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Your favorite modulation plugins...


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The world seems to be full of compressors and equalizers, and there's a decent amount of delay plugins out there too, but modulation is a bit less common - or so it would seem.

 

So, flangers, phasers, chorusing, tremolo, etc. etc. - what are some of your favorite modulation plugins?

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The world seems to be full of compressors and equalizers, and there's a decent amount of delay plugins out there too, but modulation is a bit less common - or so it would seem.


So, flangers, phasers, chorusing, tremolo, etc. etc. - what are some of your favorite modulation plugins?

 

 

I like the Pro Tools Leslie a lot. For backups, guitar, electric piano. That sort of thing. I like modulation in the Waves Doubler. Subtle, but set up right it can be very cool. I like Blue Cat's chorus, phaser and flanger. Even the mod control in the Pro Tools mod Delay can be set up cool.

 

Oh, and in iZotope's Trash you can do some very cool mod tricks. I love my cheap chinese Trem pedal from Belcat.

 

And I love drawing volume and pan stuff on the grid in PT.

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I like modulation to be recorded at the source, so I very rarely use modulation plug-ins. I do like the "Reel Tape Flanger" plug-in for PT, though. Sounds just like the drum break in "Head over Heels." :love:

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Waves Enigma

 

It doesn't do guitar pedal style modulations all that well - the 2 Small Stone presets that it has don't come anywhere near the real sound of my Russian Small Stone, for instance. In fact, many of the presets don't sound all that great and really just seem to be examples of what the plugin can do.

 

But the power and sonic quality of this really shines when you take the time to tune the various parameters to the material, and how you want it to warble/swoosh/remangulate!

 

Cool parameters include a choice of 1-6 delay 'steps' or 'notches' (the difference between some of the old style pedal phasers was how many delay stages they used), a choice of sine, square, sawtooth or triangle modulation waveforms, and stereo widening. (edit:- there is waay more to this plugin than those few parameters. It's almost infinitely tweakable and all of the controls are interactive - changing one will affect how another behaves.)

 

I actually haven't used this for a while as I lost all my carefully crafted user presets last year during a machine reload (imagine my dismay!), but I know I'll be using it again.

 

Not the easiest to use - if you want 1987 LA style chorus, buy a Danelectro Cool Cat chorus pedal. This plugin is cheaper than one of those tho. And it really rewards a little care and attention when you're dialling it in.

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I use several stock Sonar plugins which are very good.

Most can give me simular results with some tweaking.

I have a Lexicon plugin thet also has a chorus effect built in.

Its a really good plugin but its difficult to tweak in because the GUI is built off

a rack unit. Theres allot of scrolling through the time banks to find the speeds you want.

 

I still keep coming back to the free Kjaerhus Classic plugins.

I use the Classic Chorus, Phaser, and Flanger. All are wuick and easy to set up

and they are just about as good as any others I've tried.

 

I really like the chorus on vocals or guitar. its very clean sounding.

Maybe its because I just know how to tweak them the way I like but they do add some

really nice depth to the sound. I dont go nuts with it, but it can really create a nice wall of

sound and you have plenty of ranges you can use.

Its especially good on vocals because it will take a bland mono vocal and both give it a lift it and

some depth in the mix. Since its a stereo plugin a mono input will greatly benifit from it it.

 

I also think the Voxengo chorus is very good too.

Theres a suite that consists of TapeBus, Delay, Impulse, Insert and Chorus plug-ins.

The chorus isnt realy fancy, but it has terrific clarity for giving things sparkle.

 

The TapeBus plugin is also an excelent plugin for mastering work too.

Voxengo has another free one, but I really havent gotten around to messing with it much.

 

I do have one Waves plugin called Doppler that will do some wild effect.

It lets you imitate the sounds of say a train passing by where the pitch will

be higher when its coming at you and then it drops in pitch as it passes you by.

You can change the in and out times and slopes of the sound so you can generate a variety of

effects.

 

I've used it at the beginning or end of songs to make the music sound like someone

unplugged a record player while it was running. I've also used it on drum toms to get

that bloopy synth sound out of them. Its a bit tricky to use but it can give you some

things other plugins cant.

 

What might be cool is to find a chorus that has a side chain input that you could set to

trigger off say a Snare or Kick. Then you could have say one deep chorus revolution each time the

kick is hit. That would be much cooler than trying to time an LFO to do that. An LFO out of sequence

with the beat can sound awful. If it was to run off a triggerd side chain, it woukld be sequenced with the beat.

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CamelSpace for amazing rhythmic tricks within the modulation

 

 

+INFINITY!!! I also really dig Xfer's LFOTool and Roger Lynn's Adrenalin Sync 2, you can do some really cool stuff with them. The D16 mod plugs are great as well, as are the u-he uhbik ones and the Tone2 MutliFX...

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You know, I've never really messed with CamelSpace. I need to rectify that. Looks pretty powerful.

 

 

the other trick is to compress with the gain controls of CS or to dial in the input levels vis a vis theo output level of this FAB plug

 

I think one can get totally lost in a pink floyd kind-of-way with your GTR and CamelSpace

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