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Dave Pensado

Grammy Award-winning mix engineer

Manic Compressor is rapidly becoming Grammy-winning mixer Dave Pensado’s favorite compressor

Boutique Compressors - Into The Lair #223

Working with boutique compressors in today's episode. Hope you can find a few that work for you and your endeavors. Enjoy!

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Hugh Robjohns

Sound on Sound Magazine

I found the +10dB compressor worked just like the hardware version, both as a compressor and expander/gate, and emulated precisely the same kind of attitude and character that made the ADR F760X-R Compex compressor/expander and F769X-R Vocal Stressor so popular in the first place. It’s an impressively versatile and very welcome plug-in, especially in the full bundle version. Highly recommended!

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Ross Donaldson

Engineer (Billy Idol, Roger Waters)

Transgressor 2 — Used on every mix by Ross Donaldson (Billy Idol, Roger Waters) I bought the first generation of this product way-way back and I think I have used it on every mix since. I am looking forward to the updated interface. In the olden days we would take a Drawmer gate and set it to “duck” so we could process just that crack portion of the snare then add it into the mix. This allows me to do that in one interface with much better control.

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David Gnozzi

Platinum Engineer, Producer, Audio Educator, And Mastering Engineer – MixbusTV

Big Clipper – Platinum producer/mastering engineer David Gnozzi holds a shootout of 15 limiters including his favorites for mastering; declares “Big Clipper, big win!”

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Garrett Haines

Grammy-winning Mastering Engineer, Tape Op Magazine

The Wall limiter—Easy to get good sounds, preserves the mix EQ profile better than competing limiters I expect many readers are going to want to buy this plug-in within five minutes of trying it. In addition to being a nice limiter for general use, The Wall is superb for adding last-minute level to reference mixes. I found that it does a better job respecting the original mix EQ profile than a majority of competing options, and the limited control set makes it easy to get good sounds.

Mastering Limiters Deathmatch 2020: What's the Best Plugin?

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Dave Pensado

Grammy-winning Mastering Engineer, Tape Op Magazine

How To Mix Massive Kick Drums - Into The Lair #127 Grammy-winning Mixer Dave Pensado shows how he gets a massive kick drum with Little Foot “…Lets you do things you can’t do any other way.”

How To Mix Massive Kick Drums - Into The Lair #127

Dave Pensado shows you how to mix massive kick drums in the 127th Into The Lair.

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Ross Donaldson

Engineer (Billy Idol, Roger Waters)

Mongoose makes mixes streaming-service friendly I had totally forgotten I owned this plugin until I saw the ad. I had a mix that was going out to the streaming services today and said what the hell, let me throw it on there. It definitely made a difference. It was slight but I missed it when I bypassed it. The interesting thing is Spotify seems to like it and penalize you less but the other services hit you just a bit more. I’m ok with that.

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Barry Rudolph

(Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart), recording engineer/mixer with over 30 gold and platinum records

Big Clipper — Gold and platinum engineer/mixer Barry Rudolph reviews Big Clipper and finds it awesome Big Clipper is a combined limiter and clipper plug-in with much more control over both processes. It comes with its own preset menu and is available in VST, AU, RTAS and AAX Native versions. It has an interesting stereo mode where you may select processing in conventional stereo, Mid/Side, Mid only or Side only. The main controls include: Push to control input gain to the clipper--good for low level subtle noises or sources with great dynamic range The Pull control adjusts the clipping threshold and the Shape control varies between soft (smooth) and hard clipping (edgy) effects. Lastly there is the Blend cross-fader that works differently for the four different Blend styles. The four Blend styles define exactly how the limiter and clipper work together and better control what you are trying to achieve with this plug-in. The Crossover mode [C X L] has the clipper in the low band and the limiter in the high band with the Blend fader setting the crossover frequency anywhere from 100Hz to 20kHz. With minimum Push level and high Pull limiter threshold, this works great to put a little "hair" around a sterile direct bass track. I crossed over at 140Hz and Shape was on the soft side at 29%. The Crossover mode [L X C] puts the limiter in the low band and the clipper in the high band. This can be an all-in fuzz tone but with careful adjustment of Push and Pull, you can keep this effect musical. You can switch over to Blend Mode where the cross fader now mixes between a full bandwidth limiter and full bandwidth clipper. The same bass took on a cleaner but more aggressive tone after I rolled out a lot at 200Hz and boosted the high mid-range with the Frequency Sensitivity controls (see below). Lastly there is Series mode where first in the chain is the limiter and then comes the clipper. Newly added is an Output level control that's great when deciding to clip a track that you've already automated its level in your mix. Big Clipper will add a tremendous amount of level and the Output control will dial that back to your previous mix level you had before adding it. Awesome upgrade. Key to Big Clipper's utility is that all these different modes are easily auditioned at any time without any re-patching. You can find just the right sound to musically fit your source and song usage. Further controllability comes from the limiter's Attack and Release time faders and the Frequency Sensitivity controls. Frequency Sensitivity is a three-band filter in the side-chain that constrains or boosts certain frequencies more/less into clipping/limiting. I found this very useful to only process a certain frequency range and keep from distorting other frequencies that didn't sound good broken up. I liked that there is a helpful text window at the bottom of the GUI that tells you what each control does as you mouse over it.

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