Mixing – Analog or Digital?

A perennial topic among YouTube audio production channels is whether analog is better than digital and whether or not it even makes a difference. While I’m a video editor and not a mixer, the music projects that I have been involved with have all been recorded analog. Of course, in the past 20 years audio has been increasingly recorded and mixed purely in the digital realm. Although, sometimes analog pieces of gear were used for character and color.

Produce Like A Pro is a YouTube channel that I follow. Music producer Warren Huart frequently features videos by Grammy-nominated producer/engineer/mixer Marc Daniel Nelson. Many of these videos include downloadable session tracks that enable you to remix the songs in order to learn from the process.

I found this particular video (linked) of Nelson’s intriguing, because it tackled the analog/digital debate head-on. It’s from an older session of his in which he recorded and mixed the song “Traveling Light” by artist S. Joel Norman. As he explains in the video, most of the instrument tracks were “multed” – i.e. the mic signals were split and simultaneously recorded to 2″ analog multitrack tape, as well as directly into Pro Tools. Once the tape tracks were also ingested into Pro Tools, they could compare and pick whichever sounded the best. According to his commentary, the instrument tracks that were recorded to tape were preferred over those recorded directly to Pro Tools for this song. This is in keeping with the soul/gospel/RnB vibe of the song.

Doing my own remix

Since I like to mix some of these tunes (a hobby and to learn), I downloaded the tracks, dropped them into Logic Pro, and compared. As I first listened to the soloed tracks, the digital versions sounded better to me – louder and more open. My intent originally was to mix in Logic using mainly the built-in plug-ins. Unfortunately as I started to build the mix, I had trouble getting the right sound, especially with drums. Drums are often one of the hardest parts of the mix to get right. It’s usually the largest number of mics with the most leakage. Getting a drum kit to sound right and not like someone is pounding on cardboard boxes can take a mix engineer a lot of time.

I decided to change my approach and wherever possible, switch over to the tracks recorded to tape. Instantly the mix started to fall into line. This is a classic case of what sounds great in solo might not sound as good in combination with the rest of the mix. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is why veteran mixers always caution beginners not to fixate too much on making each individual track sound perfect on its own.

Along with the decision to change my approach, I also abandoned the idea of doing the whole mix with Logic’s native plug-ins. Don’t get me wrong. The tools included with Logic Pro are quite good. Their compressor and vintage EQ options are designed to emulate certain models of sought-after, classic analog gear. They just don’t use the licensed branding. I did still use them, but more sparsely.

Tracks -> Stacks -> Submix -> Output

My standard track layout for these mixes is to combine each instrument group into a summing track stack (a bus) – drums, guitar, bass, keys, vocals, etc. I usually route all of these instrument stems (buses) to a submix bus, which in turn is sent to the output. This allows me to mix levels and add plug-ins/processing at three stages – the track, the track stack, and the final submix bus. I don’t add any processing to the output bus. Only metering plug-ins are applied there.

For this project, I decided to use a modified approach. All instrument stems were routed to a separate instruments bus (minus any vocals). Then the combination of instruments, vocals, and choir were routed to the submix bus. The advantage of this type of film/TV mixing style is that I could adjust all instruments as a group on a single channel and balance them as a unit against the vocals and choir.

In the past I used to rely on hardware faders, but I don’t own a control surface. I also used to write live automation passes with the mouse, but I’ve gone away from doing that, too. Instead, I surgically add and adjust keyframes throughout the individuals tracks, as well as the stems. Usually I will balance out the mix this way before ever adding plug-ins. Those are there to sweeten – not to do the heavy lifting.

Mixing with plug-ins and channel strips

My main effects tool for this mix was the Waves Scheps Omni Channel plug-in, which I applied to each track stack (instrument group). Andrew Scheps is a renowned mixer who has partnered with Waves to develop the Omni Channel. The advantage to a channel strip is that you have multiple effects tools (filters, compression, EQ, etc) at your fingertips all within a single interface. It mimics a channel strip on an analog console. No need to open multiple plug-in windows.

I also have both SSL and Focusrite channel strip plug-ins, but I prefer the Scheps version. Instead of simply designing just another SSL or Neve copy, Scheps was able to pick and choose the character of different products to create a channel strip that he would like to use himself. It sounds great, has a ton of presets, and unlike the name-brand emulations, the modules within the plug-in can be expanded and re-arranged. When applying it to instrument stacks, I can really develop the character that I want to hear.

No mix is ever finished after the first pass. When I compared my mix to the official mix that’s available on Spotify, I noticed some distinct differences. The artist’s version had some additional overdubbed instrumentation (strings and some embellishments) that I didn’t have in the download. They also chose to delay the start of the choir after the breakdown mid-song. These are all subjective choices based on taste. Of course, the release mix has also been professionally mastered, which can make a big difference.

What bothered me in my mix was the lack of a really present bottom end. This is often the difference in amateur versus pro mixes. A top-level mixer like Marc Daniel Nelson is certainly going to be way better at it than I am. In addition, he might be mixing in a hybrid fashion using Pro Tools along with key pieces of analog gear that really improve the sound and help to sculpt the sonic qualities of a song.

In an effort to increase and improve the bottom end, I decided to swap the kick drum tracks recorded to tape for the digital versions. I also dropped the bass amp track in favor of only using the bass DI track. The second thing was to use Logic’s vintage graphic EQ to boost the kick drum and bass low frequencies. This particular plug-in emulates an API console EQ and is a good choice for the low end. 

In the modern era, live drum sounds are often replaced by drum samples. The samples are triggered by the live drums, so you still get the right feel and timing, but a better drum sound. Often a mixer will combine a bit of both. I don’t know whether or not that was done in the actual mix. I’m certainly not implying that it was. Nevertheless, this is a fairly common modern practice to get really killer drum kit mixes.

Dealing with recording reality

When you start playing with raw tracks, it’s inevitable that you’re going to listen to each in the solo mode. You quickly see that even the best recordings will have some wrinkles. For example, I don’t like when a singer or a voice-over artist takes huge breaths between phrases.  At first, I tried to mitigate these with De-Breath plug-ins – first Accusonus and later iZotope RX. Both introduced some annoying artifacts that I could hear in the mix. So I decided on the old-school approach, simply adding keyframes and ducking the vocal track at each breath. In doing so – and paying very close attention to the vocal, I also realized that some sort of gate must have been used during the recording. You could hear a track drop to silence as a last word faded between phrases. Riding levels helped to smooth these out, too.

Working with the bass track, I also noticed some “fizz” in the 3khz range. This appeared to be coming from the bass pick-ups. Noise reduction/restoration plug-in hurt the quality too much, so I used Logic’s parametric EQ to notch out this frequency.

Final thoughts

Circling back to the original analog versus digital debate, it simply comes down to preference and the genre of the music. If you grew up on the classic rock, country, or RnB/soul music of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, then you’ll probably prefer the sound of analog. After all, those recordings were usually made in the best studios, by mixers at the top of their game, and using the finest analog gear of the day. Can you reproduce those exact sounds on your own computer with bog standard plug-ins? Maybe, but unlikely. On the other hand, if your musical tastes go off in a different direction – electronica, hip hop, etc – then maybe digital will sound better to you. There is no right or wrong answer, since taste is personal.

The trick is starting with a great recording that gets you nearly there and then enhance it. To do that, learn the tools you already have. Every DAW comes with a great set of built-in plug-ins. There are also many free and/or inexpensive third-party plug-ins on the market. The upside is that you can apply multiple instances of a fancy name-brand emulation on each and every track of your mix, which would never be possible with the real hardware due to cost. The downside is that you have so many options out there, that a lot of users simply amass a collection of plug-ins that they have no idea how to use. This induces option-paralysis.

If you own a ton of plug-ins, it’s a good idea to ween yourself off of them. Focus on a select group and learn them well. Understand how they work and when to use them. As I’ve mentioned, I like Omni Channel, as well as the Logic plug-ins. If you are looking for a family of products, it’s hard to go wrong with any of the tools from iZotope, Sonible, and/or FabFilter. Music mixing is about taste and emotion. Be sure to preview your mixes for some trusted friends to get their feedback. After working for hours on a mix, you might be too close to it. Then refine as needed. In the end, if you are doing this for fun, then you have only yourself to please. Enjoy!

Click this link to listen to the remix on Vimeo.

©2023 Oliver Peters

Impressions of NAB 2023

2023 marks the 100th year of the NAB Convention, which started out as a radio gathering in New York City. This year you could add ribbons to your badges indicating the number of years that you’d attended – 5, 10, etc. My first NAB was 1979 in Dallas, so I proudly displayed the 25+ ribbon. Although I haven’t attended each one in those intervening years, I have attended many and well over 25.

Some have been ready to sound the death knell for large, in-person conventions, thanks to the pandemic and proliferation of online teleconferencing services like Zoom. 2019 was the last pre-covid year with an attendance of 91,500 – down from previous highs of over 100,000. 2022 was the first post-covid NAB and attendance was around 52,400. That was respectable given the climate a year ago. This year’s attendance was over 65,000, so certainly an upward trend. If anything, this represents a pent-up desire to kick the tires in person and hook back up with industry friends from all over the world. My gut feeling is that international attendance is still down, so I would expect future years’ attendance to grow higher.

Breaking down the halls

Like last year, the convention spread over the Central, North, and new West halls. The South hall with its two floors of exhibition space has been closed for renovation. The West hall is a three-story complex with a single, large exhibition floor. It’s an entire convention center in its own right. West hall is connected to the North hall by the sidewalk, an enclosed upstairs walkway, as well as the LVCC Loop (the connecting tunnel that ferries people between buildings in Teslas). From what I hear, next year will be back to the North, Central, and South halls.

As with most NAB conventions, these halls were loosely organized by themes. Location and studio production gear could mostly be found in Central. Post was mainly in the North hall, but next year I would expect it to be back in the South hall. The West hall included a mixture of vendors that fit under connectivity topics, such as streaming, captioning, etc. It also included some of the radio services.

Although the booths covered nearly all of the floor space, it felt to me like many of the big companies were holding back. By that I mean, products with large infrastructure needs (big shared storage systems, large video switchers, huge mixing desks, etc) were absent. Mounting a large booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center – whether that’s for CES or NAB – is quite costly, with many unexpected charges.

Nevertheless, there were still plenty of elaborate camera sets and huge booths, like that of Blackmagic Design. If this was your first year at NAB, the sum of the whole was likely to be overwhelming. However, I’m sure many vendors were still taking a cautious approach. For example, there was no off-site Avid Connect event. There were no large-scale press conferences the day before opening.

The industry consolidates

There has been a lot of industry consolidation over the past decade or two. This has been accelerated thanks to the pandemic. Many venerable names are now part of larger holding companies. For example, Audiotonix owns many large audio brands, including Solid State Logic, DiGiCo, Sound Devices, among others. And they added Harrison to their portfolio, just in time for NAB. The Sennheiser Group owns both Sennheiser and Neumann. Grass Valley, Snell, and Quantel products have all been consolidated by Black Dragon Capital under the Grass Valley brand. Such consolidation was evident through shared booth space. In many cases, the brands retained their individual identities. Unfortunately for Snell and Quantel, those brands have now been completely subsumed by Grass Valley.

A lot of this is a function of the industry tightening up. While there’s a lot more media production these days, there are also many inexpensive solutions to create that media. Therefore, many companies are venturing outside of their traditional lanes. For example. Sennheiser still manufactures great microphone products, but they’ve also developed the AMBEO immersive audio product line. At NAB they demonstrated the AMBEO 2-Channel Spatial Audio renderer. This lets a mixer take surround mixes and/or stems and turn them into 2-channel spatial mixes that are stereo-compatible. The control software allows you to determine the stereo width and amount of surround and LFE signal put into the binaural mix. In the same booth, Neumann was demoing their new KH 120-II near-field studio monitors.

General themes

Overall, I didn’t see any single trend that would point to an overarching theme for the show. AI/ML/Neural Networks were part of many companies’ marketing strategy. Yet, I found nothing that jumped out like the current public fascination with ChatGPT. You have to wonder how much of this is more evolutionary than revolutionary and that the terms themselves are little more than hype.

Stereoscopic production is still around, although I only found one company with product (Stereotec). Virtual sets were aplenty, including a large display by Vu Studios and even a mobile expando trailer by Magicbox for virtual set production on-location. Insta360 was there, but tucked away in the back of Central hall.

Of course, everyone has a big push for “the cloud” in some way, shape, or form. However, if there is any single new trend that seems to be getting manufacturers’ attention, it’s passing video over IP. The usual companies who have dealt in SDI-based video hardware, like AJA, Blackmagic Design, and Matrox, were all showing IP equivalents. Essentially, where you used to send SDI video signals using the uncompressed SDI protocol, you will now use the SMPTE ST 2110 IP protocol to send it through 1GigE networks.

The world of post production

Let me shift to post – specifically Adobe, Avid, and Blackmagic Design. Unlike Blackmagic, neither Avid nor Adobe featured their usual main stage presentations. I didn’t see Apple’s Final Cut Pro anywhere on the floor and only one sighting in the press room. Avid’s booth was a shadow of itself, with only a few smaller demo pods. Their main focus was showing the tighter integration between Media Composer and Pro Tools (finally!). There were no Pro Tools control surfaces to play with. However, in their defense, NAMM 2023 (the large audio and music products exhibition) was held just the week before. Most likely this was a big problem for any audio vendor that exhibits at both shows. NAMM shifts back to January in 2024, which is its historical slot on the calendar.

Uploading media to the cloud for editing has been the mantra at Frame io, which is now under the Adobe wing. They’ve enhanced those features with direct support by Fujifilm (video) and Capture One (photography). In addition, Frame has improved features specific to the still photography market. New to the camera-to-cloud game is also Atomos, which demoed its own cloud-based editor developed by asset management developer Axle ai.

Adobe demoed the new, text-based editing features for Premiere Pro. It’s currently in beta, but will soon be in full release. In my estimation, this is the best text-based method of any of the NLEs. Avid’s script-based editing is optimized for scripted content, but doesn’t automatically generate text. Its strength is in scripted films and TV shows, where the page layout mimics a script supervisor’s lined script.

Adobe’s approach seems better for documentary projects. Text is generated through speech-to-text software within Premiere Pro. That is now processed on your computer instead of in the cloud. When you highlight text in the transcription panel, it automatically marks the in and out points on that source clip. Then, using insert and overwrite commands while the transcription panel is still selected, automatically edit that portion of the source clip to the timeline. Once you shift your focus to the timeline, the transcription panel displays the edited text that corresponds to the clips on the timeline. Rearrange the text and Premiere Pro automatically rearranges the clips on the timeline. Or rearrange the clips and the text follows.

Meanwhile over at Blackmagic Design’s massive booth, the new DaVinci Resolve 18.5 features were on full display. 18.5 is also in beta. While there are a ton of new features, it also includes automatic speech-to-text generation. This felt to me like a work-in-progress. So far, only English is supported. It creates text for the source and you can edit from the text panel to the timeline. However, unlike Premiere Pro, there is no interaction between the text and clips in the timeline.

I was surprised to see that Blackmagic Design was not promoting Resolve on the iPad. There was only one demo station and no dedicated demo artist. I played with it a bit and it felt to me like it’s not truly optimized for iPadOS yet. It does work well with the Speed Editor keyboard. That’s useful for any user, since the Cut page is probably where anyone would do the bulk of the work in this version of Resolve. When I used the Apple Pencil, the interface lacked any feedback as icons were clicked. So I was never quite sure if an action had happened or not when I used the Pencil. I’m not sure many will do a complete edit with Resolve on the iPad; however, it could evolve into a productive tool for preliminary editing in the field.

Here’s an interesting side note. Nearly all of the Blackmagic Design demo pods for DaVinci Resolve were running on Apple’s 24″ candy-colored iMacs. Occasionally performance was a bit sluggish from what I could tell. Especially when the operator demoed the new Relight feature to me. Nevertheless, they seemed to work well throughout the show.

In other Blackmagic news, all of the Cloud Store products are now shipping. The Cintel film scanner gets an 8mm gate. There are now IP versions of the video cards and converters. There’s an OLPF version of the URSA Mini Pro 12K and you can shoot vertical video with the Pocket Cinema Camera that’s properly tagged as vertical.

Of course, not everyone wants their raw media in the cloud and Blackmagic Design wasn’t showing the only storage products. Most of the usual storage vendors were present, including Facilis, OpenDrives, Synology, OWC, and QNAP. The technology trends include a shift away from spinning drives towards solid state storage, as well as faster networking protocols. Quite a few vendors(like Sonnet) were showing 25GbE (and faster) connections. This offers a speed improvement over the 1GbE and 10GbE ports and switches that are currently used.

Finally, one of the joys of NAB is to check out the smaller booths, where you’ll often find truly innovative new products. These small start-ups often grow into important companies in our industry. Hedge is just such a company. Tucked into a corner of the North hall, Hedge was demonstrating its growing portfolio of essential workflow products. Another start-up, Colourlab AI shared some booth space there, as well, to show off Freelab, their new integration with Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

That’s a quick rundown of my thoughts about this year’s NAB Show. For other thoughts and specific product reviews, be sure to also check out NAB coverage at Pro Video Coalition, RedShark News, and postPerspective. There’s also plenty of YouTube coverage.

Click on any image below to view an NAB slideshow.

©2023 Oliver Peters

Software Subscriptions

A decade ago Adobe launched its Creative Cloud subscription model to mixed reactions. On March 27th, the audio plug-in developer Waves once again raised the ire of the creative community by switching to a subscription model. Let’s dig deeper into the topic.

Prior to the digital era, when a company built a recording studio or a post facility, they invested in physical hardware – mixing desks, switchers, edit controllers, etc. These were assets on the ledger that had value if the company decided to sell. Once the industry moved to software tools, those no longer functioned as assets with any value. You could sell the building and furnishings, but no one wanted the old software. That’s assuming you could easily transfer licenses. Instead of an asset, software became an ongoing operational expense.

In response to this shift, many software companies have introduced a SaaS (software as a service) subscription model and dropped perpetual licensing options. To understand this, first take a look as any of your EULAs and you’ll quickly see that you never really own software and the company can make changes to the agreement as they see fit.

“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” – Darth Vader

To be fair, a company has the right to offer their products in any way they like. But, users are also free to accept or reject the company’s business model. The tougher part is how to correctly transition from one model to the next without alienating established users. SaaS models typically benefit both the developer and active, professional users.

Stepping aside from the subscription issue for a moment, there is a huge advantage to staying within a single ecosystem. That’s the big plus for Adobe users, but it is also an advantage for Mac users who purchase products through the Mac App Store. It’s easier to keep track of updates and make sure things are compatible, as opposed to a hodgepodge of unrelated third-party products.

When a company “sells” products with perpetual licenses, it becomes an act of juggling development costs and trying to estimate how many new sales will be generated. When you shift to a SaaS model, development and revenue projections become more predictable. According to Adobe, subscriptions also help combat software piracy. Obviously, companies like the model and many are shifting to it – Microsoft, Filmic, Avid, and many other plug-in developers. In fact, Waves is coming late to the idea of subscriptions.

In the case of media, Adobe Creative Cloud covers many applications used on a daily basis by working designers, editors, photographers, etc. Likewise, Waves (or other plug-ins) are used on a daily basis by professional mixers and recording engineers. However, the landscape of potential users has shifted over the past decade. Thanks to social media outlets, there are many more hobbyists and part-time content creators who are also using these tools. They are often not using the tools on a daily basis, so SaaS doesn’t work for them. There’s no incoming revenue to offset the expense. This group of users is far more interested in free and cheap tools, which thanks to software development, are bountiful. These users far surpass the professionals in whatever way you define that.

Waves has traditionally had a weird business model. While their plug-ins are usually quite good, the company has been selling them like they are the “Kmart blue light special” of the audio world. Plug-ins are listed with a retail price of several hundred bucks, but almost always are “on sale” in the range of $30-$50. As a casual user, I appreciate the low cost, but I can’t help but think this undervalues Waves.

The Waves product mix includes a lot of simple variations to what are more or less the same plug-ins, which tends to make the portfolio look larger than it is. You have to routinely pay for updates, which are priced proportionally to the number of plug-ins you have. The truth of the matter is that you can go for a few years and never need to pay for the upgrade. But, due to an OS change or a move to Apple Silicon, you can’t avoid it and may get hit with a surprisingly large invoice.

When Waves shifted to subscription, they made two huge mistakes. First, it was done overnight with no advance warning. Second, all perpetual licenses were frozen without the ability to update. They’d continue to work, but at some future date might not work any longer. The Waves Creative Access subscription plan itself includes two tiers: Waves Essential (110 plug-ins for $14.99/mo) and Waves Ultimate (all 220 plug-ins for $24.99/mo). But there are some important details. The Essential plan is not just any 110 plug-ins, but rather a curated group. You might find that certain key plug-ins that you need require the Ultimate plan.

Needless to say the nature of the change and the lack of advanced communication caused an uproar in the online audio community, with plenty of negative posts by YouTube influencers. Anyone familiar with how Apple handled the transition from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X should have seen this coming. Learning from the past can head off a lot of embarrassment.

The Waves Creative Access plan doesn’t seem to me to be one that really has professional users in mind either. Seriously, what pro studio uses 220 Waves plug-ins? I think the company is trying to entice casual users to pick up more Waves plug-ins than they are now using. And to experiment with some that they might not have otherwise thought about using. That’s good, but it opens Waves up to a world that’s different than Adobe faced a decade ago.

Product promotion is often pushed through social media influencers, including many YouTube channels devoted to certain product types, such as audio. They usually are an affiliate with the company and earn revenue through affiliate links. Therefore, influencers are quite sensitive to the blowback that comes from angry comments on their channel. And so, having a formerly favorable influencer trash your product or company policies does impact sales.

I’m purely speculating now, but in the case of Waves, this may have also been coupled with back-channel feedback from other partners. For example, famous mixers and studios like Abbey Road, who have lent their names to branded products. Or large retailers, like B&H Photo, Thomann Music, or Sweetwater.

But wait! There’s a silver lining. On March 29th, Meir Shashoua, Waves CTO and Co-Founder, issued an open letter acknowledging the concerns and backtracking on the decision. According to the letter, plug-ins will once again continue to be available with perpetual licensing and updates, in addition to the Waves Creative Access subscription plans. At least at the time of this post, all Waves plug-ins are listed at $29.99. If they are sincere and continue with both models, then it’s a win-win for both professional users and hobbyists alike. After all, do you really need 220 plug-ins? It’s refreshing to see when the user voice actually has a positive impact. Hopefully trust isn’t violated again.

©2023 Oliver Peters

Chasing Analog Character

I started in radio and at one point considered a career as a recording engineer. But the path took me to TV and then video post-production instead. I do mix simple projects as part of being a video editor, but complex mixes tend to go out to an experienced audio professional running Pro Tools. Nevertheless, I do keep my hand in mixing music just for fun. Thanks to the internet, even if you don’t know a band to record, you can download high-quality multitracks to mix. It’s a good way to improve your chops for other types of mixes.

I’ve paid close attention to the trends in audio plug-ins and some of the better YouTube channels related to audio topics. Naturally, the internet algorithms push more of this content my way. One trend in analog-style plug-ins for the past few years has been to emulate the channel strips of some of the top audio mixing consoles from past decades.

A trip down analog lane

Originally audio consoles for mixing were variations of radio broadcast consoles. Mono at first, since AM radio was mono, and later stereo. The typical AM radio console in the 1950s and 1960s was a unit that sat on the desk and featured rotary volume knobs, aka pots (potentiometers), for each input. Above the pot sat a switch for on/off, output, and cueing (audition a record without going out over the air). Inputs were set for various mics, turntables, tape decks, and cartridge players. The console’s signal passed through an outboard brick wall limiter and then on to the transmitter.

As recording technology became more “sophisticated” (think The Beatles), console designs changed. Rotary pots were turned sideways and adjusted with a lever-style volume control (fader). At most, each input might have basic filtering/EQ controls. Coincidentally, multi-track recording also came into its own, with recorders shifting from mono and stereo to 4 and 8-track configurations. Therefore, these consoles were designed to have direct outputs. Mic input 1 (fader 1) was sent out through the fader control directly to channel 1 of the recorder, mic 2 (fader 2) to channel 2, and so on. In the early days, having even an 8-track recorder was uncommon, so consoles were still relatively small. The classic example is the REDD console used by Abbey Road Studios.

As recorders advanced and track counts increased (16, 24, 32, and eventually synced 24-track machines for 48 tracks), so did the console sizes. Fader design also evolved to a flat slider, allowing for tighter spacing and more inputs. The mixing console sitting on the desk gave way to large mixing consoles that were the “desk.” While there were and are many different manufacturers, Neve, API (Automated Processes, Inc), and SSL (Solid State Logic) are ones that stand out. These were the consoles often used in studios where some of the iconic rock LPs of the 70s, 80s, and 90s were recorded.

Solid State Logic

The SSL 4000 E was introduced in 1979 as the first mixing desk with integrated dynamics processing on every channel. It also featured a master bus compressor in the center section. I’m familiar with the classic SSL 4000 E series desk, which was the Audio 1 mix console we installed in 1989 at Century III at Universal Studios Florida. The biggest characteristic of this mixing desk is the channel strip, which is what plug-in developers try to emulate today. The SSL 4000 E is quite possibly the most emulated channel strip plug-in of them all.

Vintage SSL analog consoles are still prized gear in many modern studios. The general signal flow of the console goes something like this. During live recording each input channel takes a mic feed, processes it, and sends it back out to the tape deck via a direct output. Then, in playback that same tape recorder channel feeds the line input of the same SSL channel for further processing. The mixed output passes through the center section of the console for the final stereo mix.

The key selling point was and is the integrated processing on each channel, including mic preamps, filters, gate/expander, EQ (equalizer), and compressor. A studio wouldn’t need to buy tons of outboard gear for EQ and compression, because most of what you needed was already in the console. In addition, classic SSL desks, like most mixing consoles, included a patch panel so that outboard gear could be patched and inserted into any of the channel strips. This is the origin for effects inserts common on the software mixer panels of most DAWs and NLEs.

More importantly for mixing engineers, all of the common processing controls are at your fingertips. No need to reach around to a rack to adjust an EQ or compressor, since you can dial in a knob right there on the strip. Only specialized items like a Lexicon reverb or Eventide Harmonizer require moving away from the desk.

Studios standardized on certain console brands, because of the sonic qualities characterized by the design of each manufacturer. To a critical ear, a Neve analog console sounds different than an SSL. Each has a different mojo, thanks to the electronics under the hood, curves selected for EQ and compression, and more. Aside from the physical layout of the strip itself, it’s this sonic mojo that developers like Waves are trying to emulate when they license and release a channel strip plug-in that models a classic brand and design. Even the original companies like SSL have their own flavor of these plug-ins.

Moving into the digital realm

Like all hardware manufacturers, modern SSL mixing products include digital, as well as hybrid console designs. The hybrid desks feature a combination of hardware surfaces and software effects processing. However, most users are running DAWs (digital audio workstation). These applications feature a user interface with mixing panels that mimic the fader array of a classic mix desk. But few include the full array of tools that a classic analog console offered as part of the built-in software channel strips. Apps like Logic Pro or Fairlight (within Resolve) do include in-line EQ and/or compression. But, the general approach has been to rely on native or third-party plug-ins inserted into the strip.

If you want a certain compressor, insert it into one of the available slots above the fader. Click the plug-in to open it and adjust the settings. Unfortunately, if you have both a third-party EQ and compressor applied, then you have to open two different plug-ins, many of which feature skeuomorphic designs to emulate the look of the real hardware – some larger, some smaller. Your screen starts to get rather cluttered, especially if you are doing this on several channels at the same time.

A new trend has been emerging, probably due in part to Universal Audio’s Luna DAW. This application is focused on mixing and takes more of an analog approach than other DAWs. Not only is the approach different, but it also strives to infuse the sonic qualities of analog gear. So now we are seeing a wide range of new third-party channel strip plug-ins, which each attempt to emulate the look and sound of the channel strip portions of classic analog mixing desks.

The truth about analog emulation

The color, warmth, or character associated with the analog sound is due to imperfections. An old chief engineer of mine referred to EQs, compressors, and similar devices as “controlled distortion devices.” Analog hardware uses components, like resistors and capacitors, which were and are all subject to a variance in tolerances, aging, and worse.

When a plug-in developer makes a licensed digital plug-in designed to emulate some piece of classic gear, they are often working from schematics of the design or maybe a working version of the actual piece of gear. However, if they are trying to emulate a console channel strip, odds are that they are modeling a single version or only a single input. In reality, the signal flowing through each channel of an SSL or Neve console is going to be slightly different from one to the next. That’s a result of the variances in the electronics for things like harmonic distortion, even though they may still be well within the design specs. Although extremely minor, channel 1 might sound different from channel 2 and so on.

Listen to experienced mixers talking about their favorite studios and you’ll quickly learn they always sent drums through specific channels, guitars through others, etc – simply because of these variances. If you loaded up Pro Tools with a Waves SSL 4000 E plug-in on each channel of a mix, it would not sound identical to a mix done on an actual SSL console. Furthermore, a vintage analog console today that’s in good condition has often been recapped – meaning, capacitors and other aged electronic parts have been replaced. This affects the sound. A mix on a vintage SSL today might also sound different than on that same console when it was new 30 years ago. A lot of this chase for the ideal analog sound is rather Quixotic.

To emulate these minor variations, Brainworx integrates TMT (Tolerance Modeling Technology) into their channel strip plug-ins (AMEX 9099, SSL 9000 J, Focusrite SC, SSL 4000 E). They have modeled 72 slight differences, intended to reproduce the channel-to-channel sonic variations of a real console. If you apply one of these channel strip plug-ins to multiple inputs, you can opt to set the TMT setting to all be the same number (1-72), be sequential, or be random.

When you click the TMT button to random, then each plug-in uses a different model from the 72 choices. You can opt to re-randomize the order and in doing so, get a slightly different sound to the mix. Do this a number of times until you get the magical combination that you like. While the differences may be trivial, I can attest that the changes are real. Of course, you are applying this to different sounding instruments in a mix anyway, so does it really matter? You decide.

Turning your DAW into an analog desk

We are so enamored with the analog sound, that this has taken many different turns. For  example, Pro Tools now includes a plug-in/feature called HEAT (Harmonically Enhanced Algorithm Technology). Quoting from the Avid website: “HEAT does more than just warm-up your sound – it actually fuses the color characteristics of vintage analog consoles, vacuum tube circuits, and analog tape into your mix using high-quality, sophisticated algorithms. In the analog world, euphonic characteristics are introduced across individual audio tracks when mixing on an analog console or tracking to analog tape. HEAT works similarly, processing all audio tracks individually. But it also gives you the power to tweak its Drive and Tone controls globally to get the sound you want, whether that means something richer, brighter, smoother, or livelier. You can also A/B individual tracks or the entire mix to compare your handiwork, choose a pre or post insert state, or bypass HEAT altogether.”

A similar approach using the channel strip interface is featured in the Waves CLA Mixhub. Noted recording engineer Chris Lord-Alge has partnered with Waves to produced a number of CLA-branded plugins. CLA Mixhub is his variation on an SSL-style channel strip. You can apply the plug-in to up to 64 tracks. By assigning channels to “buckets” – 8 channels per bucket, 8 buckets total – it enables you to work more like you would on a traditional console. Click an instance of the plug-in the single view and you see the traditional SSL-style adjustments: EQ, filters, dynamics, etc. Click to bucket view and you’ll see a group of eight inputs at a time. Now you can select between each of the sections. This enables you to work with eight EQs or eight compressors all at once, much like you would on a real console. To my knowledge, no other plug-in works this way… yet.

Of course, Waves is a popular plug-in developer and they offer many other choices for channel strips. One of my favorites is the Andrew Scheps Omni Channel. Scheps is also a top mixer who has lent his name to several plug-ins. Rather than do his version of an SSL or Neve channel strip, Scheps had Waves combine the tools he likes best, taking a little bit from a variety of analog tools. Not only does it include many useful tools in a single plug-in, but you can re-arrange the signal flow order. Want to swap the compressor before the EQ, or Gate before the de-esser? No problem. There’s also an insert slot to add in other available Waves plug-ins on your system.

I’ve spent a lot of this post talking about plug-ins that look, feel, and sound like vintage, analog hardware. Yet, there are modern approaches to a channel strip as well. iZotope’s Nectar, Neutron, and Ozone are exactly that. In the end, the appeal to a channel strip is ergonomics. All of the important processing is there close at hand without the need to open multiple plug-ins each with different interfaces. Not only should they sound great, but they should be easy to use and help you get to a great mix quickly.

As I’ve stated before, these plug-ins are all designed first and foremost for audio applications. Most will work within editing applications, too, although with some exceptions. Test a trial version before you commit. But, if you’re chasing an analog sound and mixing experience, many of these tools are worth your experimentation.

Addendum: During the last week of March, Waves abruptly changed its business policy from perpetual licensing to a pure subscription model. Later in the week they backtracked and announced that both perpetual and subscription options would be available after all. More on that in the next blog post.

©2023 Oliver Peters

The Oscar. Now what?

Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated the Academy Awards night, including winning the Best Film Editing award for Paul Rogers. The team used Adobe Premiere Pro as their NLE of choice. By extension this becomes the first editing Oscar win for Premiere. Of course, it’s the team and editor that won the award, not the software that they used. Top editors could cut with any application and get the same result.

The Academy Awards started as a small celebratory dinner for insiders to recognize each other’s achievements in film. Over the decades this has become a major cultural event. Winning or even being nominated is a huge feather in the cap for any film. This can be heavily leveraged by the marketing teams of not only the film distributors and talent agents, but also the various products used in the process – be that cameras or software.

Avid’s dominance

When it comes to editing, Avid has been the 800-pound gorilla in the modern digital era. Ever since Walter Murch won for editing The English Patient using Media Composer, the specific NLE on an Oscar-winning film has become a hot topic among editors. This was never the case when the only options were Moviola, KEM, or Steenbeck.

Even this year nine out of the ten nominees for the Oscar for Best Picture and four out of the five nominees for Best Film Editing used Media Composer. Yet, Avid’s dominance in the winner’s circle has seen some occasional cracks from competitors, like Apple’s Final Cut Pro (legacy version) and Lightworks. Nevertheless, Media Composer is still a safe bet. And let’s not forget sound, where Pro Tools has even less competition from other DAWs among film and TV sound editors and mixers. All of the nominees for the Oscar for Best Sound at this year’s Academy Awards used Pro Tools.

There are, of course, many awards competitions around the world, including the ACE Eddie Awards, BAFTA, Golden Globes, and others, including various film festivals. Many of these don’t give out specific craft awards for editors or editing; however, a lot of these winning films have been edited with other tools. For example, many award-worthy indie films, especially documentaries, have been edited with Premiere Pro. Even Final Cut Pro (the current “X” version) has had wins in such categories. This includes wins for the short films, The Silent Child and Skin at the 2018 and 2019 Academy Awards.

Stacking up the NLE competitors

The truth of the matter is that today, there are seven viable applications that might be used to cut a professional feature film or documentary: Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, Edius X, and Vegas Pro. You could probably also factor in others, such Final Cut Pro 7 (now zombie-ware) and Media 100 (yes, still alive), not to mention consumer-oriented NLEs like iMovie or Movie Maker. Realistically, most experienced film editors are likely to only use one of the first five on the list.

Of those five, Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the app that most editors have their eyes on. Aside from its widespread use in color correction, Resolve is also a perfectly capable editing application. Although it has yet to pull off an Oscar win for editing, Resolve has been widely used in many aspects of the production and post workflow of top films. Owing to its nature as a “Swiss Army Knife” application, Resolve fits into various on-set, editing, and visual effects niches. It’s only a matter of time before Resolve gets an Oscar win for editing. But other Blackmagic Design products also shouldn’t be overlooked. In the 2023 Academy Awards, more than 20 films across the technical, documentary, short film, international feature film, and animated categories used some Blackmagic Design product.

Marketing

When an application is used on an award-winning film, I’d bet that the manufacturer’s marketing department is doing high-fives. But does this really move the sales needle? Maybe. It’s all aspirational marketing. They want you to feel that if you use the same software as an Oscar-winning film editor used, then you, too, could be in that league. Talent is always the key factor, but we can all dream. Right? That’s what marketing plays upon, but it also impacts the development of the application itself.

Both Avid and Adobe have been fine-tuning their tools with professional users in mind for years. They’ve added features based on the needs of a small, but influential (or at least vocal) market sector. This results in applications that tick most of the professional boxes, but which are also harder to learn and eventually master.

That’s a route Apple also chose to pursue with Final Cut Pro 1 through 7. Despite a heralded introduction with Cold Mountain in 2003, it took until 2010 before Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter nailed down an Oscar with The Social Network. They then reprised that in 2011 with a win for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even as late as 2020, the discontinued FCP 7 was represented by Parasite, winning Best Picture and nominated for Best Film Editing.

Apple and Final Cut Pro’s trajectory unexpectedly changed course with the introduction of Final Cut Pro X. This shift coincided with the growth of social media and a new market of many non-traditional video editors. Final Cut Pro in its current iteration is the ideal application for this market and has experienced a huge growth in users. But, it still gets labelled as being not ready for professional users, even though a ton of professional content is posted using the app. Apple took the platform approach – opting to leave out many advanced features and letting third party developers fill in the gaps where needed. This is the core of much of the criticism.

How advanced/complex does a professional NLE really need to be?

In the case of FCP, it’s certainly capable of Hollywood-level films along with a range of high-end, international dramas. Witness the many examples I’ve written about, like Focus, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Voice from the Stone, The Banker, Jezebel, and Blood Red Sky.  However, a wide range of professional editors would like to see more.

The internal corporate discussion goes like this. Marketing asks, “What do we have to do to get broader adoption among professional film editors?” Engineering answers, “It will take X dollars and X amount of time.” Top management asks, “What’s the return if we do that?” And that’s usually where the cycle stops, until the next year or awards season.

The truth is that the traditional high-end post market is extremely small for a company like Apple. The company is already selling hardware, which is their bread and butter. Will a more advanced version of FCP sell more hardware? Probably not. Avid, Adobe, and Blackmagic Design are already doing that for them. On the other hand, what is more influential for sales in today’s market – Oscar-winning professional editors or a bevy of YouTube influencers touting your product?

I’m not privy to sales numbers, so I have no idea whether or not going after the very small professional post market makes financial sense for either Blackmagic Design or Adobe. In the case of Avid, their dominance pays off through their ecosystem. Avid-based facilities are also likely to have Avid storage and Pro Tools audio facilities. Hardware most likely covers the development costs. Plus, both Avid and Adobe have shifted to subscription models (Adobe fully, Avid as an option). This seems to be good for both companies.

Blackmagic Design is also a hardware developer and manufacturer. Selling cameras and a wide range of other products enables them to offer DaVinci Resolve for as little as free. You’d be hard-pressed to find a production company that wasn’t using one or more Blackmagic products. Only time will tell which company has taken the approach that a) ensures their long term survival, and b) benefits professional film editors in the best way. In the case of Apple, it’s pretty clear that adding new feature to Final Cut Pro will generate more revenue in an amount that many competitors would envy. Yet, it would be small by Apple’s measurement.

In the end, awards are good for a developer’s marketing buzz, but don’t forget the real team that won the award itself. It’s wonderful for Paul Rogers and Adobe that Everything Everywhere All at Once was tapped for the Oscar for Best Film Editing. It’s an interesting milestone, but when it comes to software, it’s little more than bragging rights. Great to have, but remember, it’s Rogers that earned it, regardless of the tools he used.

©2023 Oliver Peters