Three Must Have Plugins from Waves Audio

Today, we're going to be looking at three plugins that will help your mixes to sound better. Save you a ton of time and won't break the bank.

Now at the time of filming this, each one of the plugins that are represented today are under $30.

Likewise, if you stick around to the end of the video, I'm even going to show you how to get one of them for free. The first plugin we're going to be talking about is the Waves Vocal Rider. Now the reason why this is a must have plugin is because if you want a really good vocal performance, that sounds natural without the coloration of a compressor, then this is a wonderful plugin to help you to automate a process that would otherwise be very time-consuming.

So what exactly does this plugin do that makes it such a huge time saver? Well, this plugin literally adjusts your vocal levels automatically saving you the need to draw each automation level in your DAW or manually ride a fader while the track is playing.

All you have to do is set the target range of the vocal level in relation to the rest of the mix, then Vocal Rider compensates for all the deviations from the target by intelligently raising or lowering the vocal gain instantly. As stated before, unlike compression, Vocal Rider adds absolutely no coloration to the track!

Next is a very familiar looking plugin.

Only this one is called the Bass Rider. Now in contemporary music, the bass usually helps form the foundation of the song. However bass is also regarded as one of the hardest parts of the mix to get. So taming bass levels can be very tricky as they are naturally very dynamic. Therefore some sort of bass leveling is often required.

Likewise bass frequencies often vary in the power they produce and behave in ways that may seem counterintuitive to the mix engineer. For example, a C1 note will generate much more energy than a C3, even though the C3 is perceived as louder. Now the most common way to compensate for different bass levels is to heavily compress the signal.

However, heavy compression reduces the overall dynamic arrange of the bass. Since louder notes are squashed while quieter notes are compressed, the low note attacks may actually smear. This is where the Bass Rider comes in. The Bass Rider is an innovative, easy to use plugin that rides bass levels automatically much like the Vocal Rider that we just took a look at. 

From the short time that I have used this thing, the Bass Rider delivers perfect bass levels without changing the natural sound of the bass, and it's optimized especially for the frequency range and envelope, characteristics of ALL bass instruments.

So therefore Bass Rider covers all the bases. (DI, amplified, acoustic, synth, upright) Yet again, the reason why this is on the list is because this is a huge time saver and I guarantee you, after using these plugins, you will never mix vocals or bass the same way again.

Last, but certainly not least on this list is the Berzerk Distortion plugin.

This has quickly become my go-to plugin for wild, deranged, and creative distortion, saturation... you name it. This thing has 10, all original distortion shapes, advanced feedback, pitch dynamics, side chaining, and even mid-sized options for versatile experimentation. (It's no wonder why I keep reaching for it over and over again).

Oh, and let's not forget the Go Berzerk button, which randomly generates wild distortion patterns for a nice little flare on an otherwise boring sound. So, when you're producing a new beat, playing around with a synth line, or putting together song ideas on the fly, you often need that kick of inspiration... "that sound".

It's "that sound", which redefines the project and takes the music forward! This plugin can definitely help you do just that!

It's modeled after a large array of well-loved distortion units of all types (amps, tube devices, stomp boxes, and old analog units). The Waves engineers that helped to develop this plug-in used original custom wave shapes based on their all-time favorite distortion curves as well.

And as stated before Berzerk includes 10 unique shapes. Each with its own personality, some transform the sound with grit, dirt, and character. While others will completely blow your head off!

If you want to go completely bizarre, you can turn the density knob to shift the wave shape in amplitude, but watch out because it gets very, very loud, very quickly. Now, one of the real unique things about this particular distortion plugin is the feedback section. It's like an onboard analog synth that can either run a tunable sine wave through the signal, producing interesting baselines melodies, or rhythms, or it can even oscillate while riding the input for some crazy synthesized vocal effects.

It also includes a speed knob to shape the groove as well as octave pitch range and blend adjustments, all of which you can side chain!

The sheer versatility has made it one of my personal favorites.

Oh, and guess what if you decide to join us on the live stream on May 24th at 2:00 PM Eastern standard time for our 50,000 subscribers celebration, I'm actually going to be sharing a link on that stream where you can get one of these for free, just for showing up!

Let me know if you're going to be adding any of these to your arsenal.

And if you do use the links in this post or in the description of the video, as those are affiliate links. This means at no extra cost to you, I'll receive a small commission for leading you to their products. Remember, "We can dream alone.  We can even create alone. But together, we can achieve so much more".