Recording - February 2020 - 60

THE

P-280

DELIVERS

ULTRA-HIGH

RESOLUTION SIGNAL, CRYSTAL CLEAR LOW
NOISE-FLOOR AND VACUUM TUBE WARMTH. THE
PERFECT COMBINATION TO RECORD THROUGH ANY

INTRODUCING THE
NEW PELUSO P280

P280

OF TODAY'S WIDELY DIVERSE SIGNAL CHAINS.

Apogee Clearmountain's Domain
fell into place after the fact. I love that, especially considering that the presets are
universally recognizable effects.
I found it very informative to start with
some of the presets and tweak from there.
I experimented with a few different settings and had fun pushing the limits with
the ascending semitone pitch-shifted delay. Ideas started flowing once I wrapped
my head around the subtleties of the routing and tone shaping capabilities as I
branched off from the 'Live Rolling Stones'
preset. The particular mix I was working
with didn't call for overly delayed or reverb-saturated parts, but I wanted to bring
a bit of space and wideness to the mix. I
automated a send from the guitars through
Clearmountain's Domain for the choruses
and kept the level in check. It seemed to
spread the guitars out to the sides and envelop the vocals in a cool way - all without adding any mud or vagueness to the
guitars. They retained detail and attack,

but filled the stereo field and added some
excitement to the choruses.

Conclusions

Clearmountain's Domain is a plugin
that rewards those who take the time to
learn it well-not that it's overly complicated, just that it might take some practice to create purposeful settings that
work well in the mix. The sound quality
is wonderful, and it provides a platform
for creative effects that would be hard to
duplicate with other plugins. If you take
the leap, I recommend spending some
time with the user guide, as Bob has
several great tips in there about how he
approaches this effects chain. The price
might be a tad high, but again, these effects sound beautiful and would be hard
to recreate using other tools.
Price: $349
More from: apogeedigital.com

Bob Clearmountain weighs
in on his Domain plugin
INTERVIEW BY PAUL VNUK JR.

P-280

Detailed, ultra-high resolution
Crystal clear low self-noise
Excellent on all vocals and instruments
Rich lows, detailed mids & clean high-end air
Unique FET-tube combination ampliier
Center-terminated 3-wire brass capsule
9 indexed
polar-patterns
ind
Case, power supply, cable, & mounts included
Handmade in USA

PELUSOMICROPHONELAB.COM

Peluso Microphone Lab

How do you develop a plugin?
Did Apogee approach you
and say that it wanted to create a plugin to recreate the
Bruce Springsteen 'Born in
the USA' snare drum sound?

Actually, the presets were a total afterthought. The way the Clearmountain's Domain came about was, my assistant tried to
'in-the-box' duplicate the hardware effects
chain that I put together and use every day,
which is made up of all digital and analog
outboard gear. I'll often have three different
reverbs and delays and a pair of harmonizers to thicken sounds up, or I'll distort it
a little bit. It's all sent to faders on my desk.
In the analog world, it's pretty easy to do.
My assistant tried to duplicate it in Logic,
but he couldn't get it to balance properly.
Then I tried to do it in Pro Tools, and I nearly threw the thing out the window [laughs].
So we just thought, what if we could build
a plugin? About two years ago, Apogee
was just starting to develop plugins, and
we started mapping one out and just kept
60 RECORDING February 2020

refining it with the help of Stefan Stenzel,
who is an incredible programmer. But to
answer the initial question, no, it isn't one
of those things where somebody came up
with a plugin and stuck my name on it. It's
really me and my processes.

The reverbs are fantastic, are
they models of reverbs from
your studio racks?

They're actually impulse responses. The
'Mix This' chambers are the actual echo
chambers I have here in my studio that we
built-we did an impulse response of them.
The Apogee studio is an impulse response
of their studio that I've actually been using
in Altiverb for several years. The other ones
we went out and captured over the last few
months. My wife and I went to see a show
at a theater in Beverly Hills. My wife, Betty, came back from the lady's room, and
she said, "If you're thinking about impulse
responses, you should get the lady's room
from here." So we did, and it was really
good. It just sounded great. And we got
the stairwell in the garage across the street
from there, and then a few other places.

http://www.apogeedigital.com http://www.pelusomicrophonelab.com

Recording - February 2020

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