If I had a penny for every time I overheard a conversation between music producers and mixing engineers boasting about the dope iZotope, Waves, Ozone and every other plugin in the book that they own and use. In my career I have had many conversations where I have gone, no actually I don't use many fancy plugins and I have had some dude roll his eyes at me or patronize me with "Let me show you this plugin" conversation. Sorry boys, no offense, not all of you are like that, just some who love indulging in mansplaining. Anyway, to my point - the fact is no matter how many cool plug ins you own, you will never achieve a good mix until and unless you know what you are doing with them.Â
The plugins that I use while mixing are almost always these - EQ, Reverb, Delay, Compression and Limiter. There have been many times when I have been able to achieve a great mix with whatever was available to me within Logic X and not use any outside plugin. While there are many amazing plugins which you can buy and use, specially in terms of accuracy and clarity. Here is a challenge for you, learn what these basic four plugins actually do within your DAW and mix a song just using those. It should take you a couple of weeks to understand each of these plugins correctly and learning about their immense amount of capability, mixing is not about slapping on a fancy name, it is equivalent to cooking - how much salt and pepper is just right. Once you understand these, you should be able to use them with proficiency within any other Audio or Video software, disregarding what the plug in looks like or what its template is.Â
If you want to get started on understanding EQ - go right ahead and start here on my "Understanding EQ" blog post. Don't forget to subscribe to my website, for, I will post a blog about the rest of the plugins soon!Â
Until next time
RivitaÂ
This is solid advice. I have over a thousand dollars of plugins and I could probably get great results with the built ins from Ableton or the stuff included with NI. The stuff is just coloration, and I hear mixes all the time and can't tell you what plugin someone used 98% of the time, but I can tell if they used them badly. Learning the tools and training your ears to hear what you are looking for is more important than what you selected.