Using Sound Plugins Effectively

What You'll Be Creating

If you are familiar with free effect, or mixing, plugins then you have no doubt heard about these VST software. In this tutorial, I’ll show you what they can do and how to use them properly for mixing and a bit of sound design.

Presently, they’re only 32-bit compatible so, in 64-bit DAW programs, you'll need to use a VST wrapper such as jBridge for Windows.

You can download the plugins from the VST effects website.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I shall be using:

NastyVCS, a channel strip with prefiltering, saturation, EQ, compression and limiter
TesslaSE, a plain simple fine saturator
epicVerb, a reverb effect which has got both normal reverberator and a more different ambience processor
ThrillseekerXTC blue, a nice three band mastering EQ with saturation
BaxterEQ, a mastering EQ with low shelf and high shelf bands

Variety of Sound plugins rack — These are the plugins we are going to use in the tutorial / Picture by author

Project Basics

I shall use Ableton Suite for the project with a tempo of 128 BPM and a rhythm signature of 4/4.

Ableton project settings — Project with 128 BPM and 4/4 rhythm signature

About the Music

The piece is a short electronic dance music track idea featuring big pianos, several synth effects and white noise.

Instrument channels — Pianos and synth tracks

Workflow

Before starting mixing, I froze and made flat all the tracks then copied all to the time line, in the arrangement view.

Kick

This is the basis of the dance track. It has impact, because of the volume, the saturation using NastyVCS and finally an EQ to make it more knocky.

Effects chain:

NastyVCS, saturation at 2
EQ Eight, shelving cut at 1 kHz with -9.5 dB and Q of 10.1

NastyVCS on kick — Saturation used with a setting of 2

Loop

An accompaniment of hi-hats and snares. I used Nasty and EQ Eight, here, as well. I reduced the high content of the loop, to make room for other sounds.

Effects chain:

NastyVCS, prefilter HP at 250 Hz
EQ Eight, low pass at 12 kHz with a Q of 0.71

NastyVCS on the loop — HP filter used on NastyVCS

Bass

I shaped the tone of the bass with TesslaSE's fine saturation then sidechained to the kick. A low pass filter removed the top end and then EQ Eight removed the subs to make room for other low end content.

Effects chain:

TesslaSE, saturation is at maximum, output -5.2 dB
Compressor, sidechained to the kick, 2:1 ratio, medium attack, auto release
NastyVCS, low pass filter at 850 Hz
EQ Eight, 4x lo cut at 45 Hz, Q at 0.71

TesslaSE plugin — I used the TesslaSE to increase the harmonics of the sound

Piano Lo

This is a heavily effected piano sound to accompany the other high piano. The Chorus effect gives a bit of stereoness to it.

Effects chain:

Chorus, feedback 49%, dry wet 71%, small amount, small rate
Redux, soft downsample at 4.17

Plugin chain on low piano — Chorus and bit reduction settings

Piano Hi

This is the main piano part. It has got a big reverb sound using epicVerb.

Effects chain: epicVerb, 3485 msecm room1 mode, reverb type, 0 predelay

epicVerb plugin — 3485 msec used in reverb mode

Piano Group

This gives more volume and a bit of reductive filtering to the piano section.

Effects chain:

Utility, +5 dB amplification
NastyVCS, prefilter LP 8.5 kHz, HP 200 Hz

NastyVCS used for filtering — Filtering duties with NastyVCS

Lead

This is a fast and sharp synth sound. I added some air with ThrillseekerXTC and spiced with Ping Pong Delay to spread in the stereo field.

Effects chain:

ThrillseekerXTC, air band +8 at 5 kHz, +8.5 at output to compensate volume drop
Ping Pong Delay, 20% feedback 22% dry wet
NastyVCS, prefilter HP at 300 Hz

ThrillseekerXTC blue on lead track — To bring out the top I added a lot of air with ThrillseekerXTC blue

Synth fx1

No effects here.

Synth fx2

I added Chorus to give more stereo to it.

Effects chain:

Chorus, medium amount, medium rate, dry wet 34%
Utility, +6 dB gain to compensate Chorus effect volume drop

Synth fx3

I made the dynamics more dense with the compressor part of NastyVCS.

Effects chain: NastyVCS, compressor at 12 or maximum

NastyVCS on synth fx3 track — Maximum compression used on synth fx3 to make a different sound

Fx Group

I used a Ping Pong Delay to widen the stereo information of the section.

Effects chain:

Ping Pong Delay, 41% feedback, 34% dry wet
Utility, +3 dB to compensate volume drop
NastyVCS, prefilter HP at 250 Hz

FX chain on the fx group track — The Ping Pong Delay widens the strereo content

Noise

This is a rhytmic whitenoise sound with reverb and made lower sounding with BaxterEQ's maximum shelving cut.

Effects chain:

epicVerb, reverb type at 355 msec with plate mode, 0 predelay
NastyVCS, prefilter HP at 250 Hz
BaxterEQ, high shelving cut -5 dB at 3.4 kHz on both sides

BaxterEQ on the noise track — I cut the top end with BaxterEQ at 3.4 kHz

Master

I removed some of the subs with EQ Eight to make more headroom and added a Limiter to kill peaks causing distortion.

Effects chain:

EQ Eight, 4x times lo cut at 45 Hz with 0.71 Q
Limiter, default setting, 0 dB gain

Master chain — EQ and Limiter on the master channel

Export Settings

To make proper end result I used the following settings:

file type: WAV
sample rate: 44100 Hz
bit depth: 24 bits
dither: no dither

Export settings — I used 44.1 kHz sample rate and 24 bits depth

Conclusion

In this tutorial, I demonstrated how to mix with Variety of Sound plugins on drums, bass, piano, synths, and noise. I used Ableton stock plugins like Limiter, EQ Eight, Chorus and Utility. In some cases I decided to use NastyVCS to filter out low frequency content.

Let me know in the comments below if you have questions on how to use them for more purposes or for other instruments.