Hello!
This is a new section of the site in which we will write about software and hardware for music programming. For the beginning, I was thinking to write about an instrument or an effect, but then I realized that there are many people involved in the world of music programming, be it amateurish or professionally, so there is no need to talk about programs from the start. It is not always about the program the music producer uses; it is the idea that the composer generates that matters.
As the title says, this article is about Wave Arts Power Suite 5. Wave Arts a well-known company, introduced software processors for mixing and mastering for home use, and with their release version 5 they entered the market for high-quality effects. Power Suite consists of 5 processors: TrackPlug 5, MasterVerb 5, FinalPlug 5, MultiDynamics 5 and Panorama 5.
TrackPlug 5
TrackPlug is a channel strip plug-in which includes 10 band of professional, 64-bit EQ, assignable EQ as parametric, low/high shelf, low/band/higpass or notch filter, spectrum analysis mode, great brickwall lowpass/highpass filter, side chain EQ support on each dynamic section, dual compressors and gate, clean and vintage sound modes, peak limiter...
All sections already exist in many hardware and software processors. In the EQ section contains 10 band and every band has 4 controls for what type you are using (parametric, low/highpass filter), frequency, gain control and q or width and bypass button. Down after the EQ section is the brickwall section with high and lowpass knobs. I am amazed by the characteristics of this section because this is the first plug-in I have used to develop a really great brickwall. Furthermore, I would like to mention about the dynamic section witch starts with Gate and after that with two independent compressors.
In all three effects you can chose between soft, medium and hard compression. As in EQ section similar in dynamic section you have window where you can make fine adjustments for gate or compression. The compressor has all the elements you need, starting from threshold, ratio, gain, attack, release, mode where you can chose between clean and vintage, side chain, knee and lookahead. Also you have graphical x/y section where you can see the threshold and gain settings. On the right end of the plug-in you have the main meter section with main gain control, limiter and peak meter. This plug-in has clean and transparent sound and is really great to be used on every track you have, of course it depends what you need, but it is great to have all-round plug-in for vocals, bass, guitar, drums or everything you like. For me this plug-in sounds too harsh sometimes and it doesn’t have that traditional warm sound, but I thing the main advantage is the transparent and clean sound and because of that this plug-in has bean used a lot.
MasterVerb 5
MasterVerb is a great-organized reverb plug-in with 4 sections. On the top is the graphical representation on what to do in the other three sections. Under this section is Еarly reflection section where you can chose between 8 types of reverb algorithms- halls, rooms, plates, chambers, echo, cathedral, nightclub and ping-pong. Above that is Late Reverb section where you can chose between hall and plate type of reverb. In these two sections you have a lot of parameters so you can adjust and get the sound you are after. On the right part is Envelope section and main section with Peak meter, Late/Early rotary knob, Dry/wet rotary knob and gain rotary knob.
The sound of this reverb is natural and sweet and the interface is far easy to use and in just a couple of minutes you will have a nice sound which will take very little of your CPU power because usually all great sounding reverbs are really CPU-hug.
FinalPlug 5
FinalPlug is a peak limiter/volume maximizer. The controls you will find in this plug-in are typical and standard on the market and those are: Threshold, Ceiling and Release Slider. The Release section has an Auto button, which is recommended to use most of the times. The sound of this plug-in is almost identical to the plug-ins in the rest of the suite and that means it is transparent and clean.
The most beautiful thing about this plug-in is that the user just selects what he/she needs from the CD or DVD mastering and with further small tuning great results can be achieved.
MultiDynamics 5
MultiDynamics is powerful multiband compressor/expander plug-in. It has six independent bands each with separated compressor/expander. With this plug-in you can compress or expand everything you want from drum, guitar or synth group to master. With every band you have an independent control for Lo-Gain, Threshold, Hi-Gain, Attack and Release rotary knob.
There is also a slider for global adjustments of these parameters and other global functions are the crossovers from 18dB/oct and 30dB/oct, lookahead function and clean and vintage mode like in all other plug-ins from this suite. Overall this plug-in is great and with little practice you can have great results.
Panorama 5
The last plug-in from this suite is the Panorama. This plug-in is specialized tool for creating realistic 3-D audio sound in stereo signal. When I say 3-D I mean not just to pan the sound left or right, but up, down, front, back, near and far. For me this is a complex plug-in and I don’t recommend it if you don’t understand what you want really to achieve.
Overall, I think if you carefully read the manual you will spend some interesting time using it.
I have always considered all these tools as sound designer tools because with typical reverb plug-ins you can have some similar results.
All in all, Power Suite 5 has all the processors required for mixing and mastering. The sound is clean and transparent and if you like this type of sound you can easily achieve it with these processors.
Text by Darko-Packi Spasovski
packi@mt.net.mk
www.skopjeclubbing.com.mk |
