A very useful video in which he goes through his process, and he uses some plugins from Plugin Alliance, so I went to their website to see if I could afford any of the plugins he uses, and found that they’re having a sale for the next 86 hours (as of April 23 at 11:49 am) that supposedly has all plugins except a few for $30 each.
I got several of their plugins when I bought Komplete 14 CE, and at first I didn’t pay much attention, but eventually I started using them and realized they are great.
Just wanted to post this here for those who may want to take advantage of this sale, and also to ask if there are any of their plugins that are designed for orchestral instruments, especially to make strings and brass sound more like a typical film score, especially the more epic ones.
Think Hans Zimmer, Tom Holkenborg, Joseph Trapanese (his “No One Will Save You” score is a masterpiece), the Michael Giacchino ones that are on the epic side, think “Jupiter Ascending” and “Thor Love and Thunder”), Lorne Balfe and all those guys. That’s the sound I’m looking for.
Of course I already put the ones he recommended and some more in the cart, but I want to see if anyone here has another recommendation. Many of these are rather expensive, so if this sale is true, then it’s huge savings.
Don’t be taken in by the “hurry before the deadline” nonsense. PA sales are continuous throughout the year. Bide your time and “your” plugin will turn up at the $29.99 mark, whatever the RRP is.
edit:
EG A month ago I bought these three:
AMEK Mastering Compressor $399
Brainworx bx_console AMEK 200 $399
Brainworx bx_masterdesk PRO $349
It’s best you step away momentarily and take a big deep breath.
Listen to Googly. PA sales are never-ending, just like Waves, NI, and UAD.
Using the tools of a well known engineer/producer isn’t necessarily going to get you the “sound I’m looking for.” There are a host of other tools that could also meet your sonic objectives. As you probably know, experience counts and experience involves really learning your tools and knowing them inside/out…when to use what to achieve any given objective.
What Tom is using are great tools, and most available from PA at a huge fraction of the “list” price. Hardly anyone pays list. List is just a marketing gimmick. Most PA prices as said above if you are willing to wait are around $29 each with a few exceptions.
PA has it’s own plugs but is also a vendor for other developers. That for example has recently manifested issues with DearVRpro and DearVRpro2. Some developers drop PA and therefore if you want to upgrade what you purchased from PA at a later date, there is no avenue to do that other than start over direct through the developers own website.
Also, you will never be notified by PA of a plug-update. You have to manually check each plug via the PA website, and either manually update each plug that has been updated, or re-install/update everything you have a PA license for.
PA was sold by Dirk a couple years ago to Soundwide ie Native Instruments. IMO, Dirk basically milked PA for all its worth using very creative and often clever sales promotions that were beneficial for the buyer before unloading it on NI. Today NI is attempting to sell these same plugs at around the same price that Dirk sold them for 2-3 years ago but has changed/reduced the offers.
Guys, thanks for the advice, but you advice me to wait, when what’s the point if now they are at only $30 each? If you tell me they are at $100 each but if I wait I can get them for $30 each, then that makes more sense, but $30 for these plugins is perfect, especially if some of them are used by Tom Holkenberg.
And if you ask why I want to have what he has, please open Netflix and watch the two Rebel Moon movies. Even if you don’t like them (they don’t have great reviews but to me they’re great). Then go to Qobuz.com, which as far as I know is the only place where you can buy the two Rebel Moon score albums in 24 bits 48 Khz in files that you can actually own, not stream, and if you don’t already have them, get yourselves two things:
A Qudelix 5K headphone DAC, about $120 on Amazon, and
Audio Technica ATH-MSR7b headphones, about $250, but well worth it because the clarity you hear with these have no match even with much more expensive headphones.
Setup the EQ in the Qudelix to your particular preference, and then play the two albums.
Both are equal masterpieces, and in my top 5 of all time. There’s a lot of amazing music these days (in the film scoring industry and classical, the rest goes from OK to terrible).
So if I see that he has all these plugins he works with, I’m going to try to get at least some of them, especially when at least a few of those are $30 each.
You know the thing I’m really going to wait for a sale, and it’s going to be a long wait? His two libraries on Orchestral Tools. Apparently the last time they were on sale, and not even 50% off, was in 2022, just before I started getting into all this. But those are 849 €, which is a lot more in dollars, and I also get charged some BS international fee when I buy from them, so that’s a sale I’m going to wait for, even if it’s years, because I have a lot of brass and percussion libraries already.
No, I’m not saying “Wait!”, I’m saying there’s no rush. If anyone misses this sale, just like a bus, there’ll be another one along, soon.
You can buy the kind of gear Jimi Hendrix used, but it won’t make you sound like Jimi. (Unless you’re Robin Trower, of course!) It’s about technique, or in the case of orchestras, in the arrangement and the conducting. I’d look more into the compositional/arranging methods of these composers, more than what processors are used in the recordings. To use my original analogy, Zimmer will always sound like Zimmer, regardless of what studio he uses.
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And I like PA plugins, been using them for 10 years.
Life’s too short, my friend. Before you know it, your time is up. So if you see something you want at a good price, why wait? Perhaps you’re younger and you feel like you can wait as long as it takes, and that’s totally fine. I’m in my 50’s and I know that years pass like nothing. I’m not going to keep waiting for sales unless something is very expensive. And I did that several times, that’s how I got a large collection of sampled libraries, many of which I got for half price, including the whole OT Berlin Series bundle which normally would be $4,000. There was no way I was going to pay $4k for that. And the truth is that it’s not worth that much, or even $2k because of a large number of samples that sound like garbage, even if others sound better than most libraries.
Guys, no offense, but you’re missing the point. I never made a stupid statement like “Man, if I buy all the things that Tom Holkenborg works with, I’m gonna be like him in no time!” Did I say anything remotely similar to that? No.
But when you look up to certain people that to you represent the best of the best in the career you’re trying to get started, especially when you don’t have the rest of your life ahead of you, and one of those people takes the time and patience to show the world at least a small part of what his process is, and at least some of the tools he uses are within your reach, it only makes sense to buy those tools and learn to use them as best as you can.
I don’t aspire to be as good as he is, if I can write a score in the future that is 1/8th as good as the Rebel Moon ones, I’ll be more than happy. Because that will still be an excellent score. To me what he did with Rebel Moon surpassed everything that’s been done in film music until now. He took it several levels even above his own previous work. The only thing that comes really close to that is Joseph Trapanese’s “No One Will Save You”, which while different, if you were to tell me that it was composed and recorded by Tom Holkenborg I wouldn’t have doubted it. Same if you would’ve told me that Trapenese did the Rebel Moon scores.
And slightly older but still a masterpiece that takes music to a new level is Alexandre Desplat’s score for “The Midnight Moon” from 2020. I thought his score for Valerian was amazing, and he topped himself and almost every other score that’s ever been done.
So if I see that Holkenborg, Trapanese, Desplat, Zimmer, Giacchino, Wallfisch, Balfe, etc, use certain tools, and those tools are within my reach, why wouldn’t I buy them? Hell, the only reason I bought Cubase was because I had seen Hans Zimmer using it and talking about it. I thought it was $600+, but one day I went on Steinberg’s website, and saw that there was a promo for which if you had Logic Pro X you could get Cubase Pro 12 for $215. I thought I was going to get it just to see why Hans Zimmer and many other major composers worked with it.
And when I saw what it could do, especially when it came to MIDI programming, I was hooked. I had read that it was hard to learn, and yet, and to me it seemed easy but extremely powerful, at least to get to a point where I could do what I did in LPX and so much more.
I’m not crazy, right? You guys see “Any plugin $29.99*” and the asterisk shows a short list of plugins that are not included. So to me any other plugin they sell should be $29.99 as long as you enter the code ANY-2999, correct? Or am I taking crazy pills?
In case the screenshot ends up being compressed to much to tell, I put five plugins in the cart, which at their regular prices amount to $576.98, and after applying the code, I get a hilarious $10 off discount for a total of $566.98.
So this is really fu***d up, right? Any way you look at it, it’s blatantly false advertising. Tell me I’m wrong.
I concur, that this looks like a rip-off. I added 2 plugins and was also being charged virtually full price.
But…
Then I tried with just 1 plugin - and it was $29.99 (plus VAT).
So, maybe try getting them one at a time.
As I mentioned earlier, the current offerings IMO are nothing special.
If you want to know what you are possibly doing wrong, based on what you just posted, maybe chat with the people here:
many of whom have been taking advantage of $29 PA sales for several years. Rarely is there a genuine glitch.
I don’t know of any plugs specifically designed for orchestral instruments to make strings and brass sound more like a typical film score. Even the epic ones.
It’s about the user and how he uses the tools.
Bingo.
Haven’t seen that one…ever LOL.
Your wrong. But don’t feel bad. It’s typical NI marketing…not nearly as fun or clever as when Dirk ran the show.
I’m 70, 100% amateur hobbyist, and I’m going to live forever! Ha ha!
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ps
Don’t forget, boys and girls, to check out my BitChute page (link in my profile) - Rock and bellydance. I put my music where my big mouth is.
And now it’s way past my bedtime, so Goodnight to you all!
It appears you might be right. So far I placed two orders for two plugins that were discounted heavily to $30 each. So I don’t wanna jinx it, but it might not be that much false advertising as it is that they make you work for it.
Well that’s great! So last night I got two plugins, the two from Plugin Alliance that he shows in the video, SPL Attacker and the bx_console AMEK 9099. I also got the pro package of Fab Filter, not just because he uses four plugins, but because I had seen them for over a year featured in several videos and tutorials, and I wanted to have them.
Since now there’s a new bundle deal, can you guys recommend anything else from Plugin Alliance?
Metric A/B is probably my most used from PA. However its also excluded from the PA sale. I have tried a couple other A/B tools, but like Metric A/B best.
A lot of the BX is good. Generally speaking i get a lot more use out of UAD and even SoundToy tools.
Fab Filter, nothing to do with PA, has some very good tools.
I still reach for Maag if my objective is to bring out some extreme high end.
Assuming you heve C13pro, do learn what you already have and don’t assume stock plugs are not as good. In certain cases, such as dynamic EQ, Frequency2 is outstanding due to its inputs and sources. While ProQ3 handles dynamic EQ, it does not have as many options as Frequency 2.
Question, what do you use that for? I would guess to compare something with something else, but maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been using Cubase for a year, and Logic maybe half a year before that, so I haven’t come across all the things someone with more years of experience has.
Yeah, I bought the Pro package last night and I’m impressed. Even better, at least it has a few presets for orchestral, even classical music.
To what do you refer exactly by extreme high end? Higher frequencies or something else? And Maag, at least in the PA ones, there are two EQs and one compressor, are you referring to all of them or just one specifically?
I do, and since I haven’t slept well last night, the first time I read it I thought you had wrote C3-PO, and I thought “What??? There’s a plugin called C3-PO???” Until I realized that you were talking Cubase Pro 13.
And I agree, Cubase comes with amazing plugins, and like you mentioned, Frequency2 is an excellent EQ. If I have to narrow a specific frequency that has some kind of annoying noise, it’s very easy to maneuver. And even the simple ones can yield great results, like Dom Sigalas made a video about the Stereo Delay where he changed around a few settings and it makes something really wide. I saved the preset as Dom Sigalas.
I wanted to share with you guys this great articles on the plugins that a recording engineer called Alan Meyerson uses for scores. It’s a fascinating view into a world of very specific plugins that I never heard of, some of which are inexpensive, others accessible, and others insanely expensive.
OK, so just in case somebody’s coming across this thread, the savings are real, it’s just a bit of pain because you have to put different orders, but at least with the latest sale (Thank you Grim!!) it’s faster because you can do four at a time.
But it’s worth it, because I just bought $1,750.95 of plugins for $269.95. Sure, you can say this and that, the prices are inflated for the sale, etc, etc. But the point is, these plugins at some point were at these prices, and now you can have them for a small fraction of those prices:
So the ones you see with four merged cells are the ones for the current sale. So you add 4 at a time and then in the voucher code field you type “pick4” (case is irrelevant), and you see the hundreds of dollars come down to $69.99.
So people can argue til the end of time, to me all these plugins for $269.95 is a hell of deal.
Yes, that is its main function. However it includes a lot of additional features that fit in well with its function of A/B comparing… There are a lot of A/B tools out there including free ones. Another one I tried was Mastering the Mix, but it ultimately didn’t sit well with me like Metric does. It’s like a comfortable glove.
Maag, the 4 band EQ. You can demo these correct? Demo it and increase the stuff above 10k. It’s famous for this task however there may be other tools that work just as well that don’t have the Maag high end reputation.
He also has 2 videos about Frequency2 and its unique feature of multiple side chain inputs as well as multiple side chain sources…no other tool to my knowledge does that.
Under Dirks reign, some users called it PA Bingo. Creative or clever ways to make a consumer purchase stuff. All sorts of exclusions and always changing things up… It is a game against Dirk for some to obtain the tools for the lowest price. Forget about actually learning or even using the tools…
Under NI the game has gone boring. There really isn’t much left that hasn’t been tried. However buying singles…I think this is a new one!
Whatever make you feel good about buying them. Thats marketing 101. Hardly anyone for the past several years pays more than $29 per PA plug. If you try to sell it, considering the transfer fees…they are worthless. Both Shadow Hills, if you wait, can be had for $29 each. Originally, yes some were higher priced, but with PA I think that depends on their own BX or them as a re-seller.
So IMO its best to spend days, even weeks really learning these tools. Know every parameter pushing to the extremes, knowing when to use what to obtain an sonic objective. This is where the value is…not how many tools or the price of them yesterday or today, but really knowing them.
I hate to break it to you, but high level composers in Hollywood don’t rely on plugins, and don’t mix their own work. They actually have staff that works for them.
They are using not only extremely expensive computers (more than one), they also have recourses to their disposal such as outboard gear that can spiral to the hundreds of thousands, let alone bespoke libraries that are available only to the very few in the circle, and also, and sorry to say, all orchestral instruments these guys use are real. Even Zimmer records a live orchestra , on top of his samples.
To add to the issue, they don’t mix and master their scores. The productions they work with are huge, and money allows to hire staff to do those sort of things, purely because they are under the gun, and also , because a mixing and mastering engineer will ultimately do a better job…
But, as a composer, I haven’t come across any plugins from PA that performed any miracles. Needless to say, PA is awesome and I am using a lot of their plugins. But none of them created a situation whereby I thought my mixes were night and day, with that said, they are hugely helpful.
Also, some plugins such as the Kirchhoff EQ and similar quality plugins haven’t seem to be on the $29,99 sale, dunno, this might change soon.
My two cents:
If you want a great plugin for orchestral instruments try the Sugar by process audio. It has transformed my Brass and use it on almost everything.
Highly recommended also is the StageOne 2 by Leapwing. Simply put, unparalleled stereo enhancement with a real depth of sound. All other stereo enhancers imho pale in comparison. Simple , demo sounding sounds have been transformed with this thing, and I am not exaggerating.
