It has two different reverbs, each with pre-delay, so you can get a good range of spaces for your mix. The Unplugged plug-in offers a range of EQ, compression, reverb and delays designed specifically for acoustic instruments, but also useful for roughing up clean DI signals.
A 'body' or mid control might have been a worthwhile addition but then CLA isn't known for his forward midrange! Vocals verdict: Small tick. The choice of compression curves and the top-end EQ are both good. Even so, the quality of results is surprising considering the limitations. The vocal is the focal point for most listeners, so the 'instant fix' of the Vocals plug-in is only really appropriate when you're in a hurry to get a monitor mix together.
The size and crunch of the thing is impressive and the delays are synchronised to the host tempo.Īgain, the instant gratification is a knockout, though you will need further plug-ins to refine your sound. There are also compression and EQ settings, and some stereo effects. If your guitars are DI'ed, you can flip the Re-Amplify switch to apply a built-in amp sim, otherwise the processing is tailored for an amped signal in the chosen style. You can select between Clean, Crunch and Heavy amp styles. The three distortion settings are great: Growl, Roar and Rip speak for themselves! The Sub settings and three low-frequency curves put the areas you want to tweak right at your fingertips, and the brick wall limiting keeps the sound rock solid. The CLA Bass plug-in provides a range of immediate setups for a powerful rock bass that would translate effectively into other genres, especially hip-hop and electronic styles. Getting a good bass sound is always hard: the weight, the cut and the drive all have to be just right. Anyway, we've talked plenty about the Drums plug-in so far. We'd like the plug-ins to be modular, so that it would be possible to drag the faders into a different order. And if you want to refine it with, say, additional EQ, you can always add one in later. You can get powerful, punchy, weighty kicks and cracking snare sounds in no time at all. It's an instant time-saving fix, and in the case of the Drums, it really does work well. The idea is to get immediate results without faffing around with various plug-ins chained together. There are all sorts of limitations with this style of plug-in, but that's kind of the point. These give you CLA's classic effects approaches for the different drums. Sticking with Drums, you can switch between fundamental drum types: kick, snare, toms, room, overheads and cowbell.
Some of the plug-ins feature extra controls in the top-left corner. For example, on the Drums plug-in, the variations for the Bass fader are Sub, Lower and Higher. The idea is that you don't need to worry about that - just dial in what you want to hear.īuttons above each fader toggle through effect variations, and clicking the chosen colour bypasses that effect. It's not always clear what's going on under the hood and you don't get precise control. Each controller is assigned a specific sonic attribute, so in the case of the Drums plug-in, you get Bass, Treble, Compress, Reverb, Gate, and the faders simply dial in 'more' or 'less' of that effect. Fader wayĮach of the plug-ins consists of five or six controller faders sandwiched between input and output level faders. Whatever you think of CLA's mix aesthetic, you can't deny the calibre of his CV, with artists like U2, Avril Lavigne, My Chemical Romance, Nickelback, Green Day, Paramore, Rod Stewart and Celine Dion being just a few of his clients over the years. To work on that sort of timescale, you have to know exactly how you want the mix to sound before you start and be instantly decisive throughout your mixing session - there's no time to 'um and ah' about whether you like the hi-hat sound. He'll also tell you that he finishes a mix in one to five hours. Chris will tell you that part of his secret is listening at low levels on simple reference systems such as his Sony boombox.