Still Vibrations wrote:Martin Walker wrote:Ironically, I was convinced after I've tried out the Console5 plug-in pair (
http://www.airwindows.com/console5), a free download from Chris Johnson of Airwindows fame, rather than by hardware summing mixers.
It's a two stage encode/decode process – you place one instance of his Console5channel plug-in on each of your playback channels, which changes their slew rate/EQ, and then apply the reciprocal process at the mix buss with a single instance of his Console5Buss plug-in. With a single playback channel, the two processes cancel each other out exactly, but as soon as you add more channels to the mix they interact in a subtle fashion.
Martin
This is a new concept to me Martin and I am trying it out on a short electronic texture - based on an ambient recording of bells. (At least I am hearing bells, my wife says it is silence so has it occurred to me that I may be going mad?) In Ableton Live does this mean that the track volume is set to "0" and all automated track volume changes are made to the Console5channel output instead?
Nearly!
Console5 IS a bit of a fiddle, because the summing action needs to take place at the mixing buss to replace the action of the 100% perfect DAW mixing.
Because of this, you ideally need to place Console5channel post-fader if your DAW allows that (Reaper doesn't for me), or (next best) set all your DAW channel faders to 0dB and place Console5channel immediately before each one (i.e. the final plug-in in any chain). In most cases, leave the Console5channel output level alone as well- it is calibrated to work best with its default setting.
Now you can use regular automation to change levels during your mix, but each and every sum at the mixing buss will now be modified by your single Console5Buss plug-in, which should be the first on your output channel.
N.B. Since this modifies the 'mixing' buss action, you won't hear any change with a single channel - only once you have at least several and preferably several dozen channels, each with their own Console5channel plug-in, will you begin to hear the subtle new mixing algorithm.
Most other 'console' plug-in suites provide an obvious channel strip plug-in with EQ, compression and so on, sometimes with subtle' hardware variations per instance so they all sound a tiny bit different, but for me the beauty of Airwindows Console5 is that it only emulates the action of the analogue mixing buss itself, leaving you free to add whatever EQ, compression you prefer, or not, as the case may be

Hope this helps!
Martin