Saving aspiring audio engineers and music producers one dollar at a time.
Author: Adam
Adam is a professional photographer, videographer and audio engineer. He started Real Home Recording back in 2011 and in 2017 launched Don't Go to Recording School.
Here’s my video review of an LA-4 compressor/limiter plugin emulation:
And here’s the script:
Many companies have emulated the Teletronix LA-2A compressor. A smaller amount of Urei LA-3A’s plugin emulations are out there. But no one until now has taken a crack at the black sheep of the family…the LA-4. With their debut product release, Fuse Audio Labs’ says that their new VCL-4 is a faithful emulation of a late 1960s opto leveler. So while the LA-4 is never explicitly named on the web site, the ratio knob, silver GUI, overload LED and plugin name hints at it. Also, on a few message boards it has been confirmed. The developer Reimund Dratwa has worked on plugins for Brainworx and Black Rooster Audio. I really like Black Rooster plugins so this should be interesting…
The LA-4 doesn’t get talked about too much. Besides the ratio control, it has a cleaner topology than the LA-3A.
What people love about the 2A and 3A is they are easy to use and sound good. You don’t have to worry about tweaking an attack or release control because they don’t exist. Good for cleanly chopping off peaks.
Light on CPU. Does not support oversampling. So, higher native sample rates are recommended to avoid aliasing artifacts.
Here’s my review of a crucial piece of software/hardware for your studio:
A script is below but does not include all of the information presented in the video:
In October 2017 Sonarworks released version 4 of their speaker
calibration system, called Reference. They were nice enough to send
me two calibration microphones and license to review it for you all.
If you have used IK Multimedia’s ARC System, you’ll notice right
away that the microphone looks similar and may even be the same.
The difference is, Sonarworks calibrates the microphone on their
end to combat variances between each microphone. The printed
instructions didn’t make it clear where to download the calibration
file but the Measure software did.
In case you were wondering if this is a gimmick, I received two
different mics for the review and indeed their calibrations were
different.
The installation process was simple enough. It’s easiest with the
online installer but an offline version is available if your studio
computer isn’t hooked to the internet.
Compared to IK Multimedia ARC, Reference 4 is vastly easier to measure your control
room with. I always dreaded remeasuring ARC and in fact did not
remeasure my mix area until recently since its year 2012 calibration. I would have no problem doing a weekly recalibration with Reference 4.
You don’t even need to read the manual. It guides you along in the
process from start to finish. It even came within an inch of my
speaker distance and computer monitor to listen spot difference.
There’s some voodoo going on under the hood, that’s for sure.
It’s not perfect though. I did not like how fast the measurement
was taken after the spot was found. Sonarworks needs to add a delay
option so that we can set our mic stands down before it does its
thing. According to a Reference 4 press release, there will be a
major update to this process released by spring 2018 so hopefully the delay is implemented at that time.
The microphone itself is on the noisy side. You can record with it
but be prepared to use noise reduction if your source isn’t loud
like drums or high gain electric guitar.
Version 4’s biggest new features include a zero latency mode,
Systemwide and calibration presets for 101 headphone models.
Systemwide enables users to always have Reference on. This allows you
to get acclimated to the sound of flatter speakers. You can also
set it to other presets besides flat. An internet user who is
familiar with Yamaha NS10 speakers, a staple in most professional
studios, said that Sonarworks nailed the sound.
When the Reference 4 plugin is loaded in your DAW Systemwide will
shut off. The option to close it is in an awkward spot…a gear box menu.
There are occasional graphic glitches. After closing sometimes an after image will remain on screen. This happens with the measurement software and the plugin.
I’m not a fan of the stereo offset. Partly because my speakers are dumb and only have one knob so the stereo balance is rarely perfect. I wish a pan knob feature could be added to that users could manually set where a mono sound is panned straight up the center.
Be careful with the linear phase mode because it can introduce
pre-ringing issues. Optimum truly is the best setting for most tasks.
Does not use ASIO. If your audio interface cannot playback sound outside of your DAW like some Pro Tools systems then Reference 4 won’t work.
It does not come with a microphone clip. I’m not sure why.
Ironically, the ARC 2.5 mic clip grips it just fine. The lack of an included clip is the biggest gripe I have with the package.
There’s also the headphone side of Reference. Version 4 received an
algorithm upgrade so presets should be more accurate than in
version 3. If you don’t care about the speaker side you can save yourself $200. Although if you go that route I do recommend a custom calibration for $100 plus shipping.
I reviewed the headphone side of version 3 in another review which
I’ll link to in the video description. I really liked it and
coupled with Waves Nx it is perfect for people who must mix on
headphones.
Mixing on speakers are the way to go, for long term health reasons.
The Wet/dry knob is a useful feature. Another reviewer said to try
70-80%. I usually keep it 100% wet.
Sonarworks does allow you to use different manufacturer’s
calibration mic. Accuracy is not guaranteed though. For $70, or $50
when it’s on sale, I don’t think it’s worth the savings to take a
gamble on an unknown microphone.
For this review I put Reference 4 through its paces for three music mixes and I’ve also used it for a few recent video mixes. You can hear parts of the music mixes on the RHR Soundcloud page, which I’ll link to in the video description. I recommend downloading them to avoid Soundcloud’s lossy data compression artifacts.
My conclusion? I still do not 100% trust the high end. The same problem happens
when using ARC all these years so towards the end of a mix I will
disable the plugin and reduce any harshness accordingly. Mids are fine and the low end is better than ARC but I usually will disable Reference towards the end of the mix for final tweaks. If a custom EQ like ARC has was added this would be a great help to trust the high end.
The complete microphone, speaker and headphones bundle is $300.
It’s worth every penny. It saves time and it saves frustration. What you hear is the most important part of audio engineering and like the box says you can feel more confident with your recording and mix decisions when Reference is on.
A father recently emailed me and asked a few questions about what his son should do after graduating from high school. Here’s the video with his message and my answer:
Recently I took a look at my college’s web site. It now costs $200,000 to go there if you want to live on campus. It’s $140,000 for four years if you don’t live on campus. THAT IS INSANITY!!!!
So, with that in mind I want you guys and girls to watch this video if you are still on the fence about going to college for a degree in music production/audio engineering/recording arts:
I just wanted to say that there will be more articles coming to this site very soon. There’s just not enough free time to post things on here as much as I’d like.
Musician/producer/engineer Rick Beato gives us his opinion on Music School: The rant begins at 5:33 . It’s a good one. You’ll never hear the recording schools tell the truth. At the 43:00 mark he says that he has 40 something year old friends that are still paying off student loans.
If you are a viewer of Real Home Recording then you know I love plugins. But, they don’t just automatically install themselves unfortunately. You need to tell your DAW where the plugin .dll files are located so that they load up in the inserts (effects) list.
One of the great inventions of modern recording is that of guitar amp simulators. Early designs by Line 6 were OK but sounded very “fake”. Fine for live gigs but for serious studio recording NOT A CHANCE!
Fast forward to 2017. Computer processors are much faster and digital signal processing programmers have become much better. Simply plug your guitar into a direct box (or audio interface instrument input) and start playing! Even if you live in an apartment, you can record electric guitar with ease without getting the cops called on you.
First, the freebies. Don’t be put off by their price. Many of these can compete right alongside the paid plugins. If you like them a donation is much appreciated!
For lighter classic rock distortion and blues crunches I love the sound of Scuffham S-Gear. S-Gear’s cleans also sound excellent! PRS SuperModels sounds great with crunch tone as well. Overloud TH3 is a great all-around guitar amp/cab/stomp box plugin. The Rock 64 amp in particular is just stellar. Another alternative if you love Marshall amps is Mercurial Spark.
Speaking of Mercurial, their ReAxis plugin is a great all-arounder. It’s an emulation of the Mesa Boogie Triaxis rackmount preamp which itself is very nice. ReAxis also includes a few stomp pedals and cabinets as well.
If you can only buy a handful of these due to a tight budget, I would get Scuffham S-Gear (covers crunches and cleans), Bluecat Audio Axiom (good all-arounder including Bass), Neural DSP’s Fortin Nameless Suite for heavy distortion and Kuassa Cerberus for bass.
One plugin type you’ll run into is something called cabinet impulse responses (IRs). A lot of plugins can emulate guitar amps well but fail at speaker cabinet emulation. This is where the third party solutions come in.
Many guitar amp plugins have built in IR loaders. If they don’t, you’ll need to disable (bypass) the built-in cabinet emulator and then put something like Rosen Digital Audio’s Pulse after it.
If you have deep pockets and want a hardware solution then the Kemper Profiler Amp is the one to turn to. It has a large community and third party profile support base around it. Many famous guitar players use it while touring and to my ears it sounds fantastic. The competitor to the Kemper is Fractal Audio’s Axe-Fx III.
As for stomp box effects, Positive Grid Bias FX makes the top of my list. For quality and variety, it is hard to beat. Kuassa’s recent offering called Efektor is very nice but the variety isn’t quite there yet. Want free effects? TSE has a few to check out.
This article was updated on September 30, 2017 to add Ampeg SVX2.
This article was updated on February 2, 2018 to add Sigma Audio IRs and Mercuriall ReAxis.
This article was updated on May 4, 2018 to add Waves PRS SuperModels and Bluecat Audio Axiom.
While I use and recommend Cockos REAPER above other DAWs, Avid Pro Tools remains the industry standard. If you don’t know how to use PT or offer it as an option to your clients then you aren’t considered to be a professional audio engineer by many. So, it is good to know Pro Tools.
I posted all of my own Pro Tools video tutorials here already but I figured it was important to put the recording and setup basics video in its own article.
Pro Tools is tough to wrap your head around at first because many controls aren’t labeled well and functions require multiple button presses. So, to QUICKLY get started with using Pro Tools (either the paid full version or the free First version) watch this:
