Professional Analog Mastering.
Professional Analog Mastering.
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Gold Clip is a great clipper plugin - people gravitate toward this one since it sounds smoother than other clippers.
This comes down to oversampling and a EQ that the plugin introduces.
Recreating the Modern Box Tone, the Modern Clipper, with moderate modern gold settings and some of the alchemy effect, isn’t too tricky and can be done with 2 free plugins.
Notice that these settings boost some low frequencies and dip the highs. Also, the alchemy setting is dynamic.
With ZL equalizer, although any dynamic EQ would work, I’ll use a couple of bell filters to emulate the dips in the highs. I’ll also introduce a low shelf up to around 2kHz that boosts by only half a dB.
To emulate the alchemy effect, I’ll use a dynamic high shelf and attenuate very subtly, only when the highs are loud enough, which in this case meant the threshold was around -22dB.
As for the LP filter, oversampling will introduce this, so I don’t need to set up this filter with the EQ.
For the clipping portion, I’ll use Free Clip by Venn Audio and select the quintic function - this is nearly identical to the behavior of Gold Clip’s modern clipper shape.
The Gold function is just maximation, so I could use a free maximizer to do this. However, I could accomplish something very similar by increasing the input of Free Clip by a small amount. A 0.7dB increase of Free Clip’s input matched a 0.5dB increase of Gold Clip’s gold function.
Gold Clip’s oversampling function scales with the sampling rate - so for this 96kHz session, I’ll use 4x oversampling on Free Clip to match Gold Clip’s settings.
Lastly, I’ll match the output level.
Let’s take a listen to the A/B. We’ll hear Gold Clip first and then the free setup I’ve shown here.
I’ll use LUFS meters on both tracks as well, just so you can see that loudness variations aren’t affecting what sounds better.
Watch the video to learn more >
Seventh Heaven is my favorite reverb plugin - it uses impulse responses of the Bricasti M7 and then offers some additional controls to adjust the sound.
It’s excellent but expensive.
Having used this plugin for hundreds of hours when mixing, I have to admit that any regular impulse response of the unit sounds just as good.
Free M7 impulse response can be found online, downloaded, and imported into your DAW’s stock convolution reverb plugin.
Then, adjust the wet signal until it’s blended how you want.
Admittedly, scrolling through the various impulse response files can be tedious, but if you narrow it down to your favorites, it’s not too much of a hassle.
If you need to adjust the decay length, the frequency response, the pre-delay, or any other parameter, most free convolution plugins will let you do this.
I can even reverse the reverb in this plugin, which is something Seventh Heaven Pro doesn’t let you do.
The CPU is lower, the sound is slightly more transparent, in my opinion, and, of course, it’s free.
Let’s listen to both on the same segment of an acoustic guitar. I’ll use the same default Large Chamber preset and won’t adjust the settings other than the wet/dry.
The results have very minuscule variations, but again, I think the IR actually sounds slightly better.
Watch the video to learn more >
What makes Saturn 2 special is the modulation. There are other multiband saturators, but few that let you link the incoming ADSR to a parameter.
So, let’s say I want to cause more distortion to the transient of a vocal. I’d select the algorithm, increase the drive, and then create an envelope follower.
At this point, I could switch it to transient mode and link it to the drive dial.
To create a very similar sound, I could first create a send from the vocal and make it pre-fader.
On the corresponding auxiliary track, I’d insert ZL Equalizer and with a dynamic band, cause expansion.
I’ll need to set a quick attack, moderate release, and carefully lower the threshold to achieve expansion only during the transients.Then, I can use this free GSatPlus plugin, and select the classic mode for tape, crisp for tube, or just experiment until one works well for the source material.
Once the saturation is dialed in, I’ll copy ZL Equalizer and insert it after the saturator. Instead of expanding, I’ll attenuate the range whenever the transient hits.
In short, we’ve created a dynamic emphasis de-emphasis setup that causes the transient to become more saturated.
Since the bus is pre-fader, we can adjust the level of both tracks to get a good blend between the clean and saturated signal without lowering the input for the saturator.
Granted, this setup doesn’t cover everything Saturn 2 can do with envelopes, mid-side processing, etc. But with some extra routing, you could accomplish very similar processing.
Let’s listen to the A/B. I’ll ensure the loudnesses match so you can focus on the timbre. They’re not exact, but incredibly close.
Watch the video to learn more >
I picked the “Wide” function since it’s the most complex of the algorithms.
Everything else is just maximization with some compression that varies in the amplitude and knee, respectively.
The wide function separates the signal into mid and side channels, causing dynamic expansion whenever the mid image is attenuated.
Doing this with free plugins is pretty straightforward. In some DAWs, you can use a stock mid-side matrix; in Logic, it’s easier to duplicate the track and use the free plugin MSED to solo the mid image and the side image.
Once the mid and side images have been separated onto separate tracks, I’ll use the free plugin JS inflator, which is a 1:1 copy of the Oxford Inflator.
I’ll use identical settings on each image to emulate how the MM-1 maximizes both equally before splitting the signal.
A close match is a positive curve with 100% of the effect and the split band setting enabled.
That said, if you want less maximization, you could always lower the amount.
Then, insert a compressor on the mid-image channel and achieve 1-2dB of attenuation.This mimics how the MM-1 attenuates the mid-image and subtly expands the stereo width by making the center image quieter relative to the side.
This setup even gives you the option to increase the mid or side channel faders to adjust the overall stereo width - something not available with the MM-1 plugin.It seems a little complex at first, but it’s really easy to do once you’ve set it up once or twice. Also, quick side-note: this setup could be combined with the dynamic EQ emphasis de-emphasis from the last chapter to recreate Saturn 2’s mid-side processing.
Let’s take a listen to the MM-1 and then the free plugins. Let me know if one sounds better to you.