Recording - April 2018 - 43

3. Brown: the flattest saturation from
an EQ perspective, but with added
harmonic punch
4. White: pushed higher frequencies and
nicely balanced even and odd harmonics
5. LoFi: rolled off highs and lows with
added grit
Once one of these is selected you can
decide how much to dial into your mix.
DW Drum Enhancer offers many
well-made presets, broken down by
kit piece and style. These make great
starting points for working fast as well
as learning the plug-in. There is also a
lower dropdown Settings menu where
you can choose meter style, pull up the
manual, and calibrate the output scale
of the plug-in in your DAW.

Getting enhanced

In use in a 24-bit/96 kHz mix, I ran
fourteen mono instances on individual
drum tracks, plus two stereo instances
on overheads and the drum bus, and hit
about 12% of my CPU processor power
in Cubase 9.5. That's really not bad for
a channel strip plug-in!
As mentioned, the plug-in is a great
way to get your feet wet. Beyond that
it can be tricky to describe the various
Modern, Heavy, and Vintage settings
beyond broad-stroke impressions; each
one can change quickly based on
compressor, EQ and saturation tweaks.
On snare, I found the settings to move
between tight and forward in Modern,
thick and weighty in Heavy, and very
warm and splatty in Vintage. Kick
settings' differences were more drastic, with Modern being very tight and
punchy, Heavy with a nice balance of
beater and low-end thrust, and Vintage
living up to its name with a very roomy,
soft thumpy tone. Toms followed a similar
scheme. The biggest behind-the-scenes
changes to the compressor are heard
when moving between Room, Overheads,
and Bus in the Other category. Here the
compressor's Mix control is really suited
for parallel compression.
The saturation in this plug-in is
wonderful; each setting can easily
change the mood and feel of your kit
in a mix. Vintage is my favorite, with
a nice smooth roundness that gels the

drums and room together, especially on
the drum bus. LoFi, when pushed hard,
lives up to its name; it can get pleasantly crunchy, great for room mics and
ultra-city snare.
Once you learn the signal flow and
lay of the land, this plug-in is very fast
and intuitive to use-I was quickly creating
my own settings from scratch. I also
found that just because you have four
sections of processing to work with,
it's OK to bypass them and just use the
ones that you need or like on a given
source. Even just using the saturation
control by itself is really useful.
What I enjoy the most about this
plug-in is that it does what it says on
the tin. It enhances the sound of your
drums, and that phrase "the sound of
your drums" is key. Despite how far you
push, compress, and saturate, you are
still conscious of the sound of the raw
kit in the raw room. The outcome
still sounds natural and believable, not
hyper-processed.
It's also easy to tell quickly when you
have pushed a tone or compressed too
far. About the only parameter that I found
a tad touchy at times was the Gate.
Once set correctly it works wonderfully,
but it can be a tad fiddly to dial in.

Conclusion

The DW Drum Enhancer is a very
simple broad-throw plug-in with a large
range of sonic tweaks. It's laser-focused
on enhancing your drum recordings
with class and style, and it makes great
drum sounds easy for even the most
timid beginner.
Delivery: Web download
Formats: macOS 10.9+ or Windows 7+,

32/64-bit AAX, AU (Mac only), VST2, VST 3

Copy Protection: PACE iLok
License: multiple computer installs with

single-computer license stored on iLok 2 or
iLok 3 USB key, or disk-based authorization
on one computer
Documentation: PDF manual, also
available inline
Price: $199
More from: Drum Workshop/ DW Electronics, dwdrums.com/dwedrumenhancer;
Audified, shop.audified.com/products/
dw-drum-enhancer
RECORDING April 2018

43
http://www.dwdrums.com/dwedrumenhancer http://www.royerlabs.com http://shop.audified.com/products/dw-drum-enhancer http://shop.audified.com/products/dw-drum-enhancer
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