a "secret weapon" you've NEVER heard - MB Mixhead

make believe Studios and Metric Halo have done it again they have taken a piece of Hardware that was a secret weapon used on some of the biggest songs in history used by one of the biggest mix engineers and now it's a plugin and that plugin is the mix head inspired by the SPL Machine Head and it's kind of ridiculous and unfair so we're going to check that out for those who do not know who I am my name is David zida I'm a full-time mix engineer producer audio engineer all that fun stuff might not be the biggest one but we'll get there one day and today we're talking about the new plug-in from make belief Studios and Metric Halo called The Mix head and the mix head is modeled directly after the SPL Machine Head which is probably one of the rarest pieces of gear out there now honestly you can't find them anywhere and if you know someone who has one you probably couldn't pry it off of their cold dead hands well that is tell now that this plugin's out I know some people who had them and that thing is now collecting dust pretty much the SPL Machine Head is a digital tape emulator Hardware unit pop it up on the screen you've probably seen it it's a red box and if you haven't seen it well now you've seen it and it's most notably used by serbin ganaa which if you don't know who that is you should probably find out who that is before you continue watching this video but he is one of the most heralded mix Engineers of our time and argu Ubly of all time and his work speaks for itself this has been a secret weapon on his mixes for probably a really long time and my buddy Rick Carson over at make belie Studios back when Clubhouse was a thing we would all talk with our all of our audio engineer nerd buddies and one of the things that came up is Rick likes to look at pictures of um producers or videos of other engineers and you know looking at the gear looking at the racks and seeing you know what's in the pictures and the red box intrigued him and it led down a rabbit hole to where it's like oh that's the SPL Machine Head and now all of a sudden here we are to where he was inspired enough to you know create this thing into a plugin for everybody to be able to use so this super super super rare pretty much unobtainable piece of gear is modeled so ridiculously accurate and I don't I don't have the hardware I'm going based off of what other people who have the hardware who have said but to me it sounds phenomenal and when we get into listening to it you're going to hear what I meant by saying that it's unfair because I was a beta tester right so I want to just clear the air with that I was a beta tester so I did have this before the public to describe kind of how it sounds before we get into it it's kind of like an anti- tape machine like what you would expect a tape machine to do it kind of does the opposite and you know how like some people will say like oh I want the analog warmth bro but in reality they really just want harmonic saturation in the top end and a top end Sheen which is pretty much the exact opposite of warmth but you'll hear it when we uh get into the examples and the three things that I want to showcase this to you guys on are well of course the mix bus because that's what this thing pretty much excels at the best and is the most um logical place to put this at I'm going to show it on vocals because on vocals it's pretty amazing The High Frequency adjust knob is just so incredibly Musical and I'm also going to show on overheads and you're going to be able to really hear the characteristic of this thing they could have called it the ls Machine Head or whatever because you can get crap stupid loud with this it's nonsense it's musical head room's incredible it makes things loud what more do you want me make things loud OA turn on you can't really be mad at it so without further Ado we're going to go ahead and get into this and I'm going to show you what this thing can do what it sounds like and how dope it is so we are here in the session and this is a song called retribution that's an original that I actually wrote for my band and shout out to Seth mson for mastering the actual thing but uh today we're just going to be in the session that's just the mix and I actually have the mix head already in here because I got I got to use it on this mix so I'm going to go ahead and pull it up here on the mix bus and show the settings that I already have a quick overview first of all on the um mix head is you have an input gain you have a drive a high frequency adjust an output gain a tape speed and the active switch so it's pretty straightforward for the most part and you have all your parameters showcased right here on the left on this little screen uh the tape speed you have between 30 IPS and 15 IPS and then uh you also have a 3.75 IPS which I forgot they actually added that that's a new one that I haven't used yet and on here it's currently on one of my presets the MSG setting goes onne [Music] so this setting in particular the way that I have it set on the mix bus is it's very tame this is a really tame oneand which is why I called it MSG you can you can actually put it on just about anything and it's not going to crap out if you actually go to uh my name David Sida they'll be there with the input gain I'm driving it a little bit harder into it by giving it a 1.3 DB boost into the actual circuit and instead I have the drive down by -6.9 the high frequency adjust is half a DB this high frequency adjust is super musical the output gain that I have here is plus six cuz I didga -6 with a drive so this setting is really good CU you'll be able to hear what the actual box is kind of doing on its own without you know basically exasperating the level too much so I'm going to go ahead and play it and I'm going to bypass and engage it for you to hear how it sounds just on the setting that is already here on the mix so right now we're [Music] in we're still in out the what yeah so this setting is not super super crazy it's basically just giving everything a lift the lows are are saturating in a pretty nice way if you pay attention to the kick drum it's kind of just doing what you know you would expect a saturator to kind of do on a kick mixed with you know what you would expect that elasti from tape to kind of do to a k and that high frequency adjust just gives it a nice little lift in the top end it brings the mix forward in in a nice pleasing way and gels it together it's like compressing and softening the transients at the same time as it's giving like this nice Shimmer it almost kind of reminds me of the Dolby trick if you know what I'm talking about this one the drive is hitting a little bit harder we have more on the high frequency adjust and the tape speed I believe is uh different this is a louder preset I'll go back and forth between that one and the previous blue you see how this one's a lot more T yeah on this one you hear the um you hear the unit working a little bit more and going back to it honestly if I and already passed this I might actually probably have camped it here you know when you first get a plugin you want to put it through its Paces you really want to hear how it sounds this is I think my what my initial yeah this was my initial um approach to the plug-in and I saved it because I used it on the mix bus but it was a bit it was a bit heavy-handed things are starting to get a little crunchy but it's a really cool Vibe and I'm going to play it back on this same part here be laughing so I'm going to go in out [Music] love yeah that's not transparent at all but it sounds freaking sick one last preset I want to show you that is not mine it's actually the man himself serban ganaa SG the one and look what happens when you use this preset it turns gold fun fact uh Rick had us as the beta testers try to figure out what the actual settings were for this and like they had to give us so many hints before anybody got it and well now it's a setting for everybody to have but we had our fun trying to figure this one out just looking at this setting it makes a lot of sense you know dial the input gain back a little bit and you compensate with the drive and the high frequency [Music] adjust all you all you I'm it just does such a good job at tying everything together without getting rid of your transients without completely hijacking what you've done unless you want it to it's good at retaining punch in my opinion at least audibly like you it feels Punchy it doesn't feel uh it doesn't feel gooey the way you would expect a uh a tape machine to which is why you know the whole anti- tape machine thing was said that and I mean the tape speed between the 15 and the 30 the 30 is actually dirtier so I'm going to go back to that heavy-handed preset really quick and uh and show you what I mean cuz the moment I turn it to 30 you're going to start hearing things start to distort I'm going to go back to a pretty busy part in the song over here I'm going to put on H On 30 the light the yeah like the total harmonic Distortion in the low end is pretty pretty exasperated it's not quite crapping out but it adds a a pretty gritty texture that um you wouldn't initially expect from you know like a 30 IPS thing you would kind of expect it to be a bit cleaner but it's not which it's kind of cool if you want to add some aggression the uh 30 IPS is sick I wanted to spend most of the time here on the mix bus and showcasing what it sounds like on mix bus because that's where this is most likely going to live but one of the coolest things I found is really putting this on vocals actually if you guys are liking what you see so far please like And subscribe i' love for new people to be in contact with me here and just comment and have a nice little Community to where we just nerd out about the audio stuff so if you're digging all this stuff just drop a like And subscribe it really helps the channel and will help someone small like me grow so thanks so we have the lead vocal here and and I already have actually the MB mix head on here already which would make sense cuz I had it available to me so on here I'm not doing anything the input gain or the output gain and I'm kind of cranking the drive and the high frequency adjust so I want to get that harmonic saturation and I want what the high frequency adjust is doing and opting for that as opposed to a high shelf cuz I'm looking here at my EQ for vocals and this is the only EQ I have going on vocals the s's on there too shout out s but I'm getting pretty much my top shelf from The High Frequency adjust here can't be found it's like I'm 6et under running inside my head so will you save that day or will I the beauty of this being a plugin is now you can put this dang thing on vocals like this that just sounds amazing I'm lost and can't be found it's like I'm 6 feet underground riding inside my head so will you save that day or will I the way it just compresses the sound with the drive like the way that the drive circuit is compressing and the way that the high frequency adjust is I technically compressing with the softening of the transients and all that it's just it's a really beautiful concoction to together especially on vocals this is something that's probably going to live on all of my vocals and I actually used it in the opposite way on the dubs I didn't want all of that top end so actually here on the dub master I have ne5 high frequency adjust so you're going to hear what high frequency adjust sounds like if you turn it down and it's actually really nice I'm nothing can be found it's like I'm 6 ft Underground [Music] let's Loop that little section right there with the the little harsh S's and then we'll engage [Music] it you see what that does like the high frequency adjust just like it doesn't take away all of the presence but you know it shaves the edge off just a little bit in a really nice Musical and pleasing way that doesn't sound super lowii and this is5 so that's pretty that's pretty substantial you know my thought process at least on this mix was I don't want the siblin and the top end of the doubles to be getting in the way of the lead vocal in the chorus so what I'm going to do is actually have all of the chorus vocals here playing for you and I'm going to engage and disengage all of the mix heads so this is in I'm can't be found It's like got 6t Underground I'm be it's like put it back in I'm lost and can't be found it's like I'm 6t underr that's just absolute money dude and last thing I want to show this on really quick are the overheads and I'm going to play this back and we're just going to start adjusting you see how Musical that is with the symbols like I'm not I'm not even I'm not mad at that that it's too much but it also sounds really good this there's just something about this high frequency adjust that's very very tasteful it's not like all of the other um high frequency type you know eqs or harmonic saturators there's there's something really special about what this is doing that's just very sweet to the ear if you take this [Music] down that's an argument that could be made for a particular sound like that doesn't sound bad I can immediately hear that in a context that might make more sense and that's just the difference between going positive on the high frequency adjust and going negative on the high frequency adjust it's just a really musical knob it's proba my favorite thing on this unit I'll showcase a little bit more of what this can do on the full drum bus here so you can hear more more of what it does to the lows this is stock let's crank the [Music] drive you see what it does to the kick it gives it it gives it that nice thwack and that nice like super compressed card boardy thing but obviously this is too much this is way too much but you can start to hear the characteristic of what it's doing to Something Like a Kick Drum so let's dial back the input [Music] gain like that's a that's a pretty nice compromise if you wanted this to be pretty heavy-handed I think it's just super Punchy like using this thing it doesn't smooth things out it's just very very Punchy and you can make this thing sound really aggressive and when you dial it in like you know how serent preset is you can make it sound really sweet so there's a lot of Versatility in in this plug-in and I'm really excited to have it and I think that anybody who gets this is going to be super super happy and right now it's on sale I think all of Make Believe make bel's uh plugins with metric Halo are 40% off I'm not sponsored I'm not getting any money for any of this I just really believe in you know what they're doing they're doing an incredible job and they break the internet every single time they drop something they're my friends but this is these are my you know true thoughts and you you heard it for yourself so go ahead and pick it up I think it's like $99 right now you can have a sound like that for $99 and it's a cheat on your mix bus so let me know what you guys think in the comments if you guys made it this far please give me a like And subscribe if you're new here if you liked what this was like I'm going to try to be more consistent it's really hard when you actually do this do this and then have a family and all that stuff but for those who tuned in and stayed all the way I thank you guys and I'll see youall in the next one

Channel: David Sustaita

Views: 13,179

Keywords: make believe studios, serban ghenea, spl machinehead, spl machine head, mb mixhead, make believe studios mixhead, spl machinehead plugin, tape machine plugin, tape machine, serban, david sustaita, mixing metal, mixing djent, djent

Id: YZAp-qf5_F4

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2024