View other reviews for this product:
Sikosis « A lot of bang for your buck »
Published on 09/13/14 at 18:41Touted by Waves as the industry’s most popular plugin bundle, Gold certainly has a lot of bang for your buck. With 35 plugins to help you with producing, mixing and mastering your tracks, this bundle is a pretty good starting point for anyone wanting to mix in the box.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
There are some great, stand out plug ins in here - the V compressor and EQs add a lot of warmth. I use the H-Compressor a lot for parallel compression, and the L1 is my go to limiter. You also get access to a whole host of EQ, reverb, modulation effects, stereo imaging and Waves Tune LT (a plug in similar to Melodyne, allowing you to tune vocals - an essential effect in today’s music climate).
Waves do regular sales so it’s definitely worth waiting until you can get a discount (I got 50% off the retail price if I remember correctly). Waves also offer a 7 day free trial on all their plugins and bundles, so you can try before you buy, which is definitely worth doing (but don’t expect to get grips with the ins and outs of all the plugins in that time - there’s just way too much there!)
On the negative side, I found it quite hard work to install. But once it’s done it’s done (in fact I wouldn’t have remembered this at all had I not just read another review on the bundle!).
To be more specific regarding the installation, you have to install an application called Waves Licence Center (WLC). This requires you to set up an account and log in to receive your licence for the bundles/plugins you have bought or are demoing. It took a few attempts to download the bundle from WLC and at first I could not see the bundle in my DAW (Logic 9). I had to reinstall, restart, reinstall, restart a few times before it worked. I don't know what specifically I did the last time that was different than the other times, but it did work on the third attempt. You have to install WLC if you want to demo the bundle. It's free to demo so I would suggest demoing the bundle before you buy it and you can see if WLC causes any headaches for you.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall this is a good starting point to anyone getting into mixing their own tracks in the box. There is a wide choice of plug ins here and there is definitely an argument for using fewer plugins but really getting to know how they work, and I’m only really familiar with half the plug ins here (the ones I use on almost every mix I do).
However, if you can get this bundle in a sale you’ll find it’s cheaper than buying a few plugins individually, and you never know when you are going to need to use that Doppler or Metaflanger.
Pros
Wide range of plug ins
Professional sound
Cons
Installation can be time consuming
If it’s not on sale, you might want to wait until parting with you cash
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
There are some great, stand out plug ins in here - the V compressor and EQs add a lot of warmth. I use the H-Compressor a lot for parallel compression, and the L1 is my go to limiter. You also get access to a whole host of EQ, reverb, modulation effects, stereo imaging and Waves Tune LT (a plug in similar to Melodyne, allowing you to tune vocals - an essential effect in today’s music climate).
Waves do regular sales so it’s definitely worth waiting until you can get a discount (I got 50% off the retail price if I remember correctly). Waves also offer a 7 day free trial on all their plugins and bundles, so you can try before you buy, which is definitely worth doing (but don’t expect to get grips with the ins and outs of all the plugins in that time - there’s just way too much there!)
On the negative side, I found it quite hard work to install. But once it’s done it’s done (in fact I wouldn’t have remembered this at all had I not just read another review on the bundle!).
To be more specific regarding the installation, you have to install an application called Waves Licence Center (WLC). This requires you to set up an account and log in to receive your licence for the bundles/plugins you have bought or are demoing. It took a few attempts to download the bundle from WLC and at first I could not see the bundle in my DAW (Logic 9). I had to reinstall, restart, reinstall, restart a few times before it worked. I don't know what specifically I did the last time that was different than the other times, but it did work on the third attempt. You have to install WLC if you want to demo the bundle. It's free to demo so I would suggest demoing the bundle before you buy it and you can see if WLC causes any headaches for you.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall this is a good starting point to anyone getting into mixing their own tracks in the box. There is a wide choice of plug ins here and there is definitely an argument for using fewer plugins but really getting to know how they work, and I’m only really familiar with half the plug ins here (the ones I use on almost every mix I do).
However, if you can get this bundle in a sale you’ll find it’s cheaper than buying a few plugins individually, and you never know when you are going to need to use that Doppler or Metaflanger.
Pros
Wide range of plug ins
Professional sound
Cons
Installation can be time consuming
If it’s not on sale, you might want to wait until parting with you cash