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Much of the widespread popularity of Pro Tools stems from the extensive collection of compatible plug-ins from both Digidesign and third-party developers. Persuading sound designers and editors to describe the plug-ins they use can be as difficult as obtaining the secret formula for Coca-Cola, but in this article, seven Editors Guild members discuss their current favorites and describe how and when they use them. Craig Berkey There are a multitude of plug-ins for Pro Tools. Some are aimed at the music market, some are for audio restoration and others just make crazy noises. The key is to find the right plug-in for the task at hand. This takes a lot of time trying demos, talking to other Pro Tools users and reading everything about them you can get your hands on. It all becomes worthwhile once you have found that certain plug-in that helps you create what you are hearing in your head. Here is a sampling of some of my favorites:
GRM Tools Classic — With modules ranging from EQ, Doppler, Delay and Comb Filter to less common ones like Freeze, Shuffling and Pitch Accum, this package is a sound designer’s staple. I used the Delay plug-in to create the air pneumatic sound of the “X” door in X-Men Wave Mechanics Speed — Great for changing pitch over time or for time expansion/compression. The black Mercedes in Men in Black II required more than a regular engine, so I added jet engine sounds to it (among others), then used this plug-in to make the jet sounds match the moves that the car was making. I also used it to help create the vocal sounds for the creatures that made up the character Serleena. Wave Mechanics Sound Blender — Sound Blender comprises two modules, Pitch Blender and Time Blender, which can be used to create some out-of-this-world sounds. I used this plug-in for X2: X-Men United to create a hypnotic low throb for Mutant 143 when he is forcing Professor X to find all the mutants in Cerebro.
Line 6 Amp Farm — Although it is musically oriented, you can use this amp modeler to create various futz type effects. I used it extensively on Behind Enemy Lines to create two-way military radio sounds.
Antares Kantos — Unlike other synthesizer plug-ins, where a MIDI input is used as a trigger, Kantos is triggered by audio. I used it to create some low-frequency transition sounds for X2: X-Men United when we go from reality to Mutant 143’s illusion.
MDW Parametric EQ —This is a new plug-in that I have started using on my current project, Big Fish. It is a five-band parametric EQ with a narrow enough bandwidth that it can be used to notch some unwanted tones out of the dialogue. Dave Whittaker
Plug-ins are not just for the fearless (and mixers)
anymore. As editors, we’re all overly familiar with the AudioSuite
plug-ins that Digidesign has provided for years now, workhorses such
as Duplicate, Reverse, Gain, EQ II, Time Compres-sion/Expansion and
the ever-popular Pitch Shift. They cover everyday needs quite well and
are easy to use without studying a manual. Digidesign also has a lesser-known but brilliant tool, the Vari-Fi AudioSuite plug-in. This plug-in does just one thing, and it does it exceedingly well: it takes an audio selection and creates a new sound that “winds down” to a dead stop — without obvious artifacts. There are no adjustments possible, which is probably why it sounds so good — the designers were able to optimize it for best quality.
For more radical pitch changes, Pitch ‘n Time from Serato (www.imaginarygadgets.com) is a very useful plug-in. My favorite function is that it also can make dynamic pitch changes over time, which is extremely useful for sound effects design. The latest version (2.2HD) supports OS X and Pro Tools 6, as well as sample rates up to 192k. Arboretum Systems has a whole package of plug-ins under the Hyperprism family name, both AudioSuite for sound design and TDM for mixing. The one I keep using over and over is their Bass Maximizer. This great little toy is my one-stop-shopping tool for giving more “wallop” to a sound, from gunshots to impacts. It combines an effective lower harmonic generator, increasing the perceived amount of bass, with a low-frequency (only) compressor. The amount of harmonics is controllable, as is the mix of original and “maximized” material. And if the generated harmonics get too big and too low in frequency to be useful (or safe!), there is a low-cut filter. Bass Maximizer works equally well with steady-state sounds, making it handy for designing those ever-popular big, ominous, low-end moody drones that populate every other movie today.
The Waves plug-ins are well-known for their excellent sound quality and usefulness in mixing — their equalizers are second to none. Waves also makes a nifty bass maximizer called MaxxBass, although it does not include the compressor feature of Hyperprism’s Bass Maximizer. Less known is that their Doppler plug-in is outstanding, the best tool I’ve come across for applying a Doppler effect to a sound. This is a tricky effect to achieve, and while quite a few other plug-ins out there sort of manage it, the Waves version actually works. Rob Nokes My favorite plug-in is definitely Serato Pitch ‘n Time, because it allows me to give different pitches to different sounds so that they don’t overlap into mush, and to make sounds fit exactly into the length required on screen. It’s amazing how natural the sound remains, even when shifted as much as 20% — particularly when Pitch ‘n Time is compared to other software or analog techniques.
For Seabiscuit, the film editor wanted lots of weight in the jockey POVs and pass-bys, so I duped the effects, pitched one version down with Serato Pitch ‘n Time, then used the Waves L2 Ultramaximizer on the original to build a big deep bottom for the hoof hits. The increase in the deep weight caused some of the dynamics to be lost, so I volume graphed the dynamic back into the track based on the original waveform, inserting a spike in volume around each hoof hit. For Miracle, I had to denoise a lot of the recordings made using microphones on ice skates to eliminate hum from overhead fluorescent lights, and I found Waves Restoration to be good. It’s quick and effective, but for really high-quality denoising or hum removal, I would use the Audio Cube, which is a stand-alone box. The difference is that the Audio Cube gives the editor precise control (± 0.01 hZ) over the root frequency and harmonic intervals that need to be eliminated. In the future, I think we will all see productions paying for separate hum removal and noise reduction using systems such as Audio Cube or Cedar Audio, so that ADR can be minimized. My other favorite, though I seldom have the chance to use it, is Amp Farm. It’s great in conjunction with reverb, for a sort of futz effect. Craig Henighan First and foremost, good creative selection of source sounds is the heart of any well “designed” sound montage. Plug-ins are tools and are not always the magic ingredient, but, boy, can they be fun to mess around with! The six TDM plug-ins that I use the most are:
For heavy design work and to mess with sounds, I like the GRM Tools Classic plugs-ins; Shuffling and the five-band Comb Filter plug-ins are favorites. I also use Amp Farm to distort things a bit, while Timeblender and Pitchblender (part of Wave Mechanics Sound Blender) can always give interesting results. To design new sounds, I run software such as Metasynth, Access Virus and Native Instruments Absynth off my laptop, then run an audio signal from the stereo output of the laptop into two Aux ins for Pro Tools on my main cutting rig, as if the laptop were an extra instrument. I can then insert plug-ins such as TC Electronic MegaReverb or Arboretum’s Hyperprism Flanger or Chorus and render the result as a new file. I also use software samplers such as the ones provided in Reason 2.5. I’ll use those on my laptop, too — I load it with the samples I want to use, take that output into Pro Tools, add more plugs-ins and “perform” the effect right to picture. This allows me to use the power of a sampler with the higher quality plug-ins available in the TDM world. Because Pro Tools 6.1 recognizes Rewire 2, a protocol that enables different audio applications to communicate, it’s also now possible to use Reason much more reliably on my main rig.
The use of many of these plug-ins varies depending on the type of material you wish to create. Combining three or four plug-ins is a big thing for me. For instance, when degrading a sound, Digidesign’s Lo-Fi works really well to a point, but to push a sound right over the edge and really make it dirty and nasty-sounding, I almost always insert Amp Farm right after Lo-Fi, then run it into McDSP FilterBank’s EQs to pull out the sound I really want, then maybe even add the Comb Filter from GRM Tools Classic to see where it leads me. Looking for one specific sound always leads to making more sounds that can be used at a later date. A quick trick that I (and other editors) use for speed is to come up with plug-ins settings in the TDM world, then copy them to the Audiosuite equivalent. Once you decide on your TDM settings, save them with Shift+Command+S. Then instead of taking the time to re-record or do a real-time bounce, just open up the equivalent Audiosuite plug-in, pull up the settings you just saved in the TDM version and hit “Process.” The rendered effect will take no time compared to bouncing to disk. Charles Maynes I use plug-ins for sound design and sound effects mastering. Since I normally prefer not to have a synthetic quality to the effects, I try to avoid things like reverb or delay as much as possible. The plug-ins below have been very helpful to me in getting a “big” or in some cases “small” sound that will easily fit in to the films I work on. Some things I try to be on top of are stereo imaging (which sometimes needs to be minimized) and enhancing the most characteristic qualities of a given sound. Plug-ins that I consider essential:
Waves PAZ is used to determine the phase of
stereo signals. This can be handy when checking
recordings to see if they will behave correctly
in the Dolby matrix.
Although a bit tweaky, the Waves Restoration bundle is exceptional for doing two things in particular. Its declicker, X-Click, does a terrific job of fixing digital transfers by removing the little ticks and pops that can sometimes be a part of a transferred audio file, and its noise reduction, X-Noise, is a fast and good-sounding hiss reducer.
The most useful compressor/expander I have
ever used, Waves C4 Multiband Parametric
Processor, breaks the signal into four
frequency ranges, then allows you to do
either compression or expansion (which in my case tends to
be noise reduction) with different degrees
of aggressiveness. The learning curve is a
little steep, but it’s
well worth the effort. Dolby Surround Tools offers a good and easy way to derive a Left-Center-Right from a two-channel stereo recording. Shie Rozow As a music editor, the one plug-in I use the most is Serato’s Pitch ‘n Time. There are three main types of situations in which I use it: The simplest is when I need to lengthen a single note. For example, on a recent film, a cue began with the strings holding a single note for a bar, followed by the rest of the orchestra beginning in bar 2. The cue started on a dissolve, but on the dub stage the director decided he wanted the cue to begin a little before the dissolve. I made a cut where the orchestra came in, then used Pitch ‘n Time to stretch that first held note so that it began where the director wanted it, without affecting or changing the sync of the rest of the cue.
Another common situation is when a held
note within a cue needs to be extended,
usually to accommodate a picture change.
I can create a fermata by extending a note
at the end of a music phrase, thus getting
out of tempo, then back into tempo on the
B-side of the extended note. On occasion, I use Pitch ‘n Time to change the pitch of cues so I can overlay them. This is most useful when creating temp scores — I use this technique a lot to “fatten” up a cue by overlaying another cue on top of it. This is usually most effective when adding low pads or strings to another cue. One final tip on plug-ins in general — whenever you get a set of settings you like, save those settings and give them a name that will let you know what they are down the road. I save settings all the time and find that I go back to those settings on other projects because they work! It’s a huge time-saver — rather than having to try to remember or re-create that great sound I made on that show I scored two years ago, I can simply load the settings I used. Rob Sephton I was one of the “lucky” Pro Tools 1.0 guys, so I know how quirky the program was in its early stages. But I survived and am now working happily in 6.1. As the program and I have both evolved, I’ve started to use plug-ins differently. They are more valuable now — in the early days, I tended to use my Eventide 3000 and other hardware processors because the quality of many plug-ins wasn’t yet good enough. But just as samplers have gone from 8-bit to 16-bit and now 24-bit, 64-bit and so on, plug-ins are taking advantage of the processing capabilities of modern computer systems, making them much more powerful. Personally, I love it — these new toys are very exciting.
I use most of my plug-ins to process sounds
and help in pre-mixdowns of the elements
I expect to combine for a particular effect.
A few of my favorite plug-ins are Waves
V4 TDM Gold, Wave Mechanics UltraTools
2.3 and GRM Tools Classic 2.0. Digidesign
itself has some awesome plug-ins, including
Digi Rack, D-Fi and Reverb One. There
are
also some great third-party plug-ins, such
as Focusrite d2 and d3, Line 6 Amp Farm
and Dolby Surround Tools. Plug-ins add a new dimension to sound for almost everyone in post — it’s brought the joy of editing back for me, and for many of my peers out there. Read the PDF’s, but don’t be afraid to experiment and stretch the envelope on your own — you’ll be surprised what you can learn about compression, pitch shift, alias artifacts and the power to create!
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