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Using Plugins in the DAW
Plugins are how we manipulate the sound for audio editing, mixing and mastering.
Within the DAW, each track can play a single stream of audio, and we can manipulate the sound of the audio on that track by using plugins. If there are no plugins instantiated, then the sound will play back exactly as it is in its original form, there will be no effects or alterations of any kind. Within the channel parameters of every DAW, you have the ability to insert plugins, which are effects processors that will perform some kind of manipulation to the audio.
Before the days of computers, audio was recorded through a large mixing console, and each track was recorded to tape. The multiple tapes would play back and be routed to a mixing board, and that’s where the engineer would perform the mixing. The stereo output of the board would then be recorded onto tape and that’s the final song. Well, that’s the basic concept, but there’s a bit more to it then that. Really, the stereo output of the mixing board would be routed to an analog (hardware) EQ, then from the EQ go into a compressor, and from the compressor go into a limiter, and from the limiter into the tape recorder. These analog pieces of hardware need to be plugged in. If the studio engineer wanted to add a lexicon reverb module into the chain, he might say, “Let’s plug in this Lexicon reverb”.
Also, on the mixing board, each track will have a “send return” which provides a way of sending the signal out of the board and back in again. This provides the ability to “plug in” an analog effects unit, such as a compressor, a reverb module, delay module… or any device that changes the sound in a way the audio engineer desires. Usually, they would have a patch bay that made it easy to plug any device into any channel, you would just grab the patch cable, and plug it in.
Within the DAW, it’s much more convenient. We can add all the same effects, without having to buy the hardware and physically plug it in. We simply instantiate it as a plugin, all the signal routing is done automatically, and the audio will pass through whatever the plugin is. The most commonly used plugin, which should probably be on every track, is an EQ, and the second most commonly used plugin would be a compressor. For more information about EQ and compression, check out lessons 51, 52, and 53. These are your standard plugins, but there’s also a lot of novelty plugins that perform unique effects that you wouldn’t use on every track, but you can use them a little bit here and there to add different sounding elements. For instance, there are plugins that can take a mono track and make it stereo. There are plugins for reverb, delay, Phasing, distortion, multi band ompression, noise removal, tape emulation, vinyl emulation, and the list goes on. Your DAW will come with a collection of plugins, but you can always add more. There are several third party companies which create plugins that you can import into your DAW and use in the same way as the plugins that come with your DAW, and between all the various manufacturers, there’s literally thousands of different plugins out there.
I use Logic Pro, and in this daw, here’s how you instantiate a plugin.
In Reaper, here’s how you instantiate a plugin.
In Bandlab, here’s how you instantiate a plugin.
Within the DAW, you can adjust the parameters of the plugin in real time, and hear the effect as it changes. Here, I have an EQ instantiated on my voice. You can hear my voice change as I change the parameters.
The plugins will also operate in the order which they are inserted. So, first I have an EQ, and second I have a distortion. So, with the eq, if I remove all the high frequencies, then the distortion plugin will receive just the low frequencies, and it will distort them. In the process of adding distortion, high frequencies are generated and added to the signal, so even though the eq is removing the high frequencies, there will still be high frequencies that are generated from the distortion. If we switch the order of these 2 plugins, then the distortion plugin will add the high frequencies, but the eq will remove them, and the final sound will not have high frequencies.
Let’s take a quick look the plugins available in Logic.
