Recording - December 2011 - 26

Software And Soundware And Then Some!
Reviews by Mike Metlay with Allen Goodman

Not all fun presents for the musician’s holiday season have knobs, switches, grilles, metalwork, or batteries—sometimes all you want is a little something to spice up your musical computer, be it a cool new software synth, sound library, or plug-in. Here’s a collection of digital delights for your music-making pleasure!—MM

Toontrack EZmix and EZmix Packs
EZmix, $69; EZmix Packs, $29 each; www.toontrack.com

frequency gate, tape simulator, chorus, hall reverb, inverse reverb, tape delay, filter delay, distortion, bit crusher, and Overloud (a “tone enhancer” that combines compression, eq, and harmonic generation). In any given preset, one or more parameters in these effects will be attached to two controls called Shape and Blend. Note that depending on the preset, moving one of these controls might increase one or more parameters while decreasing another, so a single movement of a control creates a smooth and useful overall change in your sound. (A third control sets output level for the plug-in.) You can browse presets by name, type (insert, master bus, SFX, reverb send, etc.), instrument (drums, vocals, electric guitar, bass, etc.), the name of the producer who created the preset (in case you find yourself favoring one programmer’s sounds), or EZmix Pack (see below). Any preset can be tagged as a Favorite; these are placed on their own list, where they can be browsed, sorted, renamed, and stored with your own preferred Shape and Blend settings, all without affecting the original presets. That’s literally all you need to know. Just add EZmix to a track or bus, click through presets until you hear something you like, tweak Shape and Blend to taste, and you’re done. Repeat as often as needed to get your mix sounding right! EZmix has a very low CPU hit so you can use many instances of it on a mix before getting in trouble. Presets have meaningful names and load instantly, so auditioning is a breeze. And did I mention they all sound anywhere from great to phenomenal? There are over 200 useful presets in EZmix when you buy it; you can add more by buying EZmix Packs, which include presets based on genre or designed by a famous producer (Chuck Ainlay and Mark Needham are the first two). Hearing these presets is a real education in

Toontrack is best known to our readers for drum libraries and virtual instruments (check out the Walking Tour of the amazing Superior Drummer 2.0 in our July 2010 issue)... so I had to ask, “What the heck is EZmix?” As it turns out, EZmix is just that: a plug-in to make mixing easier for you. Partnering with Italian DSP firm Overloud (makers of the well-respected BREVERB digital reverb and TH1 guitar distortion modeler), Toontrack has created an affordable multieffects plug-in that’s specifically designed to drop into place on individual tracks or buses, quickly and easily giving you the sounds you’re looking for. A preset in EZmix may contain any or all of 16 effect types: 5-band parametric eq, lowpass filter, highpass filter, compressor, limiter, transient shaper,
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going after great sound; I had a great time auditioning Chuck Ainlay’s many different drum mic programs, and Mitch Allan’s Songwriter’s Tools is a gold mine. Mark Needham’s pack provides multiple variations on signature sounds for a variety of sources. The Electronic pack gets really crazy (like me!), but the more mainstream programs in the Rock, Metal, and Modern Pop/Rock packs are instantly useful and compelling. Yes, it’s often important to get into the nitty-gritty of programming effects and carving out precisely

http://www.toontrack.com

Recording - December 2011

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