anyone can turn their song ideas into actual singles or even albums using the Focusrite
Hhitmaker Expansion and a Focusrite audio interface and in this video we're going to check out what's
available in the new hitmaker expansion plus i'll walk through a song that i created using focusrite
hardware and this Hitmaker Expansion bundle so you can check out what it all sounds like
i'm Zane welcome to Audio Tech TV i've included a link down in the description to Focusrite's
website so you can head over there and get any more information that you might want
and this video is sponsored by Focusrite they make excellent affordable audio
interfaces that include a great bundle of software that will have you making music
right out of the box now let's check out the plugins that are available in this Hitmaker
expansion so here's a quick rundown of the plugins that you're going to get Antares Auto Tune Access,
Brainworx bx Oberhausen analog synth, Brainworks bx Masterdesk, Brainworx bx Console Focusrite SC,
Focusrite Red 2 and 3 plugin suite, Relab LX480 Essentials Rreverb, Softube Marshall Silver
Jubilee 2555 amp sim, XLN Audio Addictive Keys and you actually get to choose which
instrument you want with that one and then you also get the XLN Addictive Drums 2 Studio Rock
Kit plus you also get two DAWs with this you get Ableton Live Lite and Pro Tools First with the
Focusrite Creative Pack which includes some extra plugins and that sort of thing in Pro Tools First
now let's check out this song that i created using the Focusrite Scarlett Solo audio interface and
the Hitmaker Expansion pack now i use the audio interface for recording everything
i use the Focusrite CM25 microphone for recording the vocals and the acoustic guitar and i use the
headphones that are the Focusrite headphones that come with the studio pack bundle and i use those
for the mixing and the recording and everything so everything is Focusrite that i used for this
now let's start with the first track which is the acoustic guitar and this is what that sounds like
and on this track i have one plugin it's the Brainworx bx Console Focusrite
SC and this is a channel strip plugin that's based on a Focusrite console
so you have your dynamics section here you have a gate and you have your eq and filters and all that
sort of thing so it's your typical channel strip but it sounds really nice so let's just A/B this
you can hear a huge difference there let's put it in the mix right now
and then we'll A/B it in the mix we can really hear what it sounds like in the mix
a big difference in the mix there now i also want to point out that i have this
sent to my reverb so the acoustic guitar is panned to the left a little bit and i have it
sent all the way to my reverb b which is panned to the right and on my reverb b i have the lx480
reverb that comes with the Hitmaker Expansion and this is based on the lexicon 480 hardware
reverb which is like a legendary reverb it's very simple to use it comes with a bunch of presets in
here as well to get you started and you get this mix wet knob here so you can put it on a bus or
you can also use it as an insert so let's just a b the acoustic guitar with this reverb on and off
so you can hear it takes it from the left and puts it into the right but it's also a softer sound
in the right it's not as up front which allows other stuff to be there in the mix and i also
have it sent to my reverb a and i have pretty much everything sent to reverb a except for the
bass guitar and on reverb a i also have another instance of the LX480 reverb so that's our reverb
buses and our acoustic guitar now let's check out our bass guitar and here's what that sounds like
nothing too fancy there and on my bass track i have the red two eq and the red three compressor
and those come with the hitmaker expansion pack i'm not doing a whole lot of gain reduction here
just a little bit and then the eq is just used to shape it take out some of the low end just
because i don't want it getting too muddy with all the other instruments i have in there and that's
our bass guitar so let's move on to electric guitar now and this is pretty cool because i
have that Marshall Silver Jubilee 255 guitar amp sim and let's listen to what that sounds like
now this channel is just a little dirty it's mostly clean i'll show
you what it also sounds like on a dirty guitar down here
it's an excellent guitar amp sim plug-in if you're a guitar player and you're getting a Focusrite
Scarlett Solo or 2i2 or whatever Focusrite audio interface and getting this pack with it
you are in for a treat because i plugged my guitar directly into the focusrite scarlet solo using the
instrument input and there was like no latency i recorded with all of these effects on and i
really didn't have any latency issues at all it sounded great and i was able to keep time
no problem now let's just go back up to that other electric guitar so you can see i have just a
channel eq that's built into Ableton Live another one of these Focusrite console plugins in there
so from there we'll go to our drums and this is really cool too because
these drums come with your Hitmaker expansion pack so let's just give them a listen
you can see this is the studio rock kit for Addictive Drums 2. it's a really nice
sounding instrument plug-in or drum plug-in and if you have a daw that can handle multi-output
instruments you can use this as a multi-output instrument and that way you can route your kick
to its own track your snare to its own track and all of the drums to their own track and
put effects on there however you want it's a very nice plugin now how i came up with this drum beat
i kind of cheated a little bit i'll show you what we can do here so we go into our Addictive Drums 2
and then we go to this beats section and then in here you can see we have all these different
beats that we can choose from so let's just click on one that says outro and then i click play
that's pretty cool right there so say i liked this one right here all i have to do is drag drop that
in and we have our beat it's going to be synced up with our songs bpm it's a very cool plugin these
drums are going to have you making songs very quickly and you don't have to be a drummer or even
know how to make a drum beat to use it really nice plug-in right out of the box so that's our
drums and you can see i have some more of that Red EQ the Red compressor and another Red EQ
on there for effects now let's look at another instrument that comes with this hitmaker bundle
it is our synth instrument that we have in here so this synth is the Brainworks bx Oberhausen
synth it's an excellent analog sounding synth and we'll just give it a quick listen right now
and it's a very basic synth line that i have in there but this synth
comes with a lot of presets you can see in here we have bases bowed strings brass drums flute guitar
and so on the one i'm using is a pad in here but if we wanted let's listen to a base
yeah lots of great sounds in this synth and it's kind of going to separate you from everybody
who's using those same vital synth and all those synths that everybody else is using you get this
cool analog synth with the hit maker expansion bundle very cool so that's our synthesizer and
also on there i just have a chorus that comes with ableton live light i also have another instance of
the 480 reverb and the red to eq so that's it for all of our instruments that we have in there now
let's look at vocals alright so let's just give it a listen in the mix so you can hear the vocal
the whispers are conversations around the smelling sounds of the campground so again i recorded this
vocal with this microphone here it's the CM25 mk3 from the Focusrite studio pack came with
this audio interface these headphones and the mic cable that's connected to it very nice studio pack
and the vocals sound decent alright so on my lead vocal track i have antares auto tune and this is
something i've never really used before i've had it in the past and i've never really used it but
this was super easy to set up for somebody who's never used auto tune before auto tune
access is super easy you go in here you choose the key you choose what type of scale you want
and then you can just adjust these two things so you have the retune speed i set it to slow
because i don't want it sounding like that T-Pain effect and then we have human eyes so
i set that to minimal but we can try it with max and also show you what this sounds like
different as well but let's give this a listen so you can see what's going on with it this is a time
for friends to get together wonder about stuff and talk about the weather i hope it don't rain
all right let's set this to fast and just see if it does that T-Pain effect thing
all right so it does do that i'm going to put it back down too slow and yeah maybe if we
set that to max it wouldn't do it as bad i'm not sure that's it that's all your settings with this
plug-in and i did record with this plug-in on the track and there was no latency whatsoever
so you could use this in a live situation there was no latency at all it's very nice
so that is the AutoTune Access i also have another instance of the
console the Focusrite Console channel strip on there and i just want to show you a and b
of that on the vocals
it's a really nice plug and on vocals i like that a lot
and then i just have a limiter that's built into ableton live light and i have this delay that's
also built into Ableton Live Lite and you can see i have it set to mostly dry only a little bit
on there so that's our lead vocal track and the backing vocal track is basically the exact same
thing i just sang it again slightly different and i put a bit of different effects on there
so we have that console channel strip on there i have a saturation and this is the softube
saturation it's free and then i have this ping pong delay on there that's included with Ableton
Live Lite so we'll give this a listen now
sounds a little bit different it's going to create some interest and i have the
volume of that a lot lower kind of creates this sort of stereo almost chorus effect
on there so let's listen to everything all together
and one last thing we have our master track and on the master track we have the Brainworks bx Masterdesk
and if you're afraid of putting something on your master track or doing mastering this plugin
makes it pretty easy you have four compressor presets here so one is the most aggressive and
then two is a little less aggressive three is a lot less aggressive and then four is really
not aggressive but it's still going to compress a little bit then you have volume foundation is your
low end so you want to adjust your low end first get that set up you have your comp mix so you can
adjust how much of the compression you want mixed into your final output the thd is like a analog
setting so this is how much analog kind of sound you want in there then you just have your basic
eq along the bottom here you have some mid side controls and over here you have some filters and
then you can and then you can link your compressor so it's in stereo so if something triggers the
compressor on the left it's also going to trigger it on the right regardless of what's happening
on the right that's what linking does and then you have this turbo limiter mode and they say
not to use that unless you're going for some real heavy like electronic sounds where you want
some heavy limiting happening in there but really you probably won't be using that too much unless
that's the type of music that you make and that's our master so let's listen to that on and off
you can hear it thickens up the mix and i use a little bit of this width here so it widens it
as well just makes it sound a lot nicer and that's the bx Masterdesk
now included with the Hitmaker expansion pack which is included with your
Focusrite audio interface if you register it from October 1st 2021 and on
so if you recently registered it go back to your Focusrite account and you should have these
plugins there and if you're looking for an audio interface the Focusrite scarlett series you can't
go wrong with it they sound great they've got nice mic preamps in there and converters and they're
very affordable audio interfaces for what you get now if you want to check out the full review
that i did of this studio pack you can click the video on the screen right now and if you
liked 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