VST Blogisode #4 Protools Plug ins

Hi there Everyone,

Well i have been away for a little while to have a bit of a rest from a busy life, but i have come back today to drop the next blogisode for those of you who either like VST instruments and plugins or want to know more about what they can do. I have already written a few blogs highlighting some good products you can read about in my other blogs. But Today I will be looking at a few different plugins you can use in Protools. The main focus of this new VST series is what can you do with the basic plugins that come with the software. So if you like this Blog and the series, please support with a UPVOTE. I will try to always respond to comments as often as i can as well. So lets get into it.

(Disclaimer: I am not paid by any company to endorse any product, i promote the choices i make and use and provide my own opinion as to their performance.)

Protools has come along way over the years and while at times their development ideas and methods have been criticized from time to time (sometimes Heavily) they still continue to deliver a product that provides great quality plenty of features, a very clean and professional interface and good overall usability. It has often been the case in the past with most DAW platforms that you pay alot of money and get very few VST plugins free with your software, leaving the new buyer starting out very little to use to build some good sounds and often going online to down load free VST's to add to their Library. Many of the free plugins provided with the software such as Protools are somewhat old in design, have minimal functions and pretty crappy GUI's and templates. The developers have heard these complaints and generally still don't offer a lot with their packages and the general wuality has improved slowly. What made things even worse a few years back was when Protools released version 11 and created the AAX plugin support and stopped the RTAS and general VST coded support. This meant that the New Protools only accepted their own specific coded AAX coded plugins.

It also meant that 3rd party developers had to write new AAX code for all their associated plugins if they wanted to continue to work with Protools and reach the largest customer based industry for professional sound design, as pretty much every studio across the world at the time had a version of Protools. This may have been a contributor to a rise in the use of Ableton and other DAW software as plenty of people got pissed off with the elitist attitude of AVID (Protools developer) to exclude those who couldn't afford the new software. However other updating options where added and a few years on now things are pretty fine as usual. So now Protools has a better platform and better coding for its plugins and many 3rd party companies have adapted and got on board quickly, and incidentally the quality of AAX plugins and most plugins and vst's generally have greatly improved over the last few years. So now that the air is a little clearer from that history lets take a look at the latest Protools plugins provided with your first purchase. (below is a link to the whole list on avid)

http://www.avid.com/pro-tools/included-plug-ins

So Lets start with Sound Design and instrument VST's. Protools has a package called AIR. It comprises of 6 VST plugins. Each AIR plugin is different and includes:
MINI GRAND - a nice piano you can manipulate a little and get some nice tone out of it)
BOOM - a simplistic looking drum machine and sequencer, its o.k. and you can recording in a few interesting ways with it, but i don't really suggest it (ie Multi rhythms to one track)
DB-33 - This is an organ VST which emulates B3- Tone-wheel including the rotation.
STRUCTURE FREE- This is a back end styled plugin that allows you to design an actual sampler or instrument by using connecting micro applications and create multi-pathways in developing your instrument.
VACUUM- This is a good sampler for fat bass tones and leads using a few different tube emulating oscillators with grit and more. This is a good plugin and i still use this in mixes when i need some deep fat tones and grindy leads.
EXPAND 2 - this plugin has some reasonable sounds you can work with, it runs pretty smoothly and has a good sound library of elements to choose from including basses, some orchestral, atmospheres and environmental that can be used and blended into a decent mix without being noticeable.

In fact, i used EXPAND 2 in a college project to do a remix of Rhianna's 'Diamonds' song. The goal of the task was to use the most basic midi plugins and develop sound design skills with the lowest level methods and tools we could, to push us into finding ways to create and recreate realistic instrument and sound design... does that make sense? yeah you get what i mean. I attempted to put my mix of the Rhianna track up on sound cloud and YouTube but was stopped due to copyright so perhaps can will get it on my site, because i think i got pretty close. Protools has now included an extra bonus pack of instruments for the subscription package which you can see on the page i linked to above. These include guitar pedal emulators, and some phaser tools and so on. They work ok, but there are other ways to get good guitar sounds, but hey, these are available for the new user and that's our point.

The Next list of included plugs are the EQ and Dynamics tools. Most of these are really good given how basic they are but i use the EQ7 - all the time. I just find that this eq is very good at spotting harsh frequencies and giving more tonal balance to the mix. There are of coarse better ones around but as a freebie, this is a great tool. The compressor is ok, but i don't use it much because i have a number of others. But there is a good compressor to learn on included in this pack called the BF-76 compressor and is a 3rd party emulator based on the Universal Audio (UA) 1176 compressor, a legend in the field. This compressor is great to work on and learning about how comps work. Its great for crushing heavy guitars and pumping solid acoustic kick drums in your mixes. check it out below;

there is also a de-esser included and works quite well when you need to cut that annoying hiss, or higher end sibilence from a dialogue track. If you're unsure of what Sibilence is, its the annoying SSS type sounds you can get in a track, especially in film dialogue, or if you are cleaning up old re-recordings from records and so on. The De-esser is a high pass roll off frequency cut tool that presses down over the annoying areas and works well with a single band EQ to help cut out the offending frequency region.

There are also reverb and delay effects included. Some of these are AIR collections and to be honest, are not very impressive at all, however, the included standard reverb and Delay work well and sound great, including the stereo delay which i use on occasion because it works well. I guess what i am saying here is that some the AIR bundle stuff included with Protools is generic and pretty shit with a few exceptions, but the general tool packs work really well for most jobs and are reactive and responsive to your projects. This means that i find their responses have a good proportional response to the level they are being applied at. So, if i am using the basic protools compressor, i set my ratio, and the threshold levels are operating almost as quickly as i am moving my mouse and the reactive response to the mix is the same. They are generally clear and effective, and you don't have to strain your ears to try and hear the change of level in the effect.

here is a look at the standard Protools reverb plugin: nice GUI and straight forward, with easy and effective control.

Here is the standard Protools Stereo Delay called Mod Delay III. A great delay tool with flexible controls and great response, but takes a little playing around with. Its not hard though.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54d696e5e4b05ca7b54cff5c/t/56b9ad89cf80a1b8c85cc1fb/1455009172363/AVID+Mod+delay+III

Effects filters and sound processors. There are a pretty large collection of these happening and occasionally they add one or two more. Half of these again are part of the AIR products, which i wouldn't waste too much time on but there are other tools and filters here that work pretty good when you need them. Again, these articles are about helping the person who is new to these or the home artist who doesn't have alot of money to spend on more expensive sound design tools. A good 70% of the tools in supplied free with PT11 and beyond are good tools and you have most of the basics to create a good demo mix if that's what you need. Anyway, tools like the SansAmp PSA-1, and the MIXIM limiter are great tools for different reasons. The Sansamp PS-1 is great to add to a bus channel and belnding in some good chunky distortion to some guitars while the Maxim Limiter is good for dropping on your final master mix and bringing up some levels and also has some industry standard settings such as CD levels and Radio mix settings. But always be sure you know how to use limiter and compression tools befor you just smash on a dynamics processor otherwise you can destroy your mix and it will sound like crap when played on a radio, because they also apply heavy limiters to their broadcasts.

Finally we come to the Utilities and some of these can be very useful when you know how to use them. The more valued plugins here would include, the down mixer, the signal generator, the POW-r Dither, the Click, and the re-wire app to name a few. Others i would avoid such as the normalizer. Dither is important when you finish your final master, you need only add a dither once but it is useful. A dither is useful when you are changing your bit-rate from one level to another as the dither removes artifacts created when the file is altered from one rate to another. The click app is useful for recording obviously and this can be adjusted for your click track as well. The Re-Wire app is used when you use 3rd party software such as pitch correcting vocaliser tools such as Melodyne.

So there you have it, a decent run down on the variety of plugins you get free with the latest Protools package. There are plenty of basic tools to learn on and get used to and some that are more advanced and yet still easy to learn. There are some decent sound libraries and some good EQ and Dynamic tools and useful utilities as well. So i hope this has been helpful for you to consider if you are in the market for a DAW and you don't have a big budget to blow getting all the extras. Also bear in mind that the AVID site also has links to their approved 3rd party software as well.

As always if you like this and other posts, please UPVOTE and share with others. Thanks again and i will see you next time.
regards
Shan the Sound man