The 2024 DIY Final Cut Studio

A decade ago I wrote about the wider collection of apps that you might need as part of a broader Final Cut Pro-centric ecosystem. But it’s time for an updated look. In the waning years of Final Cut Pro “legacy” the Apple pro applications were bundled as Final Cut Studio. With the introduction of Final Cut Pro X, you had a lower cost app, but had to augment it with the missing pieces that were appropriate for more involved workflows.

Some are fans of Final Cut Pro as their main NLE. Others use it because it’s an alternative to subscription plans. Adobe Creative Cloud is the most comprehensive of these, so let’s look at what it would take to replace that level of functionality in a modern Final Cut Pro bundle.

Core Applications

To start, combine all of the Apple pro applications, including Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, and Logic Pro. This covers you for editing, motion graphics, compression/encoding, and audio recording and mixing. Granted, the last one is optional for most video editors, but this lines up as an alternative to Adobe Audition – and a much better one at that. Since Compressor will not encode certain formats, I would also suggest adding Shutter Encoder (donation requested) to your video toolkit.

Photo / graphics

Apple has conceded graphic design applications to Adobe and others. But if you want to avoid subscriptions, then Pixelmator and Affinity (now owned by Canva) are the two best options for graphics and design. Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher form equivalents to Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and In Design. Pixelmator Pro isn’t as broad; however, it supports both raster and vector graphics.

Unfortunately, Apple dropped its popular Aperture application in favor of Photos. This is a lightweight mashup of Aperture and iPhoto. While it’s deceptively more full-featured than you might think at first glance, a good upgrade is Photomator from the folks at Pixelmator. There are certainly other options, but these two companies fit well into the Apple ecosystem.

Interoperability / augmentation 

Speech-to-text is an exciting and valuable new area for editors and a must-have for many editorial workflows. Final Cut Pro lags behind Premiere Pro and Resolve in this area, so – third-party apps to the rescue. A good option is the free Jojo Transcribe. Use this to generate text, which can then be brought into Final Cut Pro for captioning.

If you need to interchange editorial files with other shops that use different applications, then you will need to translate the editorial files from and into list formats not supported by Final Cut Pro. This includes interchange between FCP and Premiere Pro, as well as sending to Pro Tools. While you might only need some of these, the following interchange apps cover the bases: XtoCC, SendToX, EDL-X, Worx4 X, X2Pro Audio Convert, and Xsend Motion. The latter sends an FCP timeline to Motion as a Motion timeline and is available via FxFactory. The others can be bought from the Mac App Store.

Plugins

You can go crazy with plugins, so be judicious with your selections. FCP includes a lot of useful video effects and transitions from the get-go. If you own Motion, you can export Motion’s stock effects or your own, unique creations as Motion template effects and transitions. These will then augment the standard FCP load. For outside options, I like to stick with the same company for consistency, like CoreMelt, Boris FX, MotionVFX, or FxFactory. The free FxFactory installation comes with a few effects, or bump that up to Pro for more. This also operates as a plugin manager where you can purchase any additional FxFactory effects that fit your needs or that of a new project.

Aside from these selections, I would also recommend the free Boris FX BCC+ Looks filter. Boris FX offers many great tools, but BCC+ Looks a good starting point. If you need more color correction horsepower, then my choice would be Color Finale 2. It’s designed specifically for Final Cut Pro and operates as a high-end grading tool. Another useful add-on for film stock looks and effects in FilmConvert Nitrate.

As far as audio plugins are concerned, there are many great options for Logic Pro if you need more than the comprehensive selection that it comes with. However, be careful in using these within Final Cut Pro. They will show up, but many either don’t work correctly or not at all. Plus FCP does not use a track-based timeline, so it’s not really conducive for advanced mixing with a multitude of tracks. On the other hand, FxFactory offers three audio clean-up/restoration effects from Accentize, which are better than FCP’s stock enhancement and work well within this video application.

To wrap it up, you could dive in deep and get everything on this list. If you do, then you’ll have a toolkit that’s comparable to Adobe Creative Cloud in most aspects. Many of these are available through the Mac App Store. Some are even free. It will cost more on the front end than simply purchasing Final Cut Pro alone. However, over the course of one or two years, it will prove to be the cheaper option than the cumulative subscription fees of other companies, like Adobe. This is even more true if you own multiple machines on the same Apple ID. Last but not least, don’t forget DaVinci Resolve. While it’s certainly a viable option to much of this list on its own, the free version is a good item for the kit to augment FCP. Even if you don’t edit with it, Resolve is useful for batch transcoding, and of course, color correction. It’s available from the Blackmagic Design website or the Mac App Store.

Have fun building your 2024 DIY Final Cut Studio!

©2024 Oliver Peters

Nikon + RED – Assimilation or Innovation?

Wow! That was my reaction upon reading the news on Thursday morning that Nikon will be acquiring RED. While these things take time to be finalized, according to the Nikon statement, “RED will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nikon.” This news was unexpected by the industry and is bound to fuel chatter at next month’s NAB, even though RED hasn’t participated with a large booth for several years.

RED burst onto the scene in 2005 with the goal of creating a digital cinema camera with 4K recording capability. Up until that time, digital cameras used for motion pictures had included the “Panavised” Sony F900 HDCAM (Star Wars, Ep. II: Attack of the Clones) and Grass Valley Viper (Collateral). Both of these used a three-CCD sensor design that generated an HD image recording to an internal or external recorder. To compare, the original RED One and subsequent RED models use a single-chip, Bayer-pattern sensor. It can be argued that the combination of three 1920 x 1080 CCDs (R, G, and B) is actually of higher resolution than one 4K Bayer sensor, where the total number of monochrome pixels are filtered to be 2/4th green and 1/4th each for red and blue. RED’s models are now up to 8K, so that point is largely moot.

A feisty start-up

At their first NAB, RED could be found with a large alpine mountaineering tent as their booth and a long line of people waiting to see test images. Subsequent NAB booths were all interesting in their own way. At the beginning, RED’s founder, Jim Jannard (also founder of Oakley), was taking deposits for camera orders without a working camera yet. Many thought it was a scam, but as we know, RED delivered the goods. In those early years, the ever-present Ted Schilowitz was the face of RED, promoting the camera at many worldwide events.

From this early start, RED cameras became popular on major motion pictures, thanks in part to directors like Steven Soderbegh (Che), Peter Jackson (The Hobbit), and David Fincher (Gone Girl). According to Ars Technica, “at the peak of its movie market share in 2016, over 25 percent of the top 100 grossing domestic films were shot on RED cameras.” However, with Sony upping its cinema game and ARRI becoming a major digital camera provider with the Alexa, RED’s dominance has waned among the top tier of productions.

REDCODE – the secret sauce

The RED cameras internally record camera raw digital files at film speeds, using REDCODE – a Wavelet-based compressed codec. This software was the brainchild of developer Graeme Nattress and garnered RED a patent, which they have vigorously defended ever since. While my layman’s opinion is that the patent is dubious, I applaud RED for defending it as their intellectual property. Lawsuits between RED and other companies, related to the patent as well as other issues, have included LG, ARRI, Sony, Apple, Nikon, and more. This intellectual property will now belong to Nikon.

To date there really has been no direct competitor doing this exact same thing without legal challenge. The general workaround is to use an external device that handles the camera raw recording, like an Atomos Ninja. In fact, Nikon cameras have utilized this to record Nikon motion imagery into the Apple ProRes RAW codec on a Ninja recorder. Another method is what Blackmagic Design does in their cameras, which is to partially decode the data onboard the camera before recording it to a file. While some slam this method as not being truly raw, from my experience in working with these files inside of DaVinci Resolve and other applications, Blackmagic’s raw files generally give me the same flexibility as do RED files.

Working with RED media

I have edited numerous films and other projects that were shot with RED cameras. I have also finished and color corrected many of these, along with others where I didn’t do the offline edit. While the codec is flexible, in my opinion the file structure is not. The clip organization was built around technical limitation of two decades ago.

Clip recordings that exceed 4GB are split into multiple spanned files. These appear as if they are one contiguous file during playback, but aren’t. These “partial” files are grouped into a folder for each clip. File management and relinking is problematic as a result, especially when proxy files come into play. I have had countless media management issues between the offline and the online edit with RED files, when proxies were used. My hope is that if anything comes out of this acquisition, it’s a modern file structure like that used by Blackmagic Design and ARRI for their cameras.

Going forward

At this point, everything that I or anyone else says about future developments is going to be 100% speculation and personal opinion without any inside knowledge. Until the ink is dry on the agreement, things could change. However, assuming they don’t, then RED becomes a subsidiary division of the larger Nikon group of companies. While most of us think of Nikon as a camera and lens manufacturer, the company is into a wide range of product categories. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not cross-pollination occurs between the two camera divisions and whether their goals align.

RED currently offers seven camera models with multiple product options for each. These range from starting prices of $5,995 for a Komodo 6K up to $44,995 for the V-Raptor XL [X]. Add accessories and lenses on top of this. One potential and logical change could be a switch to – or the addition of – Nikon’s lens mount system as either the RED standard or an option when purchasing the camera. (RED used to offer Nikon mounts as accessories for the DSMC/DSMC2 camera brains, which have since been discontinued.)

One could also imagine that Nikon might do away with the lower priced REDs, like the Komodo line, and preserve RED cameras as only a premium brand. Another variation of this theory would be to repackage the Komodo line into a Nikon-branded product. I doubt that the RED brand name goes away, since it’s got great name recognition and that might actually be worth more than the company itself. But by making such a move, it differentiates Nikon from RED cameras in terms of market sector. This would also elevate the brand recognition of Nikon-branded cameras for indie filmmakers, YouTube content creators, etc. That being said, the latest Nikon flagship cameras have been getting high marks. The Nikon Z9 has even found a place as the astronaut camera onboard the International Space Station.

If, as many have opined, this acquisition is all about the codec, then it would pretty much guarantee that you’ll see REDCODE capture integrated into at least some of Nikon’s video DSLRs. Maybe you’ll even see Nikon license use of the codec to other manufacturers. Most of the tech press have been positioning this as a battle between Nikon and ARRI, Sony, and/or Canon. But the up-and-comer is Blackmagic Design. I could easily see the battle shaping up as Nikon with RED duking it out for market share against Blackmagic’s URSA and Cinema Camera product lines.

As with any acquisition, the future success is often determined by the combination of the two corporate cultures. Or as one friend opined – Will the the kaizen of Japanese management come into conflict with RED’s edgy style? Time will tell. Nevertheless, I think the combination could be a good thing and result in speeding up Nikon’s product development, while also slowing RED’s down ever-so-slightly. That could be a good thing for content creators.

©2024 Oliver Peters

Analog Mojo For Your Fairlight Mixes

Before Blackmagic Design acquired the assets, Fairlight was one of the originators of the digital audio workstation. Thanks to its modern integration within DaVinci Resolve, Fairlight has added pro-level audio performance to this all-in-one application. When it comes to recording and mixing real musicians, as well as all levels of audio-for-film/video post, Fairlight brings needed competition to the market. There are audio restoration tools, a built-in sound effects library, and advanced features including Dolby Atmos.

As a mixing application, Fairlight uses the traditional track/mixer/meter bridge configuration. Each track has a corresponding channel strip complete with fader, EQ, and gate/compressor/limiter, plus inserts for other plugin effects. The user interface is optimized for single and multi-display arrangements, but also accommodates Fairlight control surfaces with their own integrated screens.

Blackmagic Design offers a broad ecosystem of native hardware accessories to expand the system, similar to those offered by Avid for Pro Tools. This includes several console/control surface options, an Audio Editor panel, and PCIe cards for multi-channel i/o and audio effects acceleration. Put all of this in play and, according to Blackmagic Design, the system is capable of realtime playback with effects for up to 2,000 tracks.

The analog vibe

This makes Fairlight a nice digital audio workstation, with emphasis on the word digital. What it lacks is the harmonic color and character typical of native analog-style plug-ins available in Pro Tools, Luna, Logic Pro, and other DAWs. Furthermore, the presets are focused on film and TV mixing, but not music. For example, there is no suggested “kick drum” preset for the compressor. If you mix music in Fairlight and want the sonic benefits of analog emulation, then that’s where third-party plugin effects enter the picture.

Typical “vintage” plugins emulate classic British and American consoles and outboard equipment from the 1960s and 1970s. The goal is to duplicate the character of the hardware, such as their unique EQ curves, which would be hard to derive with most digital tools. But, the actual sonic character of these plugins is highly dependent on what was used to model the software, which is usually something you wouldn’t know as the user.

KIT Plugins Blackbird Bundle

KIT Plugins, which is a relatively new plugin developer based in Nashville, made their Blackbird Bundle available to me for this review. Blackbird Studio, one of the premier music studios in town, owns a huge collection of vintage gear, including iconic Neve and API consoles. Some of this hardware was used by KIT Plugins to model their software products. Since Blackbird Studio has its name on these products, nothing gets out the door until studio founder/mixer John McBride has put his stamp of approval on it. As a result, the software tools in the Blackbird-branded plugins match the sound and character of the actual hardware at Blackbird Studio.

The Blackbird Bundle includes six analog-style EQs as part of four plugin effects. Licensing is via a free iLok account. Through the iLok application, you can activate any of these licenses to the iLok Cloud or to an iLok USB dongle (generation 2 or 3). Dongles are popular with freelance mixers, because they are transportable between gigs ($45 for USB-A and $55 for USB-C at Sweetwater). If you opt for cloud activation (free), then you’ll need a working internet connection during your session. Activation to the local computer isn’t supported.

Applying the American and British sound

KIT Plugins’ BB A5 Channel Strip emulates classic API (Automated Processes, Inc) hardware from the API 500 modular series for that “American” sound. This plugin includes a 3-band (55A), a 4-band (55L), and a 10-band graphic (56L) EQ. The key to the character of the 3-band and 4-band EQs is an API innovation called “Proportional Q.” The filter bandwidth stays wide when the gain change is small. It narrows and becomes more surgical as the setting is increased in either direction. KIT Plugins replicated this feature, which isn’t always the case with other API emulations on the market. Like the hardware, these EQs use stepped frequency values to quickly dial in a sound. However, the gain controls can be switched between stepped or variable.

The BB A5 interface sports a modern look. Frequency and level knobs are separate and not concentric like on the hardware. Separation makes more sense with mouse control, while concentric works when you can actually place fingers on a physical knob. There are some faux scratches on these interfaces to evoke “vintage.” Fortunately the designers didn’t go overboard with those.

The two Neve emulations (BB N73 and BB N105) give you the classic “British” sound. N105 is based on Blackbird’s highly modified Neve 8078 console. The Neve emulations look more faithful to the hardware with concentric knobs. The N73 uses the familiar 1073 design, but adds an output section modeled after the output bus of Blackbird’s Neve 8058 console. When you enable this function, it adds some subtle harmonics and compression, depending on how hard you drive it. This master bus feature is also on the BB A5.

The last in this bundle is the MO-Q, which is based on a boutique equalizer built by the Motown engineers in the 1960s. McBride owns one of these in his personal collection, which was the basis for KIT’s modeling. It features seven fixed bands at musical frequencies.

On the tech side, these plugins are built with KIT’s proprietary Full Range Modeling that has been sampled from 10 Hz to 96 kHz. There’s oversampling and a ton of presets. The API and Neve models include auto gain and continuous gain. There’s a a function called Analog Hum, which applies 60 Hz (approx.) noise to the signal with three level settings. It remains barely audible even at the full settings with the speaker volume cranked. The term “Hum” has a negative connotation, so don’t let that scare you. I didn’t really hear what would be considered traditional hum, but rather very subtle white noise. I think it helps some mixes, but regardless, its use is optional.

The Fairlight mix

I imported 20 source tracks from a studio recording session into DaVinci Resolve. The tracks included a female singer, background vocals, and the session band. Each channel got an instance of BB A5, which effectively turned the Fairlight mixer into a virtual API console. Pre-amp and EQ control was handled through the Blackbird effect. The channels were routed to the stereo output bus without any additional instrument grouping/summing or VCA bus control.

These plugins come with an extensive array of instrument presets from KIT, Blackbird, and several contributing mix engineers. While I normally treat presets as merely a suggestion or starting point, I decided to leave these pretty much the way they were set up for this test mix. Pull up a different preset for each track – the kick drum, snare drum, vocals, etc. After some minor tweaking, plus level and panning adjustments, the mix was quickly in a really good place. Granted, it still needed some automation for punch here and there, but the mix was already presentable without it. The only other effects used in this mix were the native Fairlight compressor on the kick drum track, as well as the BB N73 and the native compressor/limiter on the stereo output.

One cool feature that’s usually not seen in other plugins is the Link function. If you have multiple instances of these plugins in the mix – as I did by placing BB A5 on each channel – then you can link the oversampling status, UI size, and hum setting. With link enabled, the values for one instance will then be matched on all the others. That’s really useful when setting up 20 instances of the same plugin across all channels.

One minor nuisance in this test mix was that the Link settings didn’t “stick” for the BB A5 plugin when saving a project. I had to change them from the default again when re-opening the project. Fortunately, that’s simply a matter of changing it for one and then the other linked effects will update correctly. I’ve reported this issue to KIT, so hopefully there will be an update soon. It did work correctly for the Neve emulations.

Some could argue that the difference between Fairlight’s native digital effects and using analog emulation is too subtle to worry about. You may or may not agree. But, using plugins like those in the Blackbird Bundle also let you get to a mix more quickly and reduce the amount of time lost to the indecision often caused by a plethora of digital options.

These benefits also apply to any film/TV/social media project. That’s why editors using DaVinci Resolve owe it to themselves to get comfortable with the Fairlight page. Once your project extends past a few tracks, then you’ll get a better mix using Fairlight than simply staying in the Edit page. Plugins, whether native Fairlight or third-party analog emulations, will make your mix sound more polished. I’ve used a number of brands and those in KIT’s Blackbird Bundle are high-quality and easy to use. Given the Grammy-winning pedigree behind the software, it’s a great way to add analog mojo to your digital mix.

This article was originally written for Pro Video Coalition.

©2024 Oliver Peters

FabFilter Pro-Q 3

There are tons of audio plugins on the market, but one company that repeatedly shows up in top mixers’ tool kits is FabFilter – especially their Pro-Q 3 equalizer. Nearly ever DAW application features some type of parametric EQ with a graphical interface sporting four to six control points, plus high and low shelves. However, none of these native tools offer as many features as Pro-Q 3. While FabFilter does have competitors offering their own version for this style of advanced equalizer, it’s hard to beat the intuitive operation of Pro-Q 3.

The interface

When you first apply Pro-Q 3, you are confronted with a plugin window showing the spectrum of the playing audio and an empty horizontal line. You can resize the window and even make it fullscreen. There are no preset bands as with many native EQs. Simply double-click anywhere along the line to create the first band. A control panel will appear below. Slide the point left or right with the mouse or turn the FREQ dial to select the frequency and then up or down (or the GAIN dial) to boost or attenuate the gain at that frequency. When you do, you’ll see the familiar bell shape with a Q-value width. Adjust the width of the band with the Q dial in the lower control panel.

It’s easy to zero in on the right adjustment, because the spectrum graphic displays the frequency spread. Secondly, when you hover over a band’s control point, the pop-up panel enables you to solo the affected range by clicking and holding the headphone icon.

FabFilter also integrated two additional selection methods: a piano keyboard display and Spectrum Grab. When using the piano keyboard, double-click a key and a control point is added at that musical frequency. Alternatively, you can hover over the spectrum during playback and a white outline will momentarily appear around the spectrum graphic. Wait a moment and a number of frequency points will also appear. Simply double-click along this Spectrum Grab outline to add a new band or just pull up or down on one of the highlighted frequencies.

Plenty of tools

The main control panel at the bottom lets you choose from nine band shapes, six bell slopes measured in dB/octave, and stereo placement. The Pro-Q 3 doesn’t just work in the stereo field. Each band can be set to affect the sound in stereo or only left, right, mid, or side. There are 24 general factory presets, plus an additional three preset categories specific to dynamic, stereo, and surround processing. Don’t understand a function? Simply enable the interactive pop-up hints.

When it comes to equalizers, bells, shelves, and high/low filters are the most common. Pro-Q 3 includes those and more. There’s also a band pass control (only that frequency range is audible) and a notch (tight and extreme reduction, such as for de-essing). Even something specialized, like tilt/shift is handled with two different modes.

Furthermore, you can easily control the type of curve and its angle. The default is a 12 dB/octave slope for a standard bell shape. But at the other end, it’s 96 dB/octave, which results in a fairly straight slope angle with a long, flat top (or bottom).

More than just a basic EQ

You could use Pro-Q 3 for straightforward equalization at several bands. But, this is an advanced EQ with dynamic processing. Both compressors and equalizers can be dynamic, allowing you to raise or lower the volume for a given frequency range. Compressors do this by compressing the signal, whereas EQs do so by boosting or attenuating the gain at that frequency.

In Pro-Q 3, simply right-click a control point and select “Make Dynamic.” Or adjust the outer ring of the gain knob and that band immediately becomes dynamic. Turn the outer ring to alter the range of gain change. Rotate right to boost the gain range and left to reduce it. The degree of travel will determine the range of the change. You can also do this by directly dragging the arrows that appear at the edge of the visual range in the graph.

Mid/side processing isn’t new, but not many EQs offer as much for stereo placement. Creative use of EQ can also be used to affect the apparent stereo width of the sound. If you change the EQ at offset frequencies in the left versus the right signal placement, then this will appear to change the position of those sounds spatially. The same for mid versus side adjustments. More importantly, all of these methods can be applied at the same time to different bands within a single instance of Pro-Q 3. You don’t need to apply one EQ for regular adjustments and a separate EQ for left versus right.

EQ Match

Anther advanced feature is EQ Match. Run your reference track long enough to get an averaged spectrum. Determine the number of bands you want to use and save that as a reference. Then apply Pro-Q 3 to your target track and use the saved reference file for your EQ Match on that new file. This will then apply the matching band settings to the new file. I tested this on two different mixes of the same song and it worked pretty well. I’m not sure it’s something I would use a lot; however, it’s useful if you work with location dialogue tracks. This is a great way to match an actor’s mic quality who was recorded in different environments or with different mics with the inevitable differences in the sound. EQ Match will help you to get these to sound similar to each other without a lot of guesswork and trial-and-error.

Like other FabFilter products, Pro-Q 3 features a global output control for panning and level. Optionally, this control can be set to Auto Gain to compensate for loudness changes caused by your EQ adjustments. However, FabFilter adds this caveat in their documentation, “Note that the applied make-up gain is an educated guess based on the current EQ settings, and is not a dynamic process based on actually measured levels.”

Many EQ products include some type of latency or linear phase control. Pro-Q 3 does, as well. But there’s also a third mode: Natural Phase. This is a unique FabFilter feature designed to match analog phase response in order to deliver accurate frequency response with the best sound quality.

Final thoughts

There are many more features than what I can go into in this post. Check out FabFilter’s excellent YouTube videos for more detail. It goes without saying that FabFilter Pro-Q 3 is a high-quality audio plugin. You can build up to 24 bands. It supports immersive/Dolby Atmos (up to 9.1.6) mixing and comes in all of the common plugin formats for Windows and macOS. FabFilter offers a 30-day, fully-functional evaluation period, as well as educational discounts. There’s even an iPad version of it and other FabFilter products.

One thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is the ongoing development and support by FabFilter. Some plugin developers put a product out into the market and then don’t do any ongoing development to their existing releases until it’s time to sell a new version. Not so with FabFilter, which periodically releases compatibility and bug fix updates to their products. FabFilter made this plugin available to me for the review, as they have done with several others in the past. While I was working on this review, FabFilter coincidentally updated all of their products, which they regularly do. These are accessible through a standard download, no fancy plugin management app required.

Admittedly, I’m partial to vintage EQs that mimic iconic studio gear from the 1970s – SSL, Neve, API, Pultec, etc. These are great for quick, simple, and effective adjustments. However, sometimes they simply aren’t the right tool when you have to sculpt the sound. That’s where modern products with modern designs are hard to beat. While you certainly don’t need a lot of these, you do need a handful and should be selective. It’s hard to go wrong with any of the FabFilter products. Pro-Q 3 is prime example, which is why it’s a choice that many mixers can’t do without.

©2024 Oliver Peters

Kiive Audio Filkchannel Strip | MK2

Vintage audio console and gear emulations are often marketed as having the classic British (Neve or SSL) or American (API) sound of the 1970s. But there was and still is a large audio industry on the European continent, too. We typically think of German, Austrian, or Swiss microphones and audio recorders from Neumann, Studer, Nagra, and others. However, many of the German and Swiss companies also manufactured audio consoles that were commonly used in radio and TV broadcast facilities.

These analog consoles from the 1970s used a modular design, based on specs developed by the German Institute for Broadcasting Technology (Institut für Rundfunktechnik). Consoles were assembled from a set of standardized modules using the Danner “cassette” rack format. Because of stringent quality guidelines for use in broadcast, they didn’t have the sort of “color” associated with classic British gear. Many of these modules are still in use today at mastering facilities and sought after through vintage gear sites for “lunchbox” racks. These modules often sell for a couple of grand each.

Canadian audio software developer Kiive Audio recently introduced the updated Filkchannel Strip | MK2, which they made available to me for this review. According to Kiive’s website, “The Filkchannel Strip is an analog modeled plugin and is based on some of the best Danner Cassette Modules from the 70s.” I presume that the plugin’s name is a nod to modules developed by Swiss pro audio manufacturer Filtek, one of the companies that built such modules. (Filtek became part of Siemens and later was marketed under the BFE name, but now no longer makes pro audio equipment.)

Thousands of options

The Filkchannel Strip is an extremely versatile plugin with seven modules: two pre-amps, three EQs, and two compressors. Each module has a different look and controls based on the specific hardware that it was modeled after. The order of the modules within the strip can be rearranged by dragging them into different slots, but only one of each type can be used at a time. The modules also contain secondary features, like sidechain controls. There are quite literally thousands of potential combinations before you turn the first dial. In addition to the controls for each module, Filkchannel has global in/out gain controls, several oversampling settings, and a selection of UI sizes. Each module includes an LED-style “on” button plus the typical power button to enable/disable that module.

Pre-Amp

The two Pre-Amp modules (modeled after the BFE 1170 white and yellow pre-amps) can be used for gain and saturation. FILK PRE 1 and FILK PRE 2 both have two saturation types with S1 being more gritty than S2 in each.

Equalizer

The three EQ modules are more involved than the Pre-Amps. Each is designed with a three-band EQ that’s best for broad adjustments rather than surgical boosts or cuts. (These were modeled after the BFE MK5b, Siemens W295b, and Telefunken/TAB W395A equalizers.)

FILK EQ I features the most controllability of the three. It includes Lo, Mid, and Hi controls with selectable frequencies. The Hi and Lo controls can be switched between bell and shelf. Plus there are small Hi-Pass and Lo-Pass filter dials in the bottom right corner of the panel.

FILK EQ II is only a three-band EQ. It includes fixed Hi and Lo shelf controls, along with a selectable Presence (i.e. midrange) control.

FILK EQ III is similar to EQ II, except that the midrange control (labelled Präsenz – German for presence) is only a boost control. No midrange attenuation. Use this to add air to your track. The frequency range for the midrange control differs between FILK EQ II and FILK EQ III, so I would presume they also use different curves.

Compressor

Two compressor modules (modeled after the BFE BKE4 and Neumann U473A compressors) round out Filkchannel. FILK COMP 1 includes compression amount (threshold), output gain, and ratio controls (attack and release times are fixed). There’s a dry/wet mix dial and a sidechain dial to exclude frequencies below a threshold from affecting the compression. Finally, there’s a mode switch to select between NRML (normal) and BUS compression types.

FILK COMP 2 is more detailed than FILK COMP 1. There are compression gain (threshold), output gain, ratio, attack, and recovery (release) controls, along with a dry/wet mix dial. The ratio on FILK COMP 1 goes from 2:1 to 6:1. However, FILM COMP 2 ranges from 1:1 up to 5:1, after which it kicks into limiter mode (LIM). Instead of a sidechain dial, FILK COMP2 uses Bass Cut and De-Ess switches to exclude low or high-end frequencies from impacting the compression.

In action

Filkchannel Strip | MK2 is easy to install and will run on most 64-bit DAWs. It supports the various audio plugin formats for Mac and Window computers and will run natively on Apple Silicon Macs. Enter the license key code that’s emailed to you the first time you open the plugin and you are good to go (no physical iLok or iLok cloud activation required). A trial version is available.

You can certainly apply the Filkchannel Strip to every track/channel and turn your DAW into a virtual analog console. However, as I discussed on the previous post, my preference is for a hybrid top-down approach to the mix. So I placed the strip onto each bus/instrument group of a music mix that I’m working on in Apple Logic Pro. Then I applied a handful of single plugins (mostly native) as needed to treat individual tracks within the group. This allowed me to uniformly add color through saturation, shape the sound with EQ, and add “glue” to a group of similar instruments by using the Filkchannel Strip modules. 

The changes made through the Filkchannel Strip sound very graceful and clean. The exception is saturation in the Pre-Amp modules, which you can drive hard and push into distortion if you want to. So, a little goes a long way. While the EQ values seem like high ranges (-15dB to +15dB on some controls), these are actually less than Logic Pro’s own Vintage Console EQ, which tops out at 20dB in each direction. I don’t use Plugin Doctor, so I have no idea what the Q curve looks like and whether or not these are proportional Q values. However, the adjustments that I made sounded pleasing and that’s the key. Since these modules change the sound in broad rather than surgical strokes, Filkchannel Strip is a good fit for my workflow of mixing with buses.

The interface is not identical between modules thanks to the differences of the actual hardware these were modeled after. For example, FILK EQ I uses a Neve-style button layout with the dB scale under the knob. Positive dB values (boost) are to the left and negative to the right (attenuation). FILK EQ II and III use the standard approach with the dB scale above the knob – boost to the right and attenuation to the left. Regardless of these differences, twirling the knob in the same direction will yield the same result in all three – clockwise to boost, counter-clockwise to attenuate.

Thoughts

The only technical issue I encountered was that periodically factory presets wouldn’t load from the pulldown menu. In spite of that, it was easy to toggle through them using the arrow keys, so no big deal.

Regarding the cosmetics, I wish Kiive’s engineers had not added faux wear and scratches to show that these are “vintage.” I think you can effectively convey that idea without them. The controls for FILK EQ III use shading that tends to blend in with the midrange (Präsenz) dial indicator. The “on” buttons are made to look like bright LEDs, but other push-button controls aren’t. So it’s less obvious when a function is engaged. Finally, the sidechain switches on FILK COMP 2 are designed to look like flip switches. The default starts with them down (off) and then you flip up the Bass Cut or De-Ess switches to engage. I wish these also had a small status indicator light. I realize these look like the hardware, but when you translate a real-world object to a flat piece of software, sometimes it’s better to deviate from the look to some degree.

In actual use, this is a really good channel strip emulation that places the three most-used plugins at your fingertips. I own and have reviewed a number of different channel strip plugins, most of which I really like. However, some offer way too much and can get confusing. Others, like the many SSL clones, copy the hardware too closely. Functions like changing the order of the processes often aren’t obvious. Not so with Filkchannel. It offers the right kind of modules and it’s easy to drag them into any position within the “rack.”

Audio plugins are usually discussed with DAWs in mind, but video editors need these options, too. For example, Adobe Premiere Pro’s native audio plugins are decent, but there is no traditional channel strip plugin. Installing a tool like Kiive’s Filkchannel Strip | MK2 would be a good addition to any video editor’s kit. If you have a simple video project with dialogue, VO, and music, applying Filkchannel to each track in the Premiere Pro track mixer panel makes it easy to dial in the mix. Instead of inserting a stack of several plugins onto each track, simply insert Filkchannel onto the track and then control saturation, EQ , and compression at the same time.

Kiive Audio also offers a selection of other high-quality plugins, including the free Warmy EP1A and XTMax. Warmy is a tube-style equalizer and XTMax is a compressor. So whether you are a video editor that wants better audio or an audio mixer, Kiive Audio has something for you.

©2024 Oliver Peters