Welcome to another installment of the Pro Audio series. For this post, I am "mixing" it up (pun intended) and sharing with you a video walkthrough of the Pro Tools template I use for 90% of my mixing projects. The video is just under 60 minutes in length and walks you through several aspects of my mixing approach, including: Pro...
Luke Wooten is the owner of Station West, a recording studio complex located in Nashville, TN. As both a Producer and Engineer, Luke has earned dozens of #1s and multiple awards with artists such as Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley, The SteelDrivers, and The Louvin Brothers. Over the past 20 years, he has collaborated with producers such as Frank Liddell, Brett Beavers, and Carl Jackson. In 2014 Luke launched Station West Music, an independent publishing company and home to country songwriter Jordan Brooker.
In this Pro Audio Series article, I'll introduce you to a few popular hardware compressors along with my favorite plugin emulations. Almost every plugin in this post is available as a demo, so don't just take my word for it. I'd recommend that you download them all and compare them to see if one stands out for you. Whether you're an experienced engineer or just getting started, this is all about personal taste. There's a lot to digest here, so let's dive right in.
In my previous Pro Audio series article, I shared with you some of my favorite chorus effect plugins. In this post, I’ll list some popular distortion plugins. As always, I encourage you to explore the stock distortion plugins included with your DAW, because you may find that they achieve the sound you're looking for (and it won't cost you a penny more). For example, Avid's Lo-Fi is included in Pro Tools and you've probably heard that on a number of top 40 records, great free plugin.
In an earlier Pro Audio series article, we covered some of the most common types of audio effects. And in the last article, I shared with you some of my favorite plugins for delay, echo, and reverb. In this post, I’ll list some of my favorite chorus effects plugins. As a reminder, you might want to check out the stock plugins included with your DAW too, as almost all DAWs include free chorus and distortion options. It’s a good way to get started and doing so will give you a baseline for comparison.
Adam Blackstone of BASSic Black Entertainment and Musical Director for Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Rihanna, and the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime show, talks about how OWC products are an essential part of his musical workflow. He is particularly fond of his many Envoy Pro EX SSDs and his 8TB Mercury Elite Pro Dual – citing that both have sped up his workflow tremendously.
