so i wanted to see if i could create an effect chain on my mix bus or master track
and i wanted to use only free vst plugins and i'm pretty happy with what i was able to come up with
using five free vsts so in this video i'm going to go over all five of those and how i use them
and this video is sponsored by DistroKid they are an extremely affordable and easy solution for
releasing your music into all of the major online music stores like itunes apple music spotify title
and so many others so if you make music release it and DistroKid will help i'm
zane welcome to audio tech tv where it's my goal to help you conquer the tech so you can
unleash your creative beasts now i've included links to
all of the free vsts mentioned in this video down in the description and let's jump in so here's a
quick listen of the mix without the plugins on so you can hear the mix i'm working with
all right so that's the mix that i'm working with now the first plugin that i'm going to
talk about here is at the very end and the reason why i'm going with this last one
is because this is a limiter it is the george yohng's w1 limiter extremely easy to use
and what this is going to allow us to do is to hear the other effects that i've added a
lot better because it brings the levels up and it's not going to clip because it limits
it so it won't be clipping so you can see on here i have the threshold set to -5 db
i have the release as an adaptive release and it's at one millisecond there and then the
ceiling is at minus point two and let's just listen to what this sounds like on and off
so you can hear a big difference with bringing those levels up and not being too harsh when
it's doing that it's very transparent a really nice free limiter plugin right there
so now we'll start with the first plugin in the list which is this Warmy ep1a and this is an
emulation of a hardware unit from warm audio it's based on the pultec eq and i really like pull tech
eqs they're very forgiving really easy to dial in and they can pretty much sound great anywhere in
your project so this one is from kiive audio and like i said it's based on the warm audio version
of the pultec the settings that i have i actually have two pultec style hardware eqs that i use
and i kind of copied what i would use in those hardware units so i have the boost for the low end
set at 2 and the frequency is set at sixty then i have a cut just under three right there
i have the bandwidth set to seven now on my hardware unit i usually have this set to five but
i've noticed on this plugin version it sounds about the same if i go to seven then with the
boost i have it just after six and this boost is for the high-end boost which i have set to
10 kilohertz here and then i have a bit of a cut at the very highs it's a just under three and the
very highs are 20 kilohertz and one of the things i really like about this plug-in is the over
sampling feature so you can get very good results with this i have it set at the max 16 times over
sampling and i have the mix set all the way to 100 now let's listen to this on and off in the mix
now for me this makes a huge difference and i really like the sound that this has brought to the
mix it kind of thickens things up it makes the low end a little nicer and it smooths out the high end
so that is the warmy ep1a a great free eq plugin now let's look at the next plugin
in the list which is buster from analog obsession but before i get into that plugin i just quickly
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membership is active now with that out of the way let's look at buster from analog obsession
and this plugin is based on the ssl console compressor now with this style of compressor i
typically set my ratio either at two or four i'll just listen back and forth to see what
works best on that particular project for this one i set it at two i have the dry wet mix set to 100
what then for release i always set it to auto and then the attack i usually go around three
and then the next thing you want to do is set your threshold all the way to the right which
is clockwise you set it all the way that way play back your music and then you start to bring this
back until you get in between the zero and the four so you want it kind of hovering in here
and when the really hard transients hit you kind of want it peaking around
four maybe just a little after four so let's do that right now so you can see what i've done
so you can hear when i was doing the on off there when it's on
it kind of thickens things up it blends them together nicely
brings up that bottom end so you can hear those kick drums and the other low end items in the
mix so again let's play it back and i'll do the on off so you can hear the difference
all right so already this mix is sounding a lot better again
this is what it sounded like with nothing on it
quite a difference so let's bring in what we've got so far here it is
and then we're going to bring in the next plug-in which is the ivgi 2 from
Klanghelm and this is kind of an optional plugin what this does is add some saturation to your mix bus
and the saturation is very subtle and it kind of just helps to blend everything together and
reduce some of that harshness in there so let's just give it a listen on and off
so you can hear it thickened things up it kind of took away some of the harshness in
there just smooth it out a little more and i just have a little bit of drive on here
i have a little bit of this symmetric saturation as this is called here then i have the response
set to neutral and i adjusted the output and the trim so that we had a nice clean level on both in
and out and then there's a little bit of crosstalk on here as well so again this is it on and off
just kind of thicken things up a bit there again that's an optional one you can listen to it on and
off in your projects see if it works on there if it does use it if it doesn't leave it out now the
next plugin again is kind of an optional one and this is one that i typically use on my guitar bus
all the time this one's always on there but this is the iZotope ozone imager and what this does
is widens your stereo image so anything you have panned to the left and the right it's
going to make it sound a little wider and create a little more space in your mix for all of that
other stuff to fit in there so let's listen to it on and off and then i'll go over the settings
so you can hear it just kind of opened the mix up a little bit gave some
breathing room in there and i didn't go too crazy with this plugin
so when you first load it up this stereo wise is always disabled so i always turn that on right
away and i usually don't touch anything down here then the next thing you want to do is just
increase or decrease if you want the width and you can see i have it increased to 24
let's just give it a listen to what it sounds like if i increase it quite a bit
so you can hear when i got right up there it kind of made things sound
messy and all over the place so you don't want to go crazy with this plugin
just add a little bit in there and it can create that nice space that you might need in your mix or
leave it off your mix if it doesn't sound good on there at all it's a very easy plug-in to
kind of a and b and just adjust so now i'm just going to play this back with all of the effects
disabled and then i'll re-enable them while we play it so you can hear again
on and off and get an appreciation for all of these effects on your mix buss
and that's my effects chain for the mixbus using only free vst plugins and you can use
all of these or you can pick and choose one or two and mix them in with any other plugins that
you might already be using now if you want to check out even more free vst plugins click the
video on the screen right now or click the one under it to see what youtube recommends if you
like this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this
thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm Zane keep creating and we'll talk soon