#pluigins

[vstparty]

Top 5 Waves Plugins

Waves is one of the oldest and most established music software companies. Here, I’ll cover five plugins that, despite the deluge of offerings on the market, I have found myself using in virtually every production.

#5: IR-1/IR-L.

Convolution reverb is ancient news by now, and yes, your DAW probably comes with one such plugin. Waves’ incarnation, however, comes with its unique impulse response and preset library which spans several gigabytes and contains the sounds of some of the greatest performance spaces in the world. My perennial favorite is the Birmingham Symphony Hall, which has been home to such classical music luminaries as Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons.

#4. DBX-160

I shall deftly avoid the trap of comparing a plugin emulation to its original - a useless and ridiculous task, since there are discrepancies even among multiple units of the same device. What counts is that this is a broadly usable, musical, side-chainable compressor that works wonders on bass (as does the original) and in countless other applications. As with all plugins, your mileage may vary, but there is no excuse for not trying this one. 

#3. CLA DRUMS

I am viciously skeptical of anything that claims to bottle the talent of a celebrity. This plugin does something different - it gives you a library of shortcut and one-fader tweaks that I have found applicable to a remarkable number of drum tracks. I have yet to find a multitrack acoustic drum sample library or patch where the default processing in the drum plugin sounds better than what this bad boy does with just a few seconds of tweaking.

To be concluded...