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Hatsubai « Interesting take on bass mixing »
Published on 07/01/11 at 17:07Jack Joseph Puig is a famous, award-winning music engineer who's done everything from U2 to 311. Considering his popularity, it was only natural that he would get some famous mixing/mastering plugins, and Waves stepped up to build and offer them to the public. This plugin has different modes to select between a DI, amp synth, sensitivity, main, input, master, comp, low and high knobs, meter select switches to select different monitoring modes, center fades to select between edge, attack, width, sub, presence and length. There are tons of different features built into this, and it's a pretty unique take on mixing. Instead of adding tons of different EQs and compressors, this has everything built-in with some visual sliders to move instead of knobs to turn.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
When it comes to compatibility, Waves plugins are king. I never once had an issue when running a Waves plugin in my DAW. They're cross platform compatible, so this plugin can be used on both Windows and OS X. They do have one issue, however; these plugins are 32 bit. Today's world is 64 bit, and the 32 bit plugins can be a bit annoying as a separate bridge program usually needs to be activated for them to work in a 64 bit environment. Aside from that, the plugin is awesome. The plugin doesn't take up too much RAM, and considering you might be using multiple instances of this plugin, that's a good thing. I've been using the Mercury bundle for probably half a year or so now, so I've had a fair bit of experience with these plugins.
OVERALL OPINION
The plugin itself is good, without a doubt. However, when I'm tracking bass for metal, I do things a bit differently. If it's just one bass track, I'll add some slight distortion, run a high pass and low pass filter, add some slight compression and be done with it. I generally don't need extreme EQs or tons of heavy compression to get it to stand out in the mix. In fact, the goal is to make it be in the mix but not dominate it, and I find myself over utilizing these sliders more than anything. This is more of an issue with the way I mix rather than the plugin itself, so I can't rate it down too much.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
When it comes to compatibility, Waves plugins are king. I never once had an issue when running a Waves plugin in my DAW. They're cross platform compatible, so this plugin can be used on both Windows and OS X. They do have one issue, however; these plugins are 32 bit. Today's world is 64 bit, and the 32 bit plugins can be a bit annoying as a separate bridge program usually needs to be activated for them to work in a 64 bit environment. Aside from that, the plugin is awesome. The plugin doesn't take up too much RAM, and considering you might be using multiple instances of this plugin, that's a good thing. I've been using the Mercury bundle for probably half a year or so now, so I've had a fair bit of experience with these plugins.
OVERALL OPINION
The plugin itself is good, without a doubt. However, when I'm tracking bass for metal, I do things a bit differently. If it's just one bass track, I'll add some slight distortion, run a high pass and low pass filter, add some slight compression and be done with it. I generally don't need extreme EQs or tons of heavy compression to get it to stand out in the mix. In fact, the goal is to make it be in the mix but not dominate it, and I find myself over utilizing these sliders more than anything. This is more of an issue with the way I mix rather than the plugin itself, so I can't rate it down too much.