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Hatsubai « Solid noise suppressor »
Published on 08/04/11 at 19:44Noise is something that's inevitable with recording, especially guitars. While you don't tend to experience it in a purely digital world with modelers and such (meaning they don't actively induce noise, although they can produce it), recording high gain guitars will pretty much always give you some sort of noise. To combat that, you can either use automation efficiently or just run a noise suppressor. I've done both methods with success. The Waves WMS noise suppressor is a very solid noise suppressor that gives you a lot of versatility. In fact, it's more versatile than most noise suppressors out there as it's more meant to clean up the sound than to actually be a normal noise suppressor, although you can use it for either application just fine. Listing the features of this would take awhile, but you mostly have different sliders that adjust frequencies of noise that you're looking to cancel out. To use it, just put it on whatever buss you want to reduce the noise from. I've never read the manual, but Waves tends to have great support, so I can't imagine you being left out in the dust if you're having issues.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
Waves plugins are some of the best out there, bar none. For one, they're cross platform. For a Mac user, that means the world. I'm always trying to support companies that support Mac, and Waves has been pretty good about that since the whole Intel switch. I've used these in Logic without any problems. Although they're 32 bit plugins, Logic will add a bridge to allow you to use them in a 64 bit environment as to not limit you to the amount of ram you can utilize. On top of that, these things are rock solid. I've never had a crash with Waves plugins at all.
OVERALL OPINION
This is a very solid plugin if you're looking to reduce noise from the overall track, and I find it works great for that. You can really sculpt where you want to reduce the noise and clean up the overall signal. It works awesome for some of those older analog recordings you may have laying around. You can use it as a normal gate, but I find that you're wasting a lot of features when you use it that way. A basic gate doesn't need to have as many features as this has. If you have some recordings you're looking to clean up, check this out, and I'm sure you'll be surprised.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
Waves plugins are some of the best out there, bar none. For one, they're cross platform. For a Mac user, that means the world. I'm always trying to support companies that support Mac, and Waves has been pretty good about that since the whole Intel switch. I've used these in Logic without any problems. Although they're 32 bit plugins, Logic will add a bridge to allow you to use them in a 64 bit environment as to not limit you to the amount of ram you can utilize. On top of that, these things are rock solid. I've never had a crash with Waves plugins at all.
OVERALL OPINION
This is a very solid plugin if you're looking to reduce noise from the overall track, and I find it works great for that. You can really sculpt where you want to reduce the noise and clean up the overall signal. It works awesome for some of those older analog recordings you may have laying around. You can use it as a normal gate, but I find that you're wasting a lot of features when you use it that way. A basic gate doesn't need to have as many features as this has. If you have some recordings you're looking to clean up, check this out, and I'm sure you'll be surprised.