Quality Budget Gear Ep. 01: Plugins
New series coming at ya!
This one is called “High Quality Gear on a Budget”
It’s tough to know where to start when it comes to buying gear, and it can get expensive quickly.
This series will have specific gear recommendations, of course. But, it’s also designed to teach the proper questions to ask when setting up your studio, with the aim of getting great sounds for a reasonable investment.
We’ll start off talking about plugins!
A plugin is a little piece of software you can add-on to your computer recording program, to make it do different things. This won’t apply if you’re using a prosumer DAW like Garageband, where you don’t have the ability to add custom plugins. But, Garageband does come with some useful, basic tools built in.
A plugin can be a creative audio effect, a specific tool used for mixing, or really anything that would be able to modify audio in a computer recording environment.
Best Audio Plugins for Beginners
As you’re starting to build your home recording studio, it’s a good idea to get started using plugins with a set of free ones to experiment on. This way, you can see what kinds of tools you end up using the most, and get nicer versions of them. Being more focused in your plugin purchases, based on experience you get for free, is a very cost-effective way of learning how these tools work.
Melda Productions is a plugin production company that offers a comprehensive suite of free plugins, available for anyone to download and experiment with. This is what we recommend starting out with, if you’ve never used custom plugins before. Here’s the link:
https://www.meldaproduction.com/effects/free
Try using a few of these tools and see what you find useful. We recommend starting with a basic parametric equalizer and a basic compressor. The digital Multimeter plugin is also a highly useful tool for real-time analysis of your mixers, particularly when it comes to phase correlation (an article on particular phase quirks involving Ableton Live can be found here).
Plugin caveats
Plugins are one of the best ways to end up with a bunch of random software in your DAW that you never use. Why?
There are tons of plugins you could buy, a lot of them are great, a lot of them are meh, and it's hard to know the difference until you've got some experience. This leads to many musicians attempting to gain that experience by buying large bundles of plugins and spending large amounts of money on failed experiments. Experimentation is great, some waste is unavoidable, but you can minimize by keeping a general statement in mind:
“A large amount of tools does not a great carpenter make.”
The knowledge and experience to decide what tools to reach for is far more valuable than having a huge toolbox of gear you don't know what to do with. So, starting off with less tools combined with great mentors that show you how to use them is a much straighter path to getting the sounds you want.
Don’t be the guy with the Ferrari who leaves it parked in the garage all day.
If you were building a house, would you expect success if you grabbed some random tool out of a huge box and just started flailing it around? No way-success would come in the form of looking at a situation, assessing the best tool for the job, and applying it with purpose. Less tools, more intentionally used.
Note: this statement applies to the technical production side of the field, not always the writing side.
If you're still trying to write the song, you want as many instruments as possible within arms reach at all times, to keep you in creative flow. No overthinking.
Applying this same logic when to comes time to record, mix, and master the song is where a lot of creatives get off course.
This is where a creative engineer who can also think technically earns their keep; a great engineer can make a song sound lovely using a minimum of basic tools, combined with a practiced hand. Focus on developing the practiced hands!
How to get started using plugins
You only really need a few basic items to start, plugin wise:
1. A parametric EQ that lets you solo individual bands. Fabfilter ProQ is an industry standard here.
2. A basic digital compressor: several different circuit “flavors” (VCA, Optical, FET, etc) are useful for different types of material.
3. A nice digital (convolution) reverb with many different reverb presets built-in.
4. A way to mix, either an analog board, or the digital mixer within your DAW. These are for volume and panning moves, among other things.
Hint: this is why I usually recommend Logic Pro as a great DAW for the serious home recordist.
Logic has most of these basics items built-in, and they’re of generally strong quality. The built-in Space Designer reverb, and the suite of built-in compressors will take you years to max out, from a skills perspective.
Max out these basic tools with learned skills and practice first, before you go crazy buying overly expensive plugin bundles!
