The best music production plugins that you need for your home recording studio.
Introduction
Even if you’re a professional music producer, you may still not have the budget to use all those incredible old gear in your music recordings. The competitive nature of the music industry, the overall state of the economy makes this dream impossible for many, who then look out for the next best option.
And that’s where the these recording plugins come across such a value bargain. These are a great investment for any recording hobbyist and even professionals.
Best Recording Plugins for Music Production
Its easy nowadays to get a recording software, lay your tracks and mix them down. However, to better the overall sound quality of your mix, you will need plugins (of good quality).
Plugins are quite simple to use, many of them have only a few controls, so just plug them in your sequencing software and instantly you will notice a difference in your mix.
While there are hundreds of plugins out there, we will take a look at the few best plugins.
Universal Audio Plugins
Universal Audio is among the leading developer of audio recording products, widely respected not just for their impressive hardware, but also for their top quality plugins. It makes several award-winning UAD plug-ins for popular recording software such as Pro Tools, Logic and Cubase.
Several of its plugins recreate the sound of classic gear that can be found only in the big commercial studios.
Waves Audio Plugins
Waves Audio recently released a unique auto panner plugin that lets you add motion to your mixes. It includes four different panning modes to direct the motion of the sound and four different trigger modes for a variety of on/off motions.
Before I get onto the list, let me tell you that besides Waves, I also use plugins from other audio companies like Izotope, Slate and Avid.
Waves is just one company that offers great tools/plugins for mixing. There are many other companies out there that offer great sounding plugins.
Here’s the list of the top waves plugins for your recording studio.
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Waves RCompressor
A popular compressor used by several audio professionals for its “smoothing” sound.
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Waves L-1 Limiter
Another popular waves plugin with the two main controls – the threshold and the output ceiling. Use this plugin to shave off peaks.
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Waves L-1 C1-sc Compressor
For dynamic equalization, lets you focus on a certain frequency range and target a “problem” area. Has additional functions too.
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Waves Renaissance AXX
This compressor sounds mean, and best suited where you require an aggressive sound. Its easy to use too. Just fiddle with the threshold, and attack sliders and you should find your desired sound pretty easily.
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Waves DeEsser
Prevents sibilance (hissing sounds associated with uttering certian consonants) from ruin your vocals (or dialog).
Waves site: Waves.com
Studio Plugins Guide
If we all had the money to spend, everybody would use hardware sounds as opposed to plugins, because no plug-in can sound as good as the hardware equivalent (though it comes very close).
However, for several music producers out there, the value offered by plugins is irresistible – after all, you can buy several plugins and run dozens of instances of each, for the price of a single vintage hardware. And the difference in sound is not much, say around 5%.
These plugins give a modeled reproduction of the classic gear sound, and the reproduction is actually quite good. You need to remember that even with the real vintage units, there can be slight variations from one unit to the other.
You can make your recordings sound top notch, without having to spend a lot, using plugins.
For creating your music, besides the recording software, you’ll need lots of sounds, which are also known as sound libraries. Most of these sounds are available as VST plugins which can be triggered using a midi controller.
VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology, which is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plug-ins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems.
To be able to compose for any genre, you need lots of sounds so that you can do full justice to your creative ideas.
You get access to various tools which are useful to the immediate to advance producer. You could be a hip-hop producer, a DJ, a remix artist, a vocalist, or even a film/audio engineer. You can make any kind of beats with the various VST plugins that are available.
These new range of tools will help you out to create music for various needs.
But then it is not just about sounds, there are VSTs that are available to add various kinds of effects as well, such as equalizer, harmonizer, etc.
VST plugins are generally run within a Digital Audio Workstation (recording software), providing the host application with additional functionality.
As you can see, most VST plugins can be classified as either instruments (VSTi) or effects.
Plugins from Universal Audio (UAD) are among the best, that are available for recording purposes, and mimic the sound of vintage/classical gear.
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
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