This week Sonic Academy welcomes back renowned British techno producer and record label founder Kirk Degiorgio for a new course - How To Use Vintage Plugins in EDM.
Inspired by a chat he was having with DJ KiNK, this course focuses on whether classic studio gear works with equal success for electronic dance music, as it does on acoustic rock/pop.
The plug-in (and audio) manufacturers market their emulations of vintage hardware using generic “shopping-mall” AOR rock. The demos and tutorials they release are therefore of no practical use to the many producers who make electronic music.
Does this old skool tech work equal wonders to a TB303 line as it will to an 80’s guitar riff?
Check out this fascinating and detailed investigation by Kirk to find out the results!
Great tutorial Kirk! I’ve been curious about this very topic, and it was quite instructive to see how you use some of these classic plugins in the context of techno.
Much love n great tutorial, BUT…
Universal Audio still makes LA-2As.
Further, they are opto compressors and are know for great results on Vocals and Bass, not kicks. The LA-2A UAD plugin does have a Sidechain filter btw, it is in that screw on the left.
Also, Ribbon Overheads aren’t know for their “open top end”, they are know for their dark lack of tops / cymbal control and general warmth.
A bit more research / correct facts please.
Too much chat, could hardly hear the compression.
Also just get your gain structure right, monitor the dBs, no need to use MCompare.
Lastly, your vocal is clipping mate.
quite slow explain i didn’t appreciate all the talking at the beginning of the first video, but overall good tutorial i got some new knowledge for sure . thank you kirk…
almost the same here as frequency labs wrote. the dude has knwledge but the sound is really really bad! almost awfull! And I hope that’s because of clipping or internal fb and even maybe some ground loop on top of the rest of the noise and artifacts. THis is not good enough sonic academy! You really need to step up your game to where it sometime ago where. If not i’,m afraid you will lose increasingly more and more subscribers.
Great idea and concept for this tut. Excellent comparisons of the vintage gear (as emulations) on recorded Rock Samples and EM Stems. Good explanations, helpful, full of insights, so many side notes. Soaked everything up. My mixes will profit. Thanks Kirk for providing your knowledge. Unfortunately the mic is sometimes clipping, in particular on Tut 12 something went wrong while recording.
too much mcompare love, pultec tut was painful, i’ll admit i was impatiant at parts i was already familiar in
but he could of reahed points much sooner
All great info and demonstration, but the narration vocal is so much louder than the musical examples that it’s virtually useless trying to listen what is being done to the sound. If i raise the level loud enough to hear the subtle differences in sound, I get Kirk’s voice blasting out far too loudly for comfort every couple of seconds. The result is that I stopped trying to hear the difference in the A/B examples and just listened to the description which I’m not sure is worth paying for on its own.
