Welcome hi hi hi hello everyone. To the pro audio suite these guys are professional they're motivated. With tech to the vo stars george with a founder of source elements robert marshall international audio engineer darren robo robertson and global voice andrew peters thanks to tribo austrian audio making passion heard source elements george the tech with them and robo and ap's international demos to find out more about us check the pro audio suite.com And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite. Plug-ins, what's your favourite? That's our topic for the day. Well, I think a better question is, if you could only keep five, what would you keep? Okay, let's get going. Third-party plug-ins only, or does this include stock plug-ins? Anything. Any plug-in that you use regularly. Any plug-in that you've got in your Pro Tools. If you were said, okay, you've got to cull them all, but you can keep five, what would you keep? Five. Okay, EQ7, Dynamics 3, Expander Dynamics 3. I think those are separate plugins. So, Compressor 3, Expander 3, D-Verb, and one more. What do I got? Regen. It's not even a plugin. It's not a plugin. Maxim. Maxim is pretty bad. Well, you'd have to have some noise reduction, surely. Yeah, okay. So, there's no... Okay, and then noise reduction, I guess. And, and, and don't forget, don't forget you need loudness metering. Nah, you just, you know what, man, like honestly, LKFS, just get it. You're going to guess it. Yeah. That's about, that's about minus 14. Line it up to zero at minus. Yeah. Minus four, you know, minus 20 equals zero. You can get so close to LKFS that way. It like minus 20. It's night. So I don't know. Okay. Noise reduction. So when the agency calls you back and says, mate, this audio has been rejected. What do you tell them? Uh, It won't be. I guessed it. I can hit it pretty close with a VU meter. I really can. It might not be quite as loud. I might not be quite as aggressive on the edge, you know, like getting the last dB out of it. I don't know. For the last plug-in, I guess. Clarity? I really like C4. Yeah, okay. There you go. All the stock. Avid Pro Tools plugins and then the C4. And the reason why, honestly, is because then you can just exchange your Pro Tools session with anybody. You can go away and come back and your shit's going to open and you don't have to worry about licenses. And yeah, you can get a lot of work done with those plugins. I reckon, for me, I reckon I'd keep the Waves F6, which is a multiband compressor. Because I reckon, could I? No. I'm kind of wondering whether I could get away without a compressor. Maybe I'd keep a 2A as well. Yeah, maybe I'd keep a 2A as. Well, I think. And then, so. That's EQ and compression. Reverb. Oh, jeez. C. D reverb. D reverb. Yeah, maybe. I mean, yeah. Yeah, no. Which one are you doing more? Reverb's the one I use more, especially with radio imaging and vocals and all that sort of stuff. So, shit. I think I'd maybe keep H reverb because it's a bit more flexible. So, I seem to use that a lot. That's another waste thing. Gee, I sound like an advertisement for waves, don't I? That's what you use. How much are they paying you? Gomez will be happy. Gomez will be, yeah, rubbing his hands together. Reverb, delay. Uh, shit. I'd be split between SSL, do a really nice delay, a four band delay thing. And, and H reverb, sorry, H delay is the other one I use a lot, but maybe I'd go the SSL and a limiter. I take it back. I'll, I'll drop the C4 and take a delay from the standard mod delay too. Yeah. Goes pure stock digi. Yeah. And the S and the, and the, and the limiter I'd go the SSL X limit. That's pretty much on all my mixes. So, yeah, that would be my five, I think. I don't have any, so George. Okay, well, listen, here's one for you, Andrew. You can only keep five of your mics, so you have a think about that while George does his. I reckon you should narrow it down. Okay, well, let's make it hard on you. You can keep two mics then. You can only keep three. Let's say three. You can keep three mics. So you have a think about that while George does his. Okay, keep three. All right. Okay. Uh, well, yeah, it's hard for me because I have to support so many platforms. So I work with so many different plugins. It's, it's kind of insane. I'm going to assume you're on Apple. So you can use, um, Apple's very simple AU filter plugin. It's such a simple to use multi or a multi-band parametric EQ. Um, simple, easy does a lot of different jobs. Well, um, Their compressor. They got a nice compressor, too. Well, I use AU Dynamics Processor, which is your classic expander compressor tool. So it does two-in-one. And then I never use D-Clickers, but I have clients always obsessed over what their mouth noise is. Yeah, they are, aren't they? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So I'll have to throw iZotope RX, Mouthy Click into that one as much as it pains me. I still have to give them props for that one. I still draw them out. What do you do, Robbo? Yeah, I usually draw them out or cut them out, one or the other. Yeah, you get paid to engineer and actors get paid to act. Exactly. Two different jobs. And then for, let's see, that one's kind of a twofer. limiter um man every daw has one and everybody's got and they're all they all have the crush i don't like the apple one it's too simple it doesn't have an output control um. Damn it is this like a brick wall like mastering yeah mastering. Set my output to minus 3d peak you know set my luffs and just kind of you know the final tune to get the luffs where i want it to be um I guess that would be dependent on the platform. So the one in Adobe Audition works fine, the peak limiter. The one in Twisted Wave is okay, but it will only output to 0 dB. You can't set the ceiling, so it's not as useful. There's no ceiling. And then that's four, right? And so the last one I would have to say, A Swiss Army knife tool that I could use for de-essing, multiband compressor, etc. That would then be TDR Nova, I guess, because it's free and it's awesome. And so, you know, we're not talking about price value really, but I would say that one is one I can give to anybody for any setup, Mac, Windows, any DAW, and I know that I can get really good results out of that tool using it for different things, depending on whether I Want to use it for smoothing, reducing harshness, taking out sibilance, just broad mid-bands compression. It can do a lot of different jobs. So those are my hot tips. I was going to ask Robbo, do we have to pay for these five? Well, there should be ones that you're already using, I would presume. Yeah, if I'm being honest, it's those just because of the compatibility. You know the one you and I both forgot, Robert? SourceConnect. Although it's probably not a plug-in as such, I suppose. Not a plug-in as such, but there you go. It's not an effect. Maybe we should have said effects. Yeah, there you go. You know, and the other honorable mention would be Waves Shep's Omnichannel. There you go. You can just do so much. That's not bad. That's not bad, actually, yeah. Yeah, honorable mention. Well, I mean, actually come to think of it, you get, I mean, if you're starved to five plugins, like grabbing a channel strip does the trick. Yeah, then you can use, then you can get a delay and a reverb and a de-reverb. And all that shit, yep. Well, de-essers in the, yeah, it's all. I mean, supposedly. I just, I just liked the idea of compatibility and going with all like these third party plugs. And then you, it just happened to me. You, I don't know Rob, if this happens to you, but you know, you're in the industry for basically, I hate to say it like 30 years, just about. And at some point you can't open your old shit because all these, like all these plugins you don't have. And the more third party plugins you get, the more often it happens. And, There's just something to be said with the stock plugins that you have way more of a chance of just. Opening your stuff. Do you know the one that always strikes me on my other podcast that I do? I do one about radio imaging with the guys in England, Tom and Adam from Imaging Blueprint. And we talk to other imaging producers. And one of the questions, we have these stock standard questions. One of them at the end is, what's the one plugin you couldn't do without? And, you know, taking out EQs and compressors and all that sort of shit. And I reckon about 95% of them, their answer is Pitch and Time Pro from Serato. Because it's one thing, you know, for music and all that sort of shit. Well, especially for imaging. It's such a, it's such a. It's almost like the 41.6. You know, it's just one of those things that every imaging producer has in their toolkit, which is amazing. Serato must be rubbing their hands together because they've got DJs and all that stuff as well as imaging producers. Serato was the first one. They were the first one that, you know, came out with a pitch, a time character that didn't sound like shit on music. But here's the funny thing, Robbo. So you have to, you got to fit, you got to stuff someone into a box and like, you know, they read it in 17 seconds and you got to put it into 15. What do you use? It's a voice. I actually find the Pro Tools one not too bad. The standard one in Pro Tools, the time compression. Everyone says that the, The built-in TCE of Pro Tools is. The go for pure voice time compression. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is. I mean, I've heard people who work on big movies and stuff like that. Yeah, I haven't come across anything better, I'll be honest, no. The one in Audacity is better than the one in Twisted Reef. There's a hot take. Is it? I'll have to try that. So Andrew's big challenge. Yeah, but I said about plugins, and I actually wind back on that because I... I did have a couple of plugins, which I don't use anymore. I did get a, uh, ships, uh, 73. Oh, you did too. Yeah. Yeah. I had that, um, which I used to use when I wasn't here. Like if I was on the road, I'd whack that on just so it sounded like I was here. Um, but the new one I've just got, which I haven't used yet is called hush. Um, and I think that could be really handy. Well, I think it's going to be handy if you're on the road and I think it also be handy. for not having the most desirable setup that if you could run hush to get rid of all the shit in the, you know, I mean. Um, George, what about Cvox? Yeah. Cvox. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a very proprietary plugin. You know, it can only run on the Apollo platform, but people that have the Apollo, that is just the killer job. You know, they say about a killer app, you know, and why do you own this thing for this one plugin? Yeah. Cvox by Cedar. That one is. Oh, that's to clean up audio. It's real time. And it's good. How often do you have to tell somebody to disable. Their Cvox, Robert? I don't think... I've had people turn off their compression. Ever? But I've never really... I don't think I... You can kind of hear it if it's really... It depends on how noisy their room is. But if their room is already relatively noise-free, Cvox is transparent. If it's a noisy room, it can kind of sound a little bit gatey. Yeah, of course. Ooh, I have an interesting question for the room. What's one thing you still do the long way around that there's actually a plug-in for? I could answer that. Drawing mouth clicks out. Drawing mouth clicks, yeah. I do the same thing, so everything I do is completely and utterly analog. I still bounce in real time. Yeah, yeah. I bounce in real time. You know how Pro Tools is faster in real time? I don't know. Yeah, because then you finally listen to your stuff. You know, it's like you got to listen to it. I mix it down to another track, but yeah, I don't bounce at all. I mix it down and I mix all my sub mixes out at the same time. And then you shift command K the bounce track? It's something I started doing with long form stuff because, you know, if you were bouncing and, you know, I always still listen to it when I was bouncing, but, you know, you'd go, oh, there's something there I've missed. You'd have to re-bounce the whole thing, whereas- This way you can just go back and drop in, punch in, and keep going. Because you can use destructive recording. But the one thing that sticks out for me was when I first started– um, doing some, um, I think I was doing podcasts. I can't remember what I was doing. I needed, there was something and I was going, oh fuck, I really don't want to de-breath this. So I went and bought Waves De-Breath and chucked it over. And I just noticed it in my plugging folder and I've never, I tried it once and I've never used it since it was the biggest waste of 30 bucks. It just takes out, it takes. Out all the wrong syllables and then you're, you're fixing more stuff. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Yeah, I agree. It's really old. Sorry, Gomez, love you mean it, but that is probably the worst $ 30 I've ever spent. I got conned into buying that one. I went to a studio and he showed me the De-Breath. He goes, oh, you know, if you're doing long form, use this. And I got it. And it was just like, you'd have like things like. You can't tell the difference between a breath and an ass. Yeah. And it's like, all of a sudden it's like, you know, it's like gating horror. It's just awful. You'd have to go back and re-edit it to put all the yeses and stuff back in. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it doesn't even do it by editing. It actually rewrites the audio. So then you also. Lose your heads and tails. Yes, that's it. You're locked away. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, no, it's like, yeah, that's the one for me. Yeah. I always edit my, I don't know how you do it, but when I'm playing stuff back for people, I can get just, so you can pretty much see breaths in the waveform. If you know what I mean. So I'll start playing back and I'll start slicing breaths and usually I can get ahead of it. You get ahead of it. Yeah, absolutely. And people are like hearing you. Like you're rolling into it and you're just like scrolling through the waveform going, there's one, delete, there's one, delete. And you just do the breaths on the playback in basically real time. Well, that's the way I pretty much edit this podcast. I just slip ahead and I can see stuff that needs to get moved around or cut out. So I just do it. And then- you know when it gets right you're listening to one yeah when it gets there if it's and it's and it's wrong. If you hear something you just go enter that's right yeah and skip back so if you hear something that's wrong enter enter drop some. Marker and you can go back later that's the way i do this step that's. Actually something i've been lobbying thomas to build into twisted wave and he hasn't done it yet because no what you were just describing you're you're editing you're making edits ahead of the playhead isn't that what you're just saying You can't do that in Twisted Wave. Well, do you know what you could do in Sonic Solutions? Sonic Solutions, you could edit before the recording was complete. That's what I was going to say. As you were recording in this thing called Sadie, which was never big here, but it was big in the States, you could edit the waveform as. It was recording. Sounds risky. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, exactly. You've got to be good. Those are the only two that could do that at Sadie and Sonic. Rabo, couldn't the DSP do that too? No, DSP couldn't do it, no. Not that I, yeah, well, unless it's something I never discovered, but I never did. That was a killer feature because I remember mastering studios would load the DAT tapes in and they'd get past the first song and then they'd start mastering the first song while. The second song is loading. Because back then it was all real-time loading. Yeah, there you go. I'll tell you what is a really good thing, which I absolutely love and use all the time, is with Twisted Wave. is the press R for clicks, which is something you tip me into, George. Oh, so is that like a shortcut, is it? It is so good. Just click R, push R? Yeah. There you go. It's really cool. Just highlight the click, press R. Is it like a waveform edit, or is it a DSP function? So you're selecting a range of sound, a very short window. Oh, it just smooths it out? You know, like milliseconds. Milliseconds. And then it interpolates. So if there's an anomaly in the middle, it smooths that over. It draws a straight line between them. Do you know what's really interesting as well, George? I've used it during, like, because someone said it's a bit clicky on certain days, and it'd be in the middle of a word. Sure. Normally you do it between words. You hear a click, you get rid of it. And I've actually used it in the middle of a word. There's no artifact. You can draw them out in Pro Tools. With the pencil tool. Yeah. Middle you just got to scrub over them until you're like yeah and then you're like that's where it is because the clip the click becomes like a and when you scrub. Over it in low speed it becomes it's auto heal so auto heal is something in adobe audition this is one piece why reason people obsess over spectral view it's because they can see the sound no the click or the noise and and then they don't rely on their ears as much and so they see it and then they. It is. It is. It's a Photoshop Dodge tool, and it just smooths out that blip or that click or whatever. And so I asked Thomas if he could emulate that in Twisted Wave without Spectral View, and yeah, he did it. And it works. It's pretty nice. It's just another thing that's just building the Twisted Wave. It's not a plugin per se. Yeah. It's an edit tool. It happens directly on the waveform. Yeah, it's right on the waveform. Yeah. It's a feature. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Okay, so something else I do the long way. I don't, Robbo, I don't know about you, but you know LM Correct by Nugen? Mm-hmm. So it's just like, so if you guys don't know what it is, basically you mix a spot and then you press a button and it makes it the broadcast level. You know? Mm-hmm. I always hit it with my compressor and master fader. I get it right in the mix. I don't just like, oh, I missed it by three, four decibels. Click. I don't do that. Which I know a lot of people do. But I'm usually, to be honest, I'm kind of usually, if I'm doing a TV spot, I'm kind of usually mixing into a compressor anyway and setting my levels all at the same time anyway. So by the time I get to the mix, I don't have to think about the levels so much. It's just the mix. Yeah, but you're like, okay, so how nutty are you about it? Oh, not overly. The spec here is minus 24, right? No, i i go down to. The decimal oh in the final mix yeah absolutely i agree yes in the final mix i do but no during the edit no it's just a rough okay i'm around the right place yeah yeah. Yeah yeah you you get it roughly 24 it goes down to 23 it goes up to maybe even 22 20 and. Then you know you're in the zone and then when you're doing your mastering at. The at the end once they're done nitpicking it then you Get your last exact, you know, two decibels. All right. AP, two mics. What are you keeping? Well, I'm going to do it down to, I'm going to make it three. So I'm going to keep 41.6. Tick. Large diaphragm. I'm going to go, based on the other show we did a week or so ago, I'm going to go for the 818. Tick. And then in the bag. When I'm traveling an NTG5. All right. I thought you might have dropped a wild card, just so I've got it in the locker, just in case. I thought you might have gone that way. Now you've gone the travel mic. No. Fair enough. No, I'm going super safe. Like it's belt and braces for me. Two shotguns and a large diaphragm. Yep. Sounds like a song, doesn't it? Where's Beck? You wouldn't sort of think, well, they both sound the same anyway. You wouldn't throw the 416 in your travel bag instead? Or is it a size thing more than something else? I don't think the NTG-5 sounds like the 416. It's also like if it gets damaged, lost. No, it doesn't sound. No, I'm not saying that. The NTG-5 is lighter. Yeah. It travels better. Fair enough. Well, there you go. Smaller, lighter. It's easy. I mean, look, it depends where I was traveling. I mean, if I'm... If I'm taking something like a big booth, like a tri booth or something, then I've obviously got space and I'll take the 416. But if I'm traveling light, then I'll chuck in the NTG5. So here's the other question for you then, because this is kind of relevant, is if you emptied the mic locker and you only had three in there, what are you going to go and buy to refill it up? Do you know what? I can tell you. I can answer that question because two of my mics I've actually got online for sale. That's right. You do. Yep. So the, uh, the Gafell 92.1 is up for sale and the 414 EB is up for sale. And there's a U87 on the way, isn't there? Yeah. A U87. Oh, you're getting an 87. Well, I'm kind of thinking, let's go like, it's like when, when I first bought my, uh, domestic video recorder and I was working at the ABC, which is a government run TV network. And I said to one of the guys in video, I said, look, I've got to get a, a recorder so I can record some of the shows and stuff like that. And this is back in 82 or 83 or something. And I said, what do you reckon, VHS or Betamax? He goes, oh my God, no, no, not VHS. You've got to go Betamax. So I've always been that guy. I'm that guy. Yeah. We were robbed, you know. Beta's a much better format. Yeah. I'll go there. And it was a better format, but just it never took off, you know. I'd be the guy that bought the 8-track. Yeah. Okay. You know, cart. I'd be the guy that, well, I was the guy that bought the Betamax. I'm the guy that goes, when I was offered a 911 Porsche, a secondhand 911, I bought a Renault Fuego. Oh my gosh. So I can work that one out. I have a story for you. This guy is buying, this is in the 70s, and he's going to buy either a Ferrari or a De Tomaso Pantera. I forget what Ferrari model is, but it's probably like a 246 Dino or something, you know? And he goes, they're the same price at the time. They're both $ 30, 000, which in the 70s was like $ 200, 000, right? So, he gets the new kid on the block. He gets the De Tomaso. Jump to 2010 or something when this article is written. He's like, I chose poorly. The De Tomaso at the time is now worth $ 250, 000 maintained and everything. The Ferrari, I forget which model it was, but it's worth like in the millions. Yeah. I can tell you a story that's very similar. So I got a bit flush with some cash and I thought, I'm going to go and buy myself something, a nice toy, a car. So I went out for a classic. And so first one I saw was an Aston Martin DB6. Second one I saw was a Jaguar XK120 fixed head. The one I ended up buying was a Triumph TR6. The Triumph TR6 is currently worth about. Six grand? 40 grand, 45 grand. Really? Are they worth that much? Really? I'm talking Australian dollars, but yeah, somewhere around there for a really good one. I don't think it's that bad. The XK120, you're talking about 150, maybe 200,000. Oh my God. What's the estimate worth though? The DB6, you're talking about 250. Wow. A million. Fuck me. When I bought my 928, it was the 928 or the 911. The 911 was admittedly at the time twice as much, but the deviation between those two now, a 911 is like, without even thinking about it, they're like $ 50, 000. 928 struggles to get past $ 20, 000. The 928s are really good, actually. I think they're underrated. They're GT cars. They're highway. Yeah, they are, but they're just not affordable. That's a great car. But that would be me. I'd be off at a 911 or a 928, and I'd go the 928 because I thought, oh, that's going to be really good. V8. So as I drive away in my TR6 with my Betamax on the passenger seat, heading off with my Microtech Gafell microphones. Yeah. Into the sunset. The Aston and the VHS and U87. There you go. Well, that was fun. Is it over? The Pro Audio Suite. With thanks to Tribooth. And Austrian Audio. Recorded using Source Connect. Edited by Andrew Peters. And mixed by Robbo. Got your own audio issues? Justaskrobo.com. And tech support from George the Tech Whittem. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
