It is possible to make a professional sounding mix with only stock plugins but how many of the best mixing engineers are doing that?
If you watch interviews and tutorials from Grammy-winning mixing engineers, how many of them do you see demonstrating their mixing skills using only stock plugins and no outboard gear?
Let’s talk about when premium plugins beat stock plugins and why…
Our DAWs come with a set of stock plugins that can help you get the job done, yet premium plugins still exist. The world’s best mixing consoles have fantastic EQs and compressors, yet engineers still use outboard gear.
This should clearly indicate to you that the tools you use are relatively unimportant in comparison to the concepts and techniques you employ based on your experience level and the environment in which you’re monitoring your mix. If you really understand what you’re trying to achieve, then I do think the tools shouldn’t matter too much when it comes to the finished product.
Premium plugins beat stock plugins because they make your life easier
In my opinion, premium plugins beat stock plugins because they exist to make your life easier and get closer to the finished product with less steps taken.
However, both stock and free plugins definitely have their place. The majority of my mixing takes place using premium plugins, but I still use both stock and free plugins on every mix. For me, my habit of using stock and free plugins dates back to when I was in college.
When I was first starting out, I learned on analog gear. Many of my college assignments were group projects that only allowed us to use the features of the Audient 8024 desk and a couple of outboard units we had at our disposal. Our mixes were recorded into an ADAT machine, so any fader or EQ moves we did were recorded “on the fly” and mixing felt more like a performance. If you messed it up, you needed to go back and “drop in” or you could keep going like you would in a real performance – the show must go on!
The limitations placed upon us (even though we were using quality gear) helped us think more about the concepts and techniques rather than trying to manipulate lots of gear into attempting to get the sound we wanted. While the mixes we produced were good for our experience level, if I had to work on that setup today, there would be a night and day difference in what I could produce.
At the same time, I was also writing and mixing music on my laptop in my free time. I didn’t have access to premium plugins and I was using a free DAW. I only used the stock plugins that came with that DAW or free add-on plugins. I didn’t get the results I wanted but it wasn’t because of the gear – I had a knowledge gap.
Over the years, my knowledge has expanded and, while I’ll always be a student, I know that I can still produce good mixes on cheap, stock or free gear. I know that because I have tried and tested that when it was my only option. The one issue with that approach is that it’s experimental and potentially time consuming.
Like I said, premium plugins exist to make our lives easier and get to the finished product with less steps.
Let’s discuss the positives and negatives of the features of some premium plugins
EQ
My favourite EQ has the option to use Auto Gain. What that means is that the plugin automatically compensates for the increase or loss of gain after EQ. While the levels aren’t measured and it’s not a dynamic process, the level matching gets pretty close during an A/B test.
Benefit: If you’re moving quickly through a mix and you don’t have time to level match by ear, you can click the ‘A’ and Auto Gain kicks in.
Disadvantage: If you don’t know how to level match quickly by ear, this button promotes laziness and if you are used to this feature and then don’t have access to it for some reason, you’ll struggle and lose a lot of time while mixing.
Automatic microphone alignment and phase correction
Saving time is always a huge positive – especially if you produce music for a living. While I don’t yet use it, Auto-Align by Sound Radix is a plugin that I’ve seen demonstrated by people like Pete Woj of MixBetterNow.com to great effect. While I know that Pete can easily go about phase aligning his drums by ear due to his expert knowledge, he’ll use this plugin to save time and ensure accuracy.
Benefit: You save time and your hourly rate goes up.
Disadvantage: If you only know how to phase correct and align using Auto-Align, you’ll be stuck when you don’t have access to the plugin.
True Peak Limiting
Ever since I started using the Nugen ISL2, I won’t master using any other limiter. I bought it for finishing broadcast mixes but now I use it for all of my mastering needs. It’s an intersample peak limiter that allows us to work much closer to digital headroom, as it figures out what might be going on between two samples and adjusts the gain of the audio going through it.
If you’re working very close to digital headroom and your limiter takes in a series of samples but misses the peak of the audio, then it’s possible that the reconstructed audio can go beyond digital headroom and clip. The peak could be at least 3dB higher than the sample, so distortion is very possible in this instance.
Mike Thornton from Pro Tools Expert explains this really clearly in a couple of videos if you want more information on that.
Benefit: The most transparent and easy to use limiter I’ve come across.
Disadvantage: If you don’t know how a standard stock limiter works, you won’t understand how fantastic and transparent this limiter is.
Mid/Side EQ
I love having the option of using Mid/Side processing and I end up using this technique on most of my mixes and masters. Pro Tools does not come with a Mid/Side EQ, but you can get a number of stock plugins that will help you apply this technique to your mix. While I have used a number of these stock plugins, in my opinion, nothing compares to Brainworx amazing bx_digital.
Benefit: I feel this premium plugin has everything I need for Mid/Side EQ – including a De-Esser and it’s extended Dynamic EQ.
Disadvantage: If you don’t understand how basic Mid/Side processing works and you haven’t trialled some free or stock plugins, then this tool might be too powerful and you could risk making a mess of your mix.
Sample replacement
This one is a life saver. If you’ve got poorly recorded drums or you want to beef up your toms, kicks or snares with a sample, then there’s only one plugin for me for that job. Trigger by Slate.
Benefit: With a few clicks, you can have your drums sounding exactly as you want them.
Disadvantage: Knowing you can call upon great samples might make you lazy in getting the best out of your recorded drums. Sometimes it’s better to work with what you’ve got.
There are lots of other benefits of using premium plugins, such as the premium support the companies producing the plugins offer. More often than not, free plugins offer very little support if something goes wrong.
But let’s look at the big picture…
When should you use premium plugins over stock plugins?
The very simple answer is when you’re ready.
When you feel like you have a good grasp over the basic audio concepts and how to put a mix together and feel you might be able to do it quicker with premium plugins, then that’s probably a good time.
Of course, that’s dependent on you having the budget to do so. If you’re in some sort of debt or financial difficulty, you have no place buying more gear when it would be much more beneficial to make some money out of what you already have.
That leads me on to my next point. If you make money out of mixing – whether it’s part time or full time, it makes sense to re-invest in new gear or plugins every once in a while. If it’s going to save you time, make you more efficient and improve your mixes, then it’s a good investment.
Personally, I feel that having limitations can really benefit your creativity. While I no longer mix using only stock or free plugins, I’m happy with the current collection of plugins that I own because I feel that having to choose from too many is a problem.
Whatever plugins I buy in future will have to be for a very specific purpose, like the Auto-Align plugin I mentioned earlier. For now, I’m happy using my ears to correct any potential phase issues and avoiding the use of a plugin. Down the line, I might change my mind.
So, before you go ahead with your next plugin purchase, think about whether you really need it.
With so many great deals available on multiple occasions throughout the year, you can easily find yourself becoming a plugin collector. If you want to spend your money that way, I’m not going to stop you, but make sure you know what all of your gear does and that if someone took all of your premium plugins away from you tomorrow, you could still produce a great mix with the bare minimum.
Now, I’d love to know…
What’s your “go to” plugin and why?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
Just like you, I’m that “free” phase where I’m just learning (and because I can’t get a job right now), so every plugin I use is free:
EQ/Dynamic EQ: TDR NOVA. This thing is an All-In-One package, it has EQ, compression (it can be used as a channel strip), dynamic EQ, solo frequency button and even a Loudness Matching button.
Compression (single band/wide band): ReaComp, TDR Kotelnikov, Sonic Anomaly S.L.A.X., and Klanghelm MJUC jr and DC1A2. The first two have tons of features and sound really transparent, the other three are very simple to use and have really good coloring.
Saturation: Klanghelm IVGI2. This thing has a lot of features for something as simple as saturation, but the Asymetric knob lets me choose how much compression I want from the plugin.
Reverb: OrilRiver. Sounds awesome and has a lot of controls, mostly pre-delay, decay time and difussion/density (the three most important reverb controls IMO).
Delay: KiloHearts Delay. Really simple, has a ducking feature and tempo sync (in 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc).
Gain: Kilohearts Gain, Blue Cat Audio Gain Suite and TB Pro Audio AB Level Matching JSFX. The first one is really simple and has enough gain for me (for some reason Reaper doesn’t have a gain plugin). The second one has a really cool feature that allows to link different instances (they’re called groups), very useful for gain staging. The last one is to do loudness matching for anything that isn’t EQ.
Limiting: Sonic Anomaly Unlimited and Loudmax. Simple and clean limiters.
Metering: YouLean Loudness Meter and Voxengo SPAN. The first one is a very good loudness meter with a time graphic and different loudness standards and values. The second one is very well known for being an excelent spectrum analyzer, and it also shows a correlation meter.
Thanks for sharing such a comprehensive answer! This will undoubtedly help anyone who reads it and is looking to pick up free plugins. Out of all of those plugins, the only one I have and use is the Blue Cat Audio Gain. I’ll have to check out the rest. Thanks again!
Glad you liked it.
Hallo heavymetalmixer, I dont know if you learned this, or if you do this beside an other job. If so, you can study for free – if you want – “Music Technology Foundations” in Adeleide, and “Music Production and Vocal Recording Technology” in Berklee online on edx. I have done it. And it´s very good. If you want/need a certificate it costs about 50,- US Dollars for one course, and you have to pass a minimal level. If you don´t need certificate it´s free. Good luck for a new job.
Thanks Gerd
I´m also in the “free” phase. I use Samplitude Pro X Silver (only for windows). It´s free (for registration). It`s limited on 8 (12) lines and 44.1 kHz. But it has many, many very good highend plugins in and very good virtuell amps. You have all you need and more (also for mastering). The many options need time to do, but there are very good videos on website of Magix. Only I use more is “G-Snap”. And if you worked with, all is done in very short time.
Thanks for the tip Gerd!
I’m using mostly stock plug-ins, but I do have the Ozone 7 package and Sound Toys for a lot of different applications.
I like the idea of using stock gear to learn on and then move into specific plug-ins as you gain knowledge and purpose.
Currently, I’m going back to sessions I’ve completed and stripping them back to the raw tracks and re-mixing with stock plug-ins to compare and I’m finding that the average listener can’t tell the difference between the stock plug-ins and the premium.
So I would ask this question, what is accomplished (sonically) with the never ending search for the latest and greatest new thing? I posit that it’s a quest to cover up information a person may not have under control or understand.
We all have a vast pool of ignorance to pull from that often keeps us spinning our wheels in the search to improve. From my personal experience I would caution others against moving into premium plug-ins when you’re in the beginning stages of mixing. Learn to master what you have and then you’ll understand what to buy and why…..
It sounds like you’ve filled in a knowledge gap if you’re able to go back to older sessions and mix them with stock plugins. I think, as humans, we tend to always look for the new, shiny thing. I feel that nothing is accomplished sonically by looking for the latest and greatest thing. If someone gives you a tip or you want to make part of your workflow more efficient, then seek out that particular plugin and add it to your arsenal. I absolutely agree with what you’re saying and really appreciate your comments, Dave.
We as musicians and or engineers focusing on knowledge and technique over gear is Great advice Stephen. Thanks for the gentle reminder. Based on the gear/advice bombardment that we are all subjected to, I feel that this article hits the nail on the head.
Thanks Santo. I’m glad you got something out of it.