We had hardware; A reel to reel tape machine, a huge mixing console with knobs the size of silver dollars, and any effects we wanted to use, we had to go out and buy, borrow or rent the actual rack mounted hardware and plug it in, in-line with the mixer. What a pain huh?
Luckily for all of us, now we have digital everything. Which means there's no shortage of effects, or daws, virtual mixers, virtual instruments, the list goes on and on. My point is that back then, we'd have given our right arm to have access to an endless supply of free equipment like we have now. The freebies would have been welcomed with open arms (and ears).
That being said, I thought I would compare a mastered commercially released mix which uses high dollar, paid plugins within Mixcraft Pro Studio 9, with the same mix but using freebie plugins in the same daw.
While there's no way I can explain the results to a degree of understanding that you would get from simply watching the video below, I do want to make a few points before we get to the video.For the high dollar mix, I used plugins from Waves, FabFilter, Toontrack, PSP Audioware, Studio Devil, and Hofa. Check out the awesome Hofa IQ-Reverb to the left.
From Waves I used a compressor, and a couple different equalizers, the Scheps channel strip, along with one of their reverb plugins.
Tootrack provided Superior Drummer 3 which is actually on both mixes. I wanted all the instruments to sound exactly the same when dry, which meant not changing the virtual drums to something else. That would be like recording a different guitarist and expecting it to sound the same as the original.
PSP Audioware makes some cool plugins and I have used the PseudoStereo in my mixes for years now. I met the developers from PSP at NAMM years ago, where they gave me an NFR license for all their products, and I have used them ever since.
For the freebies, I simply looked around the net for some good ones that are easily available to anyone who looks.
The first one I would like to give mention to is the awesome little TSE BOD Bass pedal. What a little gem this is!
When playing out live on stage, I use an Ampeg SVT4 Pro bass amp. It has a unique, extremely powerful sound that I duplicate with the Studio Devil VBA Pro. With the TSE BOD pedal along with some compression and EQ, I was able to get pretty close to that sound, for free!I also used the Modern Compressor (2 instances) and the TB Parametric which comes with Mixcraft Pro Studio 9.
A few other awesome freebies made the mix too, as you'll see by grabbing a beer and watching the video below. Watch it, enjoy it, share it!
