Mix Bus Plugins & Tips with Sara Carter

hi it's sarah carter here dropping in on the produce like a pro channel where today i want to talk to you about mixbus plugins [Music] in this video i'm going to go over the plugins i use on my mixbus on every mix i've been using this plug-in chain for a few years now and today i want to go through each one and explain what they do and why i use them i'll start off with some raw unprocessed multi-tracks so you can hear what each plugin is actually doing in isolation at the very start of a mix then i'll demo them on a finished full mix these plugins don't change regardless of the style of music i'm working on and each one is there as part of my two phase finisher mixbus system so let's jump into it okay so the mix i've got here is not finished in fact it's not even started to be honest so the reason for this is because i wanted to use a really simplified session layout rather than my usual more complicated template so that you can hear the mixbus plugins without being colored by any other processing that might be happening before the audio gets to the mix bus i normally use buses as like a gathering place and treat them almost like one sound almost but in this session i've left those out because obviously there's a lot of coloration goes on on those buses and and i didn't want that to take away from these plug-ins and what they can do i like to think of audio like water in that it always flows downhill all my tracks filter through various collection points those buses as it makes its way to the mix bus and i apply eq dynamics and effects all along that path and the collection point that has the biggest impact is my mix bus the plugins i use are in many ways the starting point of my mix because they're always on right from the start of the mix so they're always colouring the sound in some way and therefore impacting on my mixing decisions once i get started into the nitty-gritty of the mix i like to think in broad strokes initially and get the most bang for your buck if you like by using the group buses and the mix bus to apply eq compression etc and then if i feel as i need to dive deeper into a particular sound then i can go and find that at the track level and fix it and for me the mix just seems to happen quicker this way and it's also a really popular way to mix before i get going if you want to use these tracks yourself then you can download them for free from the promix academy website just look for the mixing indie rock course by phil allen and the link will probably find its way into the description below for good measure so here we are at my mix bus and you can see that i've got more bypassed at the moment but as i said on this session i haven't done anything massively to these multi-tracks these are how they have been imported in i've changed a few levels just so that things are balanced a little bit better and not too overpowering for us to just listen to and audition the mixbus plugins the instrumentation is pretty standard straightforward drums bass guitar harmonica and vocals where i have applied treatment i've done it really only on the kick and snare so we're just coming in at the point the very start of mixing for me where all the tracks are in i've done a tiny little bit of correction so let's have a quick listen then see what we're dealing with here i'll start from this second verse [Music] you're right i'm wrong [Music] it's all right [Music] okay so that's it raw as you like not much in the way of panning a little bit maybe just for interest and certainly not much in the way of eq at the moment you'll see i use a rear bus but at the moment i've got that muted i've got nothing rooted to it anywhere and i wouldn't have at this stage in the mix my mixbus plugins do the work for me in phases or stages and the first phase is what i'm going to call the mix glue phase now you hear this term used a lot and to me it means bringing a certain cohesiveness to the mix and it's the thing that makes it sound like a record i use three plugins to achieve this glue and the first one of those is the 33 609 compressor by neve i always start with this active and with the threshold fully open so it's not compressing but it is actually still colouring the sound it might even actually be compressing a little even though the needle isn't moving at this stage but it is subtly compressing this is kind of regarded as a modern compressor by by studio standards because this was introduced in 1985. so looking at the interface you've got the limiter to the left here and you've got the compressor settings uh more in the middle of the box but in the circuitry the compressor comes first and the limiter works post compressor now this is kind of regarded as being a really great mix bus compressor although it works on anything really but it's known for mixbus piano vocals bass but i only really use this on my mix bus and as such i run it at typical settings for that type of application so for me that is going to be a low ratio or the lowest ratio i can i can get on a compressor and on this it is 1.5 to 1 and then i set the recovery here at 100 milliseconds the recovery is the release the attack is controlled by this uh flick switch here it's it says fast attack and slow but really there's not much difference between the two and they're both fairly fast so um i just tend to leave it in that fast setting and then uh on the recovery you've got these sort of automatic recovery settings here a1 and a2 a lot of people swear by them i just tend to stick to the hundred to be honest this is something i picked up from andrew sheps and if it's good enough for him and it's good enough for me and the plugins that feature on my mixbus are kind of a mix-up of what andrew sheps and chad blake have used and so i've just kind of taken on board what they've used tried it myself liked it and then maybe kind of tweaked it so that it works for me and for my sessions and that's something i encourage you to do nothing is a secret the pros don't keep secrets so you know take the information and use it in your own mixes and tweak it as you need to so when i open this up it's generally unbypassed or as it will all of these will be unbypassed when i first start mixing but today i'm going to go through them in turn so i will start with the threshold fully open as it is now play the mix uh there's a little bit of gain applied to make up for any compression that might be happening but i'm looking at the meters here and really this needle will only be just barely moving some people will use it much more aggressively than that i say aggressively but it tends to be about plus four seems to be the maximum that people will go to with this on the mix bus but it just sounds a bit too much for me so i just like it really gently working just touching the mix as it's coming in so if i'm looking at this meter and it's already kind of pegging into four at plus 10 here on the threshold i know that i'm really my mix is really way too way too hot and the reason for doing that is because what i like to do is just have these all set with the same settings so i'm not fiddling and tweaking from scratch with every mix ideally if i get the mix coming into this compressor at the right level um on the meters here then it should all kind of stack up after that and i like to apply dynamics treatment in stages so i'm on the original track a bit on the sub group and then a bit more on the mix bus and i find this process makes for a very glued and cohesive result rather than relying on one or two compressors or a limiter to do all the work i have a thing with mixbus compression and any compression that occurs before it is that it's multiplicative it's a long word what does it mean well let's say you have a two to one ratio on a drum buss compressor further up the stream okay and going into that you might have a compressed snare or a kick at say four to one and what that will result in at the drum buss is it being compressed at eight to one in total so then when it all filters through the mix and gets down to your mix bus compressor that's sitting at 1.5 or 2 to 1 that multiplies it again to 16 to 1. so you see a little applied in stages goes a long way and i tend to use low ratios on bus compression because of this to avoid over compressing and sort of flattening out and dulling the mix so you may see some mixers using four to one on the mix bus which is fine because it totally depends on what they're doing upstream so nothing is right or wrong it really depends and ultimately depends on what it sounds like and the final reason why i use this compressor is for its tone and its character it's been used on so many records it's just what people are used to hearing so it makes my mixes sound more like a finished record okay let's have a listen to it and see what it's doing here i'll bypass it for now i'll start playing the mix it when i un-bypass it it will sound louder because i've got a little bit of gain here already dialed in ready for the tiny bit of compression that's going to happen so what i'll do is i'll just i'll play the mix and bypass it and then just pull the threshold down until i start seeing some action at the needle here [Music] okay so that's typically what i would do i don't want to see much going on here i know from experience and my mixers that i usually end up running this threshold around about that six to eight dbus here well let's uh let's um bypass that then let's power it off there and let's have a listen to it in and out of the mix so i'll start with it powered off and then i'll bring it in [Music] okay so you do get a little bit tiny bit of a volume bump but what i do here are things just kind of thickening up and it's giving me that gluing effect that i'm talking about and to all intents and purposes it looks according to the meters it's not doing anything but obviously it is the next plugin that i use is yet another compressor and this is the fairchild 670. this is another one of those mixed glue plugins for me now the way this is set up is it's only dialed in at 50 and the threshold is actually at zero so there's no compression happening but there's a lot of kind of input gain and what that does is it adds color it's forcing more signal through the circuitry and it starts to just give it a little bit of warmth and a tiny bit of thump i'll leave the 33609 in i'll un-bypass the fairchild i'll switch it out and then i'll play the mix and i'll switch in [Music] yeah she's just sounding more rock and roll more 70s uh it's really adding to the vibe of this record which has kind of got a led zeppelin-esque feel to it so this is just sitting there for that extra tone boost rather than compression because it's not it really isn't compressing so next in the chain then is a tape machine this is again all part of that glue factor phase of my mix bus where i'm chasing that sort of sounds like a record vibe and i generally have two choices here after i've listened to the multi-tracks i might make a decision where i feel as though i want something that sounds more hi-fi and clean and bright and then i would go and use the atr 102 which is the ampex tape machine which is predominantly known really in the mastering world and a lot of the controls are the same on here as they are on the studer 800 which is what i normally end up defaulting to on my mix bus so it's only really on rare occasions that i will use that as if i ever get really dark sounding tracks sent to me i didn't work much with multi-track analog tape when i worked at the bbc but i do recall the corridors of murdervale being littered with these student machines that had been cast out the studio and they were just were rarely used it's quite sad to think of them all abandoned like that i know a lot of well-seasoned engineers out there i've lost no love over tip and that's completely fine but i think i've been kind of bitten by the nostalgia bug i think and coupled with the fact that i actually quite like what they do obviously as i wouldn't have one on my mix bus so this studer a800 then what i've got it set at the moment is i've got the tape formula here of gp9 selected i've got the calibration setting of plus six and i've got pulled the input back because um i know that it's all going to get quite hot going into the tape i've got the speed set at 30 inches per second and the output is dialed up to make up for the volume loss at the input what you also have here are controls for the different heads that you get on a tape machine i'm using repro here which is normal for a kind of playback scenario and you have these nice kind of like high frequency low frequency filters that you can use to really fine tune the sound of your mix and that's the great thing about the tape machine is it to just to think of it like as a great big eq unit everything it does affects the eq curve of the sound and this is where that glue factor is enhanced again in my mixbus chain it's what takes a mix into the familiar realms of a professional sounding mix for me so it's really easy to switch through the tape formulas to decide which one you like the sound of and then you can flick through the tape speeds and the calibration again just to decide which one you want to run with for the mix so for me when i use it i generally start off just by flicking through the tape formulas because they seem to have to have the biggest sound changes to me or be them subtle and then i decide what tape speed i'm going to go with and then i'll just flick through the calibration to see if that makes any great changes the different tape formulas here are all from different kind of eras and they all have their own subtle sonic imprint to the sound gp9 is quite dark which i think suits kind of indie rock really well the 456 formula is from the 70s and what you find with the tape formulas is there are kind of accepted calibration settings that that are standard for those tape formulas so the four five six i believe the plus six and the plus three calibration settings are kind of normal and 900 is from the late 80s and early 90s and you can go from the bigger numbers here on the calibration the plus 7.5 and the plus nine and the reason for that is that you can push more onto this tape this type of tape and so therefore you can get away from the noise floor of the tape the hiss for a cleaner recording uh when it comes down to the tape speed i generally flick between 15 and 30. 7.5 is quite low-fi the tape's traveling slower and that results in a grainier less hi-fi sound typically it was 30 ips was chosen for things like classical or jazz rock it's more typical to go with 15 but as i say i flick between 15 and 30. i tend to stick with 30 on this particular gp9 tape because it is quite dark sounding 30 tends to make things sound more hi-fi have more brightness so that's my reason for those kind of settings initially so let's try this out then shall we i'll take it out of bypass i'll just switch it to through so let's see what this is doing initially to the mix [Music] okay so load more bass extension kick extension loads of warmth and everything's starting to gel together now quickly i'll just run through the tape formulas so you can have a listen to the difference that they make [Music] i think it gradually gets brighter as you turn the dial to the left and the choice here all depends on what your original track sounded like so that's the tip type chosen and if you feel as though that sounded a little bit too warm a little bit too thumpy you can then kind of flick over to the different eq formats here or you can start pulling back on the filters but at this early stage that's not something i would do because i've yet to do all the work upstream with the drums and the bass guitar so for the time being i'm just going to leave this as is and let's move on to the next phase of my mix bus so this uh sort of second half of my mix but is what i go about adjusting with the mindset of a mastering engineer these are the little adjustments that go towards helping the mastering engineer do what they do best so the first plugin on that phase is the curve bender which i choose to follow the compression in this case to brighten things up because they can start to get a little bit dark sounding following compression and the tape machine or i'll use it to tighten up the low end that sort of eq bump that you can get from tape now this is based on the emi desks that were used in the abbey road studios and they're great for being able to boost high frequencies really quite transparently they add character and warmth and they're instantly accessible i mean you just look at that interface and you know what to do you know what everything is it's easy to use and so i'll use an eq in this position really for that kind of smiley face eq that you've heard people talk about where it's good might have a little bit of a bass boost and it might have a little bit of shiny top end added and this is something that i will pay attention to more so towards the end of the mix when i might be going to my reference tracks to recalibrate my ears and this is where i do that final touch this is going to be in so it's all on bypass now i'll play the mix and then i'll bypass it see if you can hear a difference but this is super subtle but see if we can hear if it's doing anything i've got the bands all switched in so the sound is running through all the circuitry well let's see if we can hear that [Music] yeah i can hear a thickness and there's nothing in everything's sitting at zero but uh yeah that's just that just sits there and it's ready waiting for me to quickly open it up and make any broad tonal changes that i feel the mix needs next then in the mastering phase is the ml 4000 by mac dsp this is regarded as a mastering compressor it's a really powerful plug-in it's a limiter it's a multi-band compressor expander gate all in one and i generally use it to tighten the frequency response of the mix and clean up the lower mids on occasion i may substitute this for the waves vitamin on very rare occasions if i just kind of fancy a change but generally i'm sticking with this at the moment and i have a couple of different settings but the one i've got it's set on at the moment and the crossovers i have set up are thus where crossover one is at hertz crossover two is at three eight five and crossover three is at seven nine fifty kilohertz and so this will operate as a multi-band compressor within those bands to just tickle the mix and to tighten things up i'll start with it bypassed and then i'll bring it in [Music] so you can really hear how it tightens up the low end and it pulls a bit of mud out of that sort of that area there that's where all that muddy buildup usually occurs um i don't use the limiter on this and again i only ever use this on the mix bus i don't think i've used this anywhere else in mixing so i've yet to uh fully appreciate what this really powerful plugin can do what i've got going here in the bands you can see i'm adding in band one which is the blue here down low down in the mix i'm giving it a bump of half a db the cut is a at half a db in the muddy range there's a boost in the mid-range which is this large red area here little uh half db boost there and then nearly a 2 db boost at the top and here the shiny stuff sort of um 8k upwards so with that done next is the oxford inflator so the ml 4000 has taken my mix and made it tighter and cleaner and what the point of the oxford inflator is for me is to start adding level now and it also adds a little bit of shine a little bit fairy dust the great thing about it is that you can add more level and you don't reduce the dynamic range when you do like say a limiter would it adds presence and punch and you can use it to get your mix louder without pumping or over saturation and this is for me it's like an excitement booster and it does that by adding harmonics it just can sound subtle or it can sound full-on but if you're not familiar with this plug-in the best way to start with it is to sort of have it have the curve at zero and the pop-up tooltips there tell you if you go into the plus range you get a fatness and a volume boost and if you go into the negative range that's where you start to it only works really quite subtly so that the loudness enhancement that you do get from it has got this harmonic character to it to give you that warmer sound so i typically run it up here around about in the sort of mid-20s well from sort of 15 to the mid-20s actually sounds best but when it's on my mix bus i just kind of leave it at 27 which i think is where i chad blake is where i nicked that from now the probably demonstrating this for you is that it really does boost the sound so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pull this output down by about four dbs or four and a half dbs which is roughly the boost that having the effect 100 is doing and then i'll bring the curve up so you can hear the effect that that has [Music] okay when i take it out bypass and it's kind of level matched at the moment you do hear it sounds brighter and it sounds wider and tighter as well so let's play now with the curve take it up to the sort of numbers that i generally use it at so you could hear it on the kick sounding more thumpy let's do that again [Music] so that sounds good to me and that's generally where i end up leaving it but the reason for this being on my mix bus is to give me more level i'm going to play back and then i'm going to take this output slowly up to zero to give you a chance to rescue your ears if you need to [Music] okay and the reason i need that level is not only to get the mix level up to something more acceptable for comparison sake when listening to other mixers but also it's going into this l2 ultra maximizer which is my final peak limiter as well as yet another level boost stage the best way to boost your mixed volume is to do it in stages and not just rely on one theta or one plug-in to do it for you spread it out over many and you get a much more transparent result this plugin adds a little bit of shaping noise shaping that goes towards that whole thing sounding like a record and giving us that glue it adds air and it gives us a more mid-range clarity and it's great for making listening mixers for your clients if you mix for other people so that they can compare your mix to a commercial release and it's more or less the same volume this isn't a true peak limiter um and sometimes i'll actually opt to deactivate this on the mix if i don't like what it's doing generally this will be the case if i want a more expansive or open sound this plugin is great for pop and rock any sort of high energy music but if i want something that's a little bit more dynamic then i might consider switching this off and then it depends on the mastering whether i'm doing it or whether it's being sent out to another master and engineer to do and very often what i'll do is i'll take this off anyway if it's going to a an external mastering engineer to give them more headroom to work with okay so let's uh take a listen to this then i think i'll do the same with this as i did with the inflator because it is adding level again it's adding another three and a half dbs and i don't want to hurt your ears so i'll start with it bypass and then i'll bring it in i'll take the ceiling up as well so all we're listening to really is the noise shaping i'll start with it bypassed and then i'll bring it in [Music] so you can hear it just the mid-range seems to get really clear and it adds a little bit of sparkle and air and punch as well so let's uh dial this setting into what i would normally use it at i'll do it slowly again so that you're not blasted out if you're listening to this on headphones so here we go [Music] you're right yeah so that has adding obviously loudness but it's adding machine excitement it's making it sound like a more like a record isn't it so those are the mixbus plugins that i'm using currently and i have been using for a number of years now okay so now that they're all active i'll bypass them one by one so you can hear the effect of them as they are taken off the mix [Music] oh souls [Music] so that's how they all sounded on an unmixed track but to top this off i'm going to demo them on a finished mix for you so this is a different mix to the raw mix we were listening to earlier and i want to thank the artist bp moore for letting me use the mixing session for this demonstration and if you want to hear more then you can check him out on spotify okay so this is his track called a product of the environment i mixed this i didn't master this and i've got the session open here for us to demonstrate my mixbus plugins here is the mix bus and here are the plugins that you can see looking quite familiar the only change is that as this was going out for mastering outside then i separated the l2 onto a separate path so that i could send the artist the limited version as a listen copy i was able then to print that separately without that limiter to be sent off for mastering this is a completely different style of music to what we've just been listening to the last being indie rock and this is more electronic neoclassical kind of sound so i'm going to play this from the where the track really builds and the drums come in this track is really dynamic the idea is that the low end sounds thick and warm yet you have the strings and synths that almost saw above the mix let me play it for you now with all the mixbus plugins activated [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so for me that is doing everything i want it to do he's adding the glue to make it sound like a finished record and it's adding level and a little bit fairy dust and width and a bit more thump to the sound finally what i'll do is just move the l2 up to the mix bus so that you can hear what that is doing to the sound get ready again for the volume bump of about three dbs i'll start with it bypassed and then i'll bring it in [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so hopefully you can see and hear how i'm using mixbus plugins with a purpose each one is there to do its own individual job and i'm using compression for tone control and glue and for a little bit more glue i'm using a tape machine and also getting some added thump from that as well then i've got a curved bender which is my mixbus eq then i've got a multi-band compressor which is the ml 4000 to pull out a little bit of mud and to boost a little bit of the mid-range finally for some fairy dust i've got the oxford inflator which is boosting the level and adding some shine and thump and then for the artist and that little bit of extra polish is the l2 ultra maximizer from waves to cap it all off so that is my mixbus chain that i've based around two phases of mixed glue and mastering now there are tons of plugins out there and it really is personal taste which ones to use so feel free to explore them and see which ones work for you as the mix bus is the last gathering point for your tracks picking plugins that give you some gentle dynamics control and eq polish is a good place to start thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 24,138

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio

Id: DPw9KTM-XDo

Length: 36min 38sec (2198 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021