Plug-ins That Have The Most Useful Presets?

[ITHertz]

Hi Folks,

Generally when mixing I don't use plug-in Presets, however I've recently been trying some different workflow ideas. One of these ideas is to create a "first pass" mix that includes compression, EQ, delay, reverb, etc. but only use Presets (so no tweaking allowed!).

So my question is, what plug-ins have the best and most useful Presets? For anyone interested in this, maybe you could list a few of your favourites.

Cheers,

Chris

[Martin Walker]

Hi CHris,

One plug-in that I return to time and time again because its presets are so versatile is the PSP 85 delay. Inspirational!

http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/delays/psp_85/

Martin

[MOF]

Compression has to have tweaking, if the source is too loud or too quiet then it won’t match the threshold and the desired effect of the programmer.

[Martin Walker]

Compression has to have tweaking, if the source is too loud or too quiet then it won’t match the threshold and the desired effect of the programmer.

One way round this is to use the suggested presets, but just tweak their threshold setting to provide the desired amount of gain reduction, leaving all the timing aspects as is.

Martin

[MOF]

so no tweaking allowed!

[Drew Stephenson]

I find the soundtoys plugins have pretty useful presets. Echoboy gives you some great creative ideas for example.

[ITHertz]

A small amount of tweaking is permitted i.e. setting a compressor's Threshold.

[Martin Walker]

I was originally going to suggest inserting a simple gain plug-in before the compressor (I personally use Blue Cat Audio's freeware Gain 3), so you wouldn't have to change any of the latter's settings at all, but that seemed a little too pedantic

Martin

[Sam Inglis]

I'm never quite sure of the value of these self-imposed rules. I guess I can see the merit in doing something different to get yourself out of a rut, but you have to be quite careful about creating another rut, or being pointlessly dogmatic.

Looking at presets does sometimes suggest ways of processing sources that you might not have otherwise though of, though.

[rggillespie]

Not sure quite why I choose it in the first place as I’m not a huge fan particularly but I find Waves Butch Vig plugin to be easily my most used plugin. The presets are excellent and get me in the right place and then the interface is superbly designed so the novice that I am, can try things to see what works and can tweaked. It says it’s a vocal plugin channel but the presets for guitars and bass are all excellent. If I owed only one plugin, it would be the one no contest.