• Is this plug-in really necessary?

I guess this may work well in the broadcast world, but they’re pitching it as a mix tool for vocals. To me that means mixing, as in mixing music. Does anyone else feel that the engineer who uses this plug-in is just plain lazy?

Maybe I’m a little irked because a HUGE part of mixing a song with vocals, especially a lead vocal, is the human placement of the vocal within the track. That requires listening to all the parts of the arrangement and finding the best place for the vocal as the song progresses from beginning to end. That requires feel and emotion from the mix engineer. Can you get that from a plug-in?

Then again, maybe the real reason I so annoyed is because this could potentially put me out of a job. It’s like the Ronco Rotisserie of audio – “just set it and forget it”.

To me, I think this may be the laziest plug-in ever created. What do you all think? Feel free to leave a comment below.

You can read a description of Vocal Rider on the Electronic Musician web site.

(Side note: I actually have the Ronco Rotisserie and it is awesome! If this plug-in produces the same results I’m screwed.)

I love Nathaniel’s article in Electronic Musician magazine. When it comes in I’ll usually jump to the end (his is the very last article in each issue) and start there. This one is particularly good because it’s his view on how the industry has learned to honor “artists” who use Auto-Tune and/or Melodyne. I think the comment “…they forgot about one important issue: they were lying to their customers.” really sums it up. Enjoy!

from Electronic Musician Magazine.

Auto-Tune and Melodyne: if you ask a well-respected singer, they are four-letter words. If you ask a not-so-good singer, and they answer you honestly, they will probably tell you that it is the only reason they have a chance of being on the radio at all. More important, if you ask the record-listening public, they have no idea what you mean. Well, that is changing…

Read the entire article here

You can read more articles by Nathaniel’s here

I started using T-Racks 3 Deluxe on individual channels in mixes and they sound great, but they suck up some serious processing power. So I started using them on my output bus as sort of a pre-mastering tool and man, what a difference! I understand that the deluxe package is a standalone mastering suite, but you can use them anywhere so I chose to reduce my processing overhead by concentrating them to my output. I don’t think I will use the package for mastering because I am very partial to Apple’s Wave Burner. But this suite will certainly hold a permanent place on my output bus.

Waves Audio introduces Waves Center, an innovative new processor that separates phantom Center audio from side (L/R panned) content. Ideal for final mixes and mastering, Center lets users zero in on the phantom Center and bring out or bring down the vocals without affecting everything else. Perfect for post-production engineers and DJs as well, Center allows users to reposition, isolate and even eliminate elements of a mix.

Read the entire article here