Groove tools

Phaser plugins This time around I´m putting phaser plugins to the test. Going into this test I imagined I would roughly be able to get the same sound from all of the contenders, but they were in fact very different beasts.  As always, you´ll find samples below. How I tested This time around I used a guitar and a piano loop, and played these through the plugins while monitoring the output in order to level match them at approximately the same loudness level (the phase peaks did introduce some challenges).  I typically used presets and went for a subtle/standard, slow and fast effect, and sometimes I had to tweak the preset slightly to fit the material. Phasing revisited A phaser is yet another delay based effect, but this time it produces the effect by changing the phase of a signal using an LFO, and mixing it back in which introduces phase cancellation. As the LFO sweeps, notches will appear at different frequencies and adding further stages will introduces ...

Saturation plugins You can never have enough saturation plugins, or can you? Today I´m  testing a few of them just to see how much variety we can expect and if we really need all of them.  I took all of the plugin on a spin for both guitar and bass, and you´ll find the related playlist at the end of this post.  Saturator X  IK-Multimedia makes the excellent T-racks range of plugins, which includes  Saturator X . This plugin is versatile overall and covers a lot of ground. My only issue with the GUI would be the omission of a mix button, but it has an auto-gain feature which is great. Saturation can add to the overall volume, which makes it difficult to compare before/after results so an auto-gain feature is very handy. The results were quite subtle when driven lightly, but quickly turned into a more distorted and brighter sound when pushed hard. This isn't a bad thing though and I can see this one becoming a go-to when I´m going for some edge. ...