After installing 13 I decided to get rid of all third party plugins and work exclusively with what comes in Cubase. So far it’s been a good experience.
There’s only one plugin that I miss, the VocalRider from Waves. It does volume automation much like an engineer might ride a fader. You set a target level and it raises or lowers the gain automatically to maintain it. Unlike compression, limiting, etc., it doesn’t affect the quality of the audio, just the level. The ability to load a plugin, set a target level and be done with it was very handy.
Recording a fader automation pass (or manually writing your automation) is the only technique I know of that accomplishes similar functionality. That said, Cubase has a ton of plugins these days and I’m certainly not an expert on all of them.
Is there any stock plugin that offers similar functionality, i.e. automating the level to maintain a specific target without compressing, limiting or otherwise affecting the signal itself?
This is one I haven’t come across in Cubase. I used to use Vocal Rider extensively but less so these days since the latest release of Izotope Nectar which has a similar (and more intelligent) function.
I’ve tried to be purist in the past and stick to stock plugins, but there is always something that crops up that needs a particular function or effect that isn’t available in Cubase.
I’d be interested to know if anyone has found a Cubase function that would emulate these plugins though.
I haven’t used Nectar but I know Izotope has a lot of good stuff.
My current mindset of using only stock plugins is an experiment in a more minimalist approach. My music is classic rock, so I don’t need a lot of the tools that I probably wouldn’t be able to do without if I were producing modern music.
The benefit, for me, is a simpler life and reducing the likelihood that I’ll end up spending my evening screwing around with the computer fixing something instead of making music. It also makes me focus on the basics. Get good tracks, use the basic tools to bring it all together, and if something needs that much attention just redo the track.
Overall it’s been a good experience, and I don’t find myself lacking anything. VocalRider was a convenience and I enjoyed it, but not enough to deal with Waves for just this one plugin. I was hoping there was a stock plugin that I’d missed, but it seems that’s not the case. Oh, well. Still worth the tradeoff.
If you have 39€ to spend, there is TBProAudio’s DynaRide:
The guy is just awesome. Quick bug fixing if necessary, top support, answering within 24h max when you contact him with a question or problem. (And no, I have no connection with him but I bought his CS-5101 channel strip plugin and find it to be of great value for money ).
Not native, but I use POWAIR by SoundRadix and it is absolutely amazing. It has paid for itself many times over and does an amazing job with tasks such as leveling 1+ hour podcasts and webinars. I’ve also used it for post mixing. It has a slider for adjusting response time (LUFS-I integration window) and can apply between 1 and 20dB of gain depending on how leveled you want the audio to be. I don’t really use the compressor so often. For vocals I think I’d prefer to manually automate the gain, but POWAIR is really nice when you have long passages to level and your client isn’t going to pay for you to spend 3 hours manually adjusting gain on their podcast.
It’s not a plug, but it’s a process that’s included in Cubase. And, IMO, how well VocalRider or Bassrider works, is very dependent on what you feed it.
It’s important to know/learn the first 9 minutes.
But the biggie is feeding a good signal to VocalRider or BassRider dependent on what he describes at 9:12 “Whats the next gain stage…” Event Based Volume Envelope.
A lot of users I would guess completely omit this, and with vocals, it’s especially important. Do this, and Vocal/Bass Riders will work that much better.
Conceptually (though obviously not exactly), what VocalRider does is like the event automation he’s drawing with the pencil, or fader automation you can do with volume automation, only without all the manual labor. It’s dynamically raising / lowering the gain of the signal and is a tool of convenience, for those times when close enough is good enough.
A good analogy would be de-essing. You can use a plugin for this (there are a number of ways you can accomplish it with stock plugins, including a dedicated de-esser), but it will never be as precise as going through the event and manually treating the S wherever you find it. The plugin method gets you most of the way there, and is often “close enough for rock and roll.” The benefit is time saved, at the cost of precision. The manual method yields better results. The benefit is precision, at the cost of time.
Cubase offers no shortage of tools to precisely automate gain. What VocalRider brings to the party is something that Cubase doesn’t offer in this particular scenario, a tool of convenience for when close enough is good enough. Admittedly, I probably leaned on it more than I should and my mixes would be better if I spent more time doing it manually. However, I don’t run a commercial studio, so sometimes close enough is good enough, which is why I was looking for a stock replacement for this plugin.
That said, I’d rather spend the time doing it manually (or experiment with the expander idea) than go back to dealing with third party plugins. I’m enjoying the simplicity that this approach brings, and knew there would be tradeoffs. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it works for me.
I already own VocalRider. If I was going to re-introduce third party plugins into my environment I’d just go with that, but I do appreciate the thought.
I agree. I didn’t mean this to be a substitute or comparable for Vocal/Bass Riders.
IMO, and generally speaking only for myself, if I were to place a VR on a vocal without any prior compression/limiting, it will maybe get me 70% there. I’m almost always going to go back and make corrections to what VR did. So I prefer to do more up front before it hits a VR or even compressor if vocals.
If I were to go through and do what Dom did first, then VR, it seems to do what it should do much better… I can also say the same about a lot of compressors and even limiters. The better you pamper or prepare the stuff that comes before them the better VR or compressor will love you. They don’t have to work as hard, and you can sometimes hear that.
It’s a similar concept to series compression. Your first start with very low ratio, slow attack, soft knee, high threshold so it just kisses occasionally, then the following compressors each one a bit more aggressive, but always testing because all of it is very dependent upon the material.
Yeah, any time a tool is working overtime there’s probably an opportunity to go back a couple of steps and do some incremental work to spread the load.
I record and mix as I go, so one of the things I’ve used VR for is just a cheap trick to quickly get the level in the neighborhood if the dynamic range is an issue. It lets me stay in the flow of tracking rather than stopping and getting bogged down in tweaking. My priority at this stage is just to get a good enough mix that it feels okay when tracking the next part. It’s not uncommon to come back after the fact and do more detailed work when I’m mixing “for real.”
