The Waves Ltd. Maxx Bass plug-in is a bass enhancer designed for uses of all types, including for film and post production. I’ve only used the plug-in for musical purposes however, so that’s what I’ll be focusing on here in this review. I believe you can purchase this one individually, but I got it along with the full collection of Waves plug-ins. I know it’s available in most of the major Waves plug-in bundles as well. Using the plug-in isn’t too difficult, although it’s not as simple as the Renaissance Bass plug-in which is basically a simpler version of this. For starters, you have control over the frequency you’d like to go up, as well as a built in dynamics processor with control for ratio and response. It then has a high pass for controlling the harmonics which also has a decay parameter. There are then sliders for controlling the level of the original bass, the input level, and the maxxbass level. The plug-in will show you when you’re clipping as well as the overall output level you’re sending. It definitely shares the same kind of user friendly interface you’re going to get with most of the Waves plug-ins, while still maintaining a great deal of control here. I have no need to look at the manual for this one, but check it out if you feel lost at all.


SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I’m running the Waves Ltd. Maxx Bass plug-in on my system at home but since I do a good amount of going back and forth between my home studio and the professional studio that I work at, I’ve used it on a few different systems. However, I’m mostly using it at home with Pro Tools 9 and a Mac Book Pro lap top that has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM. The plug-in doesn’t seem like it’s taking up much of my processing power, although I’ve never really had a need to run more than two or three instances at a time.



OVERALL OPINION

While I do find myself using the Waves Renaissance Bass plug-in quite a bit for it’s simplicity, if I’m looking to get a bit more in depth when it comes to bass enhancing, Maxx Bass is the place I will go to. As I stated earlier I’ve only used this for musically purposes for beefing up a bass guitar or kick drum, but I can definitely see how it would also be helpful in film as well. It certainly does as advertised as you can add a serious amount of bass to your sound pretty quickly and easily here. It’s not exactly like just boosting up the low frequencies in an equalizer as it’s more in depth than that and it shows in the sound. Definitely try out the demo for MaxxBass if you’re at all thinking about it as it’s well worth the time to potentially have a serious bass booster like this one…