Topic: VST plugins & mixing/mastering workflow in your DAWs

[if_then_else]

Personally, I haven't used MAutoAlign. The reviews on Gearspace and other sites appear to be "mixed" (no pun intended). In other words: it appears to have worked fine for some people on some sources and not for others.

https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1279132-sr-auto-align-vs-mautoalign.html

I think there's also a similar plugin from Nugen Audio called "Aligner". I haven't used that one, either.

Give them a try (if there are trial versions available) and see what works best for you...
The SoundRadix version appears to be the industry standard but, admittedly, it doesn't come cheap.

[phil_er_up]

Thanks If_then_else and ronmac.

Finally got something to install. Tried again to get auto-align to work in wavelab and could not.

Went a different route and installed and used MAutoAlign. Though could not get wavelab or spectralayers to see the MAutoAlign plugin.

Went to Davinci resolve in fairlight and MAutoAlign is there as a VST plugin.
Figured out how to use MAutoAlign  in  Davinci resolve fairlight.

Figured out how to export the wav file in DR though it will only output 24/48 unless you buy the full version for $300. The Full version will output 24/96.

So at a crossroads as how to move forward. Will buy DR if I have too. Though would rather get it to work in wavelab so I don't have to jump to multiple apps.

Anyone have any suggestion on how to proceed besides buying DR full version?

[if_then_else]

Try Reaper first. It's unrestricted "freemium" / shareware.
A non-commercial license will set you back $60.

Reaper loads Auto-Align 2 well on my PC.

[Ronmac]

MAutoalign works well in Reaper.


I encourage anyone who uses it to pony up the $60 for it, after giving it a good trial. That very reasonable license fee will allow you to legally use the product for two full versions. Currently at V7, you will not have to renew until V9 comes out, likely 3-4 years from now.

[phil_er_up]

Thanks again If_then_else and ronmac for reaper recommendation.

Installed reaper and guess what it sees all my VST plugins including MAutoAlign and TBProAudio ABLM2 immediately without me setting path for the vst plugins. Arg. Been using wavelab for over 20 years so know it really well. Though reaper looks pretty good. Just will have to get use to it.

Ran a test took card and supercard recordings from the same mic stand and ran the  MAutoAlign and TBProAudio ABLM2 plugins. Yikes. Would A/B it with the card and supercards recordings and the output from Mautoalign. There was quite a difference in the A/B comparison. The  MAutoAlign seemed to fix the Alignment and Phase Correction between the 2 mics. Processed file sounded cleaner. The whole file seemed to come into focus. Seemed to fix some or all of the combing effect from 2 different types of cardiod mics.  Then ran another test with front of lip mics on stage with a SBD feed. Same thing. Processed file sounds cleaner and whole file again came into focus.

Will have to purchase reaper, MAutoAlign and TBProAudio ABLM2 plugins.

Thanks again If_then_else for sharing your plugins recommendations and ronmac for his help too.

==========================================================================================
Did not mean to hijack the thread with my problems with wavelab seeing the plugins.

Lets get back to what  If_then_else posted.

Any other plugins from that list you would recommend  If_then_else ?

[if_then_else]

Any other plugins from that list you would recommend  If_then_else ?

Depends on the musical genres you're recording, how often you're going to use the plugins and on your budget.
Many plug-in manufacturers charge exorbitant prices for their flagship products throughout the year and then discount them heavily at Easter, Black Friday or Christmas. If you don't need the plugins immediately, buy them at a time when they are on sale.

Apart from the (really decent) stock plugins of Reaper, there are a few good, free VST plugins. In many cases these are some stripped-down but fully working versions of the individual company's flagship products, e.g:

https://klanghelm.com/contents/freeware.html (MJUC jr., IVGI, DC1A)
https://www.tokyodawn.net/tokyo-dawn-labs/ (TDR Nova, TDR Kotelnikov)
https://techivation.com/t-de-esser/ (Techivation T-De-Esser 2)
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/free-audio-plug-ins.html (Edit: I forgot about iZotope Imager 2...)

Re. the "special" plugins category which are almost always part of my own workflow: I'd recommend the Kush Omega amp simulators 458a and TWK (priced at $29 each). I don't really use the other two. Again, this depends on the type of music you're recording.

https://thehouseofkush.com/products/omega-458a
https://thehouseofkush.com/products/omega-twk

The other plugin that I used a lot lately is TBProAudio DSQE3, the main alternative to OEKSound Soothe v2. This is a surgical, dynamic spectral EQ. Basically, its purpose is to remove digital hashness/muddiness/boominess. Be careful as it's easy to overdo things with this kind of plugins. TBProAudio never run sales but the plugin is fairly priced at €79. There is a newer, similar one from Three-Body-Technology (named "SpecCraft") that supposedly does the same thing and for which they're running an intro offer at $69. I haven't tried it as I'm more than happy with DSEQ3 - but it might be a valid alternative. When in doubt, just try it it. I wouldn't spend $200 on Soothe 2.

https://www.tbproaudio.de/products/dseq

In terms of limiters: Sonible Smart:Limit is really good, it also includes their metering technology and AI assistants. It's super easy to get to the loudness levels of professionally mastered albums. I think the regular price is €69. They're running occasional promos on their plugin bundles. So possibly worth waiting, if you're interested in their EQ and Compressor as well.

https://www.sonible.com/smartlimit/

[phil_er_up]

Thanks again for your thoughts on these plugins. Looked at all the ones you posted.

DL'ed https://klanghelm.com/contents/freeware.html (MJUC jr., IVGI, DC1A).
Not sure if I would use those or not.

Also got auto-align 2 to work in reaper too. Will try and compare output from MAutoAlign and auto-align 2.

Mostly record jam, jazz, reggae and blues. Though mostly the first 2.

[if_then_else]

These some screenshots of the effects / plugins I was talking about.

With DSEQ3, I tend to use the preset "Master - balance soft" that's basically transparent. (As previously mentioned, it's quite easy to overdo it with these dynamic spectral EQ plugins.) Select 4x/4x for oversampling (OS) and Ultra/Ultra for Quality. Depending on the source you'd either want to use "linear phase" (which is the default) or "natural phase" (NP). You can customise the frequency range(s) for which the equalisation will be applied.

Re. Kush Omega: These amp simulation plugins are great to make guitars, bass etc shine. Always make sure to enable "phase" and "-20dB" and, if necessary, reduce the input and/or output volume.

For Auto-Align 2: Just add the plugin to each of the mix busses, play back the audio in your DAW (it must be running for Auto-Align to analyse the tracks) and when done click on "Align".

[if_then_else]

Update: I also tested the demos of Soothe 2 and SpecCraft yesterday and DSEQ3 is clearly the better alternative for me, both in terms of sound and the usefulness of the presets that are included.

[phil_er_up]

Ran auto-align 2 and Mauto-align. Thought Mauto-align sounded good till I heard the auto-align 2. Auto-align 2 file sounded better IMO.
The low end of the file from the auto-align 2 processed file was there and sounded more natural the Mauto-align file sounded more mid-range and high end not very much low end for the file I was running. YMMV.

Also used TBProAudio DSEQ3 and it is a very good plugin and I like it and would use this one. Is easy to use and sound output was musical.

Tried Fabfilter Pro C2 and Fabfilter Pro L2 and both are really good though both are expensive.
Really liked the Pro C2 compressor and would see if I use the Pro L2 limiter that much though both seemed to do a really good job and sound output was musical.

Have anyone tried the fabfilter plugins and is it worth the $179 for each?

Saw online people raved about the Fabfilter Pro Q4 though have not tried that one yet.

=================================================================

Could not get Kush Omega and Sonible smartLimit to work. So can not comment on those.

[if_then_else]

Ran auto-align 2 and Mauto-align. Thought Mauto-align sounded good till I heard the auto-align 2. Auto-align 2 file sounded better IMO.
The low end of the file from the auto-align 2 processed file was there and sounded more natural the Mauto-align file sounded more mid-range and high end not very much low end for the file I was running. YMMV.

Also used TBProAudio DSEQ3 and it is a very good plugin and I like it and would use this one. Is easy to use and sound output was musical.

Tried Fabfilter Pro C2 and Fabfilter Pro L2 and both are really good though both are expensive.
Really liked the Pro C2 compressor and would see if I use the Pro L2 limiter that much though both seemed to do a really good job and sound output was musical.

Have anyone tried the fabfilter plugins and is it worth the $179 for each?

Saw online people raved about the Fabfilter Pro Q4 though have not tried that one yet.

=================================================================

Could not get Kush Omega and Sonible smartLimit to work. So can not comment on those.

The Fabfilter plugins are the de-facto industry standard. I've got them but the equivalent plugins by Sonible are pretty good as well and possibly better value. I think the current sale is still ongoing.

The reason why you might not have gotten the Kush and Sonible plugins to work might be iLok. You don't have to have an iLok USB key but you'd need to install iLok license manager and set up a free account to demo the plugins.

Fabfilter often run discounts and you will ge substantial loyalty discounts as well, if you own their other plugins. But yes, they're expensive. On the positive side, they don't use iLok.

[phil_er_up]

Was looking through your list again and saw this plugin:

Soundtheory Gullfoss: I-powered equalizer that dynamically enhances clarity and balance in real-time.

Have you used this plugin if_then_else?

Not sure if it would be worth installing the "try now" version. Have DL'ed so many other plugins that I need to run to see if I would purchase them before the time limit runs out on the free version. Found have to use a plugin multiple times to see what it really does and sometimes use it with different genres to see if it works the same on each of them.

[if_then_else]

It's one of those plugins that definitely have an effect - but in most cases, the effect is "homeopathic".

I.e. you can hear it in an A/B test but it's nothing that would make or break your mix. Given a fixed budget, I'd rather spend my money on the plugins that make the biggest difference.

[morst]

Anyone tried one of these automatic alignment tools on the two channels of a near-coincident or wider stereo pair?
I wonder if it makes a difference when the recording is played back in summed mono?

Edit: reading the manual for AA2 I see this:

"Keep in mind that AA2 won’t stretch or “warp” the audio in order to align it.
The Time Alignment algorithm simply applies Time Offsets to the playback of each track, allowing them to play tightly in sync."

However, it will do phase rotation...
"Even in Groups with large numbers of tracks, AA2 will continue to automatically determine the best combination of Time Offsets, polarity reversals and phase rotations needed to lock each track into the tightest possible phase relationship with the whole of the Group."

[Gutbucket]

Looking forward to trying those alignment tools myself. 

TLDR- short discussion of alignment esoterics. Feel free to ignore if you prefer to pretend it's simple.

This gets me wondering what alignment might be best for some stereo combinations.  Most of the time it's likely to be best straight-aligned (in reference to a planar wavefront arriving from 0-degrees directly in front)*, but I'm curious to hear from fellow tapers using these tools or doing it manually, of experiences of where a slightly different alignment works out best.  The three+ mic position arrangements suggested by the extended Stereo Zoom (see the Michael Williams papers, the Schoeps image assistant, 3-mic position improved PAS) push the center forward a bit to get the image linking across the playback stage to work best. To put it a different way, is it best to align for a planar wavefront arriving from directly ahead or align some of the elements for a wavefront arriving from the angle of the PA off to one side, and vice versa on the other side.. or the angle of the playback speakers.. or?  Impossible to align for all directions unless the mics are all coincident.


*But what is "straight-aligned"? Any non-coincident two microphone array with spacing between the microphone pair can only be fully aligned along one axis of arrival (lets assume directly forward/backward).  Yet sound arrives from all angles.  Even if we don't care about or perhaps even desire a useful misalignment of the far off-axis stuff, a simple 2-mic microphone config using spacing between the mics will not be fully aligned for sources positioned somewhat over to either side of the alignment axis.  Introduce additional channels or pairs and it can get very complex, particularly if the microphones are not all arranged along a single line as many stereo multi-microphone configurations suggest.  We might arrange and align for arrival from only one way along the axis - say directly forward but not backward.  And the non-alignment relationship between channels for differnt off-axis angles will shift around in various ways.

Aligning mono channels that are positioned non-coincidently (rather than spaced stereo pairs) is a bit more conceptually straightforward and probably the original intent of manu of these tools, yet still when the sound sources are distributed in space one can only align for a single source among them.  If a aligning a bunch of close mics on a drum kit, one presumably needs to choose which drum (snare? kick?) on which to base the alignment and let the alignment of all others fall where they may.

I don't mean to cast shade on these amazing tools, and enjoy thinking through and discussing the implications.  As always, what sounds right is right.  You needn't think too deeply about all this.  Just listen carefully when making the decisions to be sure of doing more good than harm.  Please let me know if/when you come across outlier situations when using these tools. Thanks.