our guitar tone move more towards the midrange without changing the eq.

And finally, here's our omnicomprehensive article about effects and distortions with free VST plugins!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4: VOCALS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!


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How to mix a song with free plugins part 2/5: Bass!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
After we have our drums track ready and with a tone that we like (anyway we will need to adjust everything when the whole mix is more or less stable obviously, but we need to follow a certain order if we don't want to start building our house from the roof), it's time to further expand our rhytmic part of the song by taking care of the bass.

The bass sound, and in general the low end of a mix, is what often makes the difference between an amateur recording and a professional one, and this is caused by two factors:

1) the monitoring system (click here for a dedicated article): if we don't have a good one, it's almost impossible to have a realistic representation of what we are doing, basically we are mixing blindly, because we don't have a clear idea of how the mix will translate in the various platforms.

2) we need to mix keeping in mind the changes that happens during mastering: we need always to keep in mind that with the mastering the overall perceived loudness (and the low end) will be much more prominent, so we need to put in our mix neither too much low end nor too little (and if the mastering makes it unbalanced we need to reopen the mix and adjust).

After this fundamental introduction we need to mix our bass track by having always clear the mix separation (click here for a dedicated article): it's important that we assign to all instruments a specific place in the mix and that we avoid frequency masking, if we don't want them to disappear one behind the other.
The various instruments must pop out together and be always easily recognizable at all times, the mix must be clear and easy to listen if we want people to enjoy it.
In order to give every instrument its part in the spectrum we must also decide which one will be dominant between the kick and the bass: if we want the bass to be dominant (or "above the kick", like for example in Iron Maiden) we need to carve room in the eq of the kick leaving it more into the low end area and leaving more mids to the bass, or the other way around: if we want the kick to really poke through the mix (like in the band Fear Factory) we need to carve a bit of the mid range frequences out of the bass tone and use a kick sound with a lot of presence.

There are several ways to mix a bass, but the two most popular ones are described here: how to mix a good rock/metal bass (free vst plugins included).

Once we have a good bass tone, we need to balance it properly with the drum sound and a good rule is to use the Low End Mix Trick: we need put in solo the kick and bass tracks, then we zero out the bass volume and take notice of where the kick peaks (for example -15db), then we slowly rise the bass track volume until the sum of the 2 in the master bus is 3db louder than the kick alone (in our example so it should peak at -12db).
This is a good rule of thumb for building the low end of our mix, and starting from the kick-bass interaction we can develop the whole project on solid fundations.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4: VOCALS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!


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How to mix a song with free plugins part 1/5: Drums!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This time we're going to embark to a pretty huge topic that will touch many of the article already present on this blog, but with this I'm going to try and make order to what I've learned in the past few years and share some extra tip with you.
In order to obtain the maximum from this serie of articles please follow the hyperlinks, they all lead to in depth articles dedicated to the various topics.

The mixing process of an album is almost a philosophical project: it consists into gathering together a puzzle with a million pieces (songwriting, recordings of all instruments...) that would have no meaning on their own and carefully combine them in order to make a vision that until now is only in the head of the artist into a form that anyone can enjoy.
The process can be long and complicated, and it requires first of all order in our head: to help making order we have broken it down into one chapter for each instrument, in order to cover as many topics as possible.
Even before starting putting together our project it's important that we have clear in mind the focus of our mix (click here for a dedicated article): this will be the north start that will guide us through the mix, and will give us a direction towards where the overall sound should aim.

Let's start by assuming that we have a good song, and that this song has been recorded properly: we start with the project preparation phase (click here for a very detailed article), and once we have all the tracks in order, the project tidy and color coded, we make sure that the gain staging is correctly set to make sure that no track (nor the master fader) peaks above -12db.

I suggest to start with a mix bus compressor (click here for a dedicated article) in the master bus set very gently (2:1 to 4:1 ratio, the more dynamic and aggressive the genre, the higher the ratio), and lower the threshold knob until you see you are shaving off not more than a couple of db of peak: this move seems useless at the beginning, but it will add a little of energy to the mix, will help the instruments to glue better together and will allow us to push less with the compressors in the individual tracks, which is usually more noticeable and can be less pleasant.
Moving on with the mix we'll be introducing also all the other instruments, and gradually the general volume will be increasing: we need to lower the faders of the individual instruments in order to make sure that we we'll be still shaving off not more than 2db with the M.B.C., and not peak above -12.
This will be a good way to keep under control the gain staging and the headroom, we're going to need it in the mastering phase.

The general rule is that a mix is made of many 1% moves that all must go towards the direction of achieving an euphonic final result: you can try and experiment with all the crazy plugins and processors you want, but after each move you must always a/b with the plugin on and off (using a reference track at every step to see whether we are going in the right direction): if the sound gets better, leave it, if it doesn't add anything or it makes it worse, remove it. Sometimes less is more.

Now let's start with the drums, the pulsating heart of our song: if we get this right, we are already halfway there.
Are we using a drum sampler? Is the drum sampler featuring pre-processed sounds? 
In this case we need to spend most of our attention to which samples to use: carefully go through you whole library of drum samplers and individual samples to find the perfect snare, the perfect kick and so on, because once they are there, there is very little room for mixing, since the samples are already processed.
You can find many free and paid drum samplers on this blog by simply typing drum sampler in the search engine.
Once we have our ideal drum sound we need to work with the integrated mixer of our drum samper to make the levels, and we could probably add some high-passed reverb through an fx track (we can high pass the reverb to make sure it affects only from a certain part of our sound up) from 200hz to 1000hz up (this way we will avoid the sample to get too dark and boomy), and to carefully introduce some of it into the snare, toms and cymbal tracks to make them feel like they are being played in the same room.
Usually with pre-processed samples there is no need for extra eq and compression.

This is a good moment to hear the aid that the bus compressor is giving us: try to playback the drum track and turn it on and off from the master bus: you will notice that there is an 1% increase of fatness and roundness to the sound, and this is just one of the many 1% a mix is made of.
If the sound instead starts pumping (meaning that when a loud sound like a snare is played the other ones lowers in volume) it means we need to lower the compressor.

Are we instead using real drum sounds or non processed samples? 
Then we need to follow the steps of our in depth drum mixing guide.


CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4: VOCALS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5: KEYBOARDS AND EXTRA ARRANGEMENTS!


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