For many yester years, the old school analog studios had large format consoles style mixing, hardware compressor, equalisers, gates/expanders and reverb units. There used to be plenty of knobs switches etc to tweak and create that magic in the mixing and mastering of a song. Or I can say crafting the song! Today we are all living in pure digital age and computer technology fully dependent on our DAW software. The main reason is the cost and space.
Now most of the plugin manufacturing companies have tied up with lots of the audio legend
companies like the API, NEVE, SSL, REDD etc.
But these plugins do wonderful and does the emulation of your favourite console in your DAW. Let’s start now. Whatever console taste you like, today we can just drag and drop in our every channel or your Master Buss and get great sounding result in seconds. Remember, these console style plugins has the emulation algorithm to create that old style classic sound in your modern digital tracks which we are all lacking in today’s modern music techonolgy.
A for API – This is called Automated Process Inc., known as API which was invented in the year 1969. They were the first to introduce the modular system of 500 series units in the year 1970 if am right! This company was very famous of the 512c mic pre giving high class musically rich sounding tone in your recordings. Later they manufactured the 550A and 550B EQ’s in their 500 series module system. Then they released the 525 Compressor and limiter with a unique feature called THRUST which is patended by API for an Insert of HPF (High pass Filter) before the Detector circuit. Then they released the 2500 master buss compressor, which gives a rock solid sound in your sessions. Waves and Universal audio has taken the rights to develop this as the plugin emulation of these hardware boxes and now we can have this in our favourite DAW sessions.
N for NEVE – This legendary England company founded by Rupert Neve designs, is famous for its classic 1970’s sound and thousands of hit records have been produced during this time using the famous 1073 mic pre by Neve. It has its own top end high frequency sound at 12Khz which is fixed in their micpre with an HPF built in that. This sounds great on any source for recording. Later they modified their 1073 into the 1083 with more wider frequency
shelf providing 4 bands of EQ. This is also modelled by the Grammy award legend “Andrew Scheps” and named the plugin as SCHEPS 73! Now, if you want to get that classic NEVE 1073 sound on your DAW, then this is the solution! These are also emulated by Slate Digital and Universal Audio.
S for SSL – Another popular and widely used console is the british’s Solid State Logic console, SSL 4000 E Series in the year 1979. Later they released their G series console. These consoles provide rock solid punchy sounds in your sessions having a fully parametric EQ with a Bell curve on High and Low to pop your sound in your mix. They also have the Dynamic module in their Channel strip making a complete module design which very famous in the early 80’s records. Also its very famous for its SSL 4000 Master buss Compressor on their console in the Master section. When all the tracks are assigned through this, its produces a magic in your Song which sounds so fat and punchy to create greate sounding records. Waves and Universal audio and recently Plugin Alliance has also done the Emulation of the SSL channel Strip and the Master buss compressor which is now available
to be used in our DAW to get that Classic SSL tone in your Mix or your Sessions.
