I realize a huge percentage of users mostly opt for third party plugins, regardless of DAW/OS.
Myself included, although this might be due to the leftover from my negative experiences from my earlier PT days.
(PT LE 6;7;8;9)
I mostly work in post for TV, and use ; Audioease /DMG / iZotope / Nugen / UAD / Waves
The only (N6.5.40) plugins I employ are the surround related ones, Iosono mostly.
Why I didn’t go explore more ?
Think because of very little downtime to truly test, and the plain, cold looking GUI’s.
I’d like to know which stock Nuendo plugins are you regularly use and are there any “hidden gems” in them ?
Also, is your primary area of work music or post ?
Thanx for spending your time reading…
I had a potentially difficult situation (because of scheduling) where I decided to mix entirely within Nuendo with only non-DSP plugins. This is post-production btw… a 1hr show. So I ended up using:
And that was pretty much it! Worked like a charm. Since it was all in the box I was able to just move the external SSD (USB 2.0 on desktop, 3.0 to laptop) and dongles to my laptop and bring it to other studios just in case I needed to fire up the project and make changes.
I don’t really think there are many “hidden gems” since all of the bread-and-butter sounds pretty darn good to me. Only reason I’d go 3rd party is if something is missing, like iZotope RX features, or if I want a particular flavor (I’ve experimented with UAD compressors on narration for example). But for clean general processing using EQ and compression/limiting Steinberg’s stuff sound perfectly fine to me.
Actually, I suppose the only thing to add is that in some areas the app is lacking quite a bit, in restoration for example, but so do all the rest so I don’t care (and I use RX).
I think the old Nuendoers/Cubasers all have the same history. We were disappointed by the sound of the early stock plugs and started to look for alternatives. Now the bundled plugs have improved significantly, but we all have our trusted plugs that we love.
Also in difficult times we are genuinely happy about every 3rd party that manages to stay alive.
I really like the Nuendo EQ, it gets its job done nicely. (But I use Melda MautodynamicEQ for more surgical stuff)
Revelation is pretty impressive on music, I have used if on snares and vocals with great results.
Pitch driver and vibrato are cool for sound design, the latter especially if you modulate the modulation time…
I think the multi band distortion is coming back and that used to be amazing for motor/engine sounds if you distorted the 300z stuff. I used to do it a lot for Porsche commercials.
Mainly music but a little bit of post thrown in on occasions.
Stockers I use all the time are the compressor & gate - the sidechain really helps here as I rarely use a straight reverb or delay these days & nearly always key the effect return from the dry source and these are nice & clean so work well.
I don’t tend to use too many though as my go-to tools are always UAD.
All post and sound design. Recently have adopted the habit of trying the stock plugs on everything. Overall very happy with the stock EQ, still prefer my Sonnox Dynamics to the stock compressor but they’re close. I use PostFilter on all dialog channels, it’s fantastic. My main reverbs are REverence and the Yamaha REV-X, love them all. Pitch Driver is very cool and I’m looking forward to the new multi band dynamics with sidechain as well as the multi band Quadrafuzz (which is rumored to have sidechain forthcoming). Also looking forward to the updated DeEsser. john.
I use zero Nuendo/Cubase plugins. They are fine, but if something does a better job, I use it. Hence, no stock plugins. I actually wish they would just focus on the DAW. Let the specialists do what they each do best.
For audiobooks, and sometimes for post-- frequently use the offline Time Stretch/Compress . I rarely do an audiobook without Nuendo’s stock Expander, which basically does what it’s supposed to and looks good doing it. Have not been quite as happy with the multi band compressor, (I use UAD’s instead), though I could probably stand to spend more time with Nuendo’s. On the other hand, I like watching the meters go up and down on the UAD… I’m a cheap date.
For pretty much everything I need in a convolution reverb, REVerence rules. Studio EQ and Post Filter for offline processing.
For music…I think the Amp Rack does a pretty freaking good job. Much better than I thought it would be! In fact, I’d call it a hidden gem. Have used it a lot. Today, even. And REVerence rules.
Compressors & limiters= UAD, though I’ve sent out reference projects to colleagues without UAD using nothing but Nuendo plugins; I’m sure I could get the Nuendo stuff sounding close enough to work with, but UAD’s just… well, great. Plus, I like the metering on the Precision Limiter. Handy to have it there…
music and mixing and post - mostly avoid them out of habit, with a few exceptions… the compressor for bread and butter external sidechaining, the ancient roomworks reverb (still great… coded externally i believe), and the now discontinued tonic filter (just the right amount of simplicity vs complexity). out of the newer ones, i thought their envelope shaper is really cool and adds a different flavour to all the transient shapers i’ve tried. now the new multiband enveloper takes it a step further, really creative.
the eq is just not comfortable enough to use now i have been spoiled with ‘pro q 2’-style EQ’s with unlimited bands and an extensive selection of filter shapes and types.
even if i forced myself to use the stock plugins, i believe i would lack a professional grade limiter (like pro-l / precision / elephant / sonnox grade), and restoration tools.
Quite a variety of SB plugin employment…it was expected.
It seems that restoration is one of the area when we all go RX, understandably. I use RX4 advanced and quite pleased, except of this RX control implementation. The audio gets there, no problem, but sending it back is trial and error, sometimes it crashes Nuendo.
OLIVER >>
You are mentioning Melda MautodynamicEQ, which I’ve never heard of. Went there to investigate and discovered a huge amount of reasonably priced plugins. What are your experiences with that ?
Honestly, I’m a bit tired of the UAD precision multiband and looking for another solution.
I am 1 stop shop. Music and post.
I use mostly only Nuendo plugins. I love the visual feedback of the compression in the mixer. After many blind test I found the sonic difference between on-board compressors and other 3rd party offerings so minimal that I removed other compressors, excerpt the TubeTech from Softube.
I love the channel EQ. For me it sounds clear enough, and with broader curves almost like an SSL fake . Again the visual feedback in the mixer is great.
Reverence is my to go reverb. Over the years I’ve collected thousands of IR and found some gems. I’ve got couple of banks I use exclusively. Here a genius move from SB to include slot/snapshots. For post it makes the automation a breeze.
Magneto was good, Magneto II is a killer plug.
The only thing missing is a SIMPLE delay like H-delay from Waves. With some character and just few knobs. I hate fiddling around with monsters with 1000 knobs . I might look at the BozDigital delay as it haves some nice modulation in the delay loop.
Once I received a Dolby tuned mix of mine from Vienna, and was surprised they used only the RoomWorks plugin for the DX reverbs
I’m waiting for N7!!
I do nothing but post.
“Post Filter” is a Nuendo gem for dialog. Simple, low-impact, and exactly what I need for most production dialog.
The Nuendo de-esser seems fine for v/o.
And I can usually get the natural verb I want from Reverence, with RoomWorks for algorithmic reverb effects.
Of course RX4Advanced for repairs and matching timbre/room tone.
And TC’'s Powercore 3-band compressor on the busses, when needed. I like that one so much that I went and got a second-hand rack mount DSP, when TC stopped updating their PCI DSP cards.
The multiband compressor in Nuendo sounds quite fine in my opinion, I just wish the gui was a bit better. I far prefer the gui of the Waves C4 for example, with the ability to solo/mute bands, as well as having numerical entry of gain, etc.
it’s great, fabfilter are the best when it comes to GUI design and workflow (steinberg, hire them to show you how cubase should be designed). it’s very versatile, covering standard high level compression as well as low-level compression, low level expansion (gating) and high level expansion (upcompression). you can easily add new bands, set them to operate on Mid-only, Side-only, or vary in between, a band can be sidechain-controlled internally by an arbitrary portion of the freq. spectrum or externally (multiband sidechain compression)… depending on what you need it for, i’d also look at supresser by sonnox. it’s technically a de-esser, but it can work on any part of the freq. spectrum, is phase linear and generally a really great mixing tool as well (albeit less full-featured. but possibly quicker to get results. only one band to work with.)
The MautodynamicEq is a KILLER tool for audio post and music. The spectrogram view is just like having RX in an EQ plug, so if you have camera whines you can see them (!) and notch them out. Such a time saver!
Also the Melda stuff is incredibly rich in features. If you plan to really get to the bottom of what is possible, it will take you quite some time, but you will be rewarded. (It’s like the opposite of waves’ one knob philosophy).
Also, I really like the dynamic eq bit in it, that does a good job at de-essing voices and musically boosting or cutting frequencies. As a bonus, you get an exciter because it can do distortion as well. Oh it’s just so fantastic!
They have other gems as well, try the Mdrumleveler or Mautoalign it you work with real drum recordings. As I said in the earlier post, the Nuendo/Cubase plugs will get you very far, but if I had to chose one 3rd party plug that I just cannot live without it would be the MautodynamicEQ.
also external sidechain-dynamicEQ-ing music with VO as key signal really helps with intelligibility (or loudness of the whole material if that’s your goal).
