In this article Julian asks whether the seemingly limitless options available to us in software encourages an over-use of processing and indeed whether that matters if the music still sounds good?

I recently came across a comment online in which someone was voicing their disappointment that their DAW only had ten insert slots. They didn’t say which DAW they were using but most respondents assumed it was Pro Tools and the responses intrigued me in that half the people were in the “Dude, what are you doing that needs more than ten inserts per track?” and the others were agreeing wholeheartedly and explaining how to use busses to route tracks through Auxes to give 20 inserts (but I suppose why stop there - you could potentially run through hundreds..).

My take on this discussion was definitely in the “why would you ever need more than five, let alone ten” camp but I canvassed opinion with some of the team and responses were mixed. There were those for whom how many plugins you use was irrelevant.

Sawmills Studio engineer John Cornfield commented:

“I just do what I deem is needed, if I have recorded on a console I normally do a whole load less if I got it right on the way in but I am not fazed by having a stack of plugins if it sounds good.”

And Ross Rotheroe-Bourge of Cube Studios was in a similar vein with:

“I’ve never once worried about how many plug ins I use on a channel, no one else is looking at what I’m using, only listening to the end result”

I don’t think anyone sensible would contradict the old mantra “if it sounds good, it is good” but are we getting uncomfortable about what some of us see as the excessive use of plugins for sonic, technical or philosophical reasons? What difference does it make if we use 10 plugins where we could be using one?

Grammy nominated mixer Nathaniel Reichman put it this way:

For me it's the total system delay compensation. "OMG. I'm at 10,000 samples WTF am I doing wrong? Do I really need that wunder-plug that takes days to process?”

There is definitely a penalty to be paid in terms of efficient use of system resources, something which only becomes an issue if your computer is too slow or your session is too big, or of course a mixture of the two. If you have ample resources you can be what the “plugin police” might call lazy, running reverbs as inserts rather than setting up send and returns, that kind of thing. Look at this screenshot of an anonymous mixer’s client’s Logic session.

It’s an extreme case but does anyone really think this is OK? And if there can be such a thing as too much processing, how much is “too much”?

The consensus among the team seems to settle on around four but with the caveat that in a typical session there would be between none and two plugins on most of the tracks but a handful of tracks would need more. Four seemed to be the threshold where most of us seemed to start asking why that particular track had so many plugins and whether they were all necessary?

Steve DeMott

“So I just checked a bunch of my mixes...I seem to top out at 4, but most of the time 3.”

James Richmond

“2-4 usually.

One thing I do regularly - I like to get most of the way through a mix and then start disabling a few plugins to see what happens to the mix.

Sometimes (but not always) I prefer the mix when I take a couple of the plugins away.”

Eli Krantzberg

“Unless there is a special need or situation, I’d say I rarely use more than four. If it needs more than that and it’s not for a special effect, I’d re-think what I have going on and probably try starting over.”

William Wittman

“I don’t believe I’ve ever used more than 4. And that’s usually 4 of different types. (One eq one compressor one delay one effect etc. )”

Luke Goddard

“I've looked at channels with four and thought "OK". Five does make we wonder what was going on in the first place.”

If there is a takeaway from this, very unscientific, survey of the team it seems to be that for most of us there is a degree of processing on individual tracks which sets off an internal alert among mixers that this might be a sign that there is an issue which for whatever reason isn’t being fixed by the processing which is being applied. It might be perfect as it is but it’s worth checking that a poor decision hasn’t been made, either poorly recorded material, an inappropriate arrangement decision (can you just mute the track? - sometimes it’s the right call) or maybe you have misidentified the issue which needs fixing. Whichever it is its probably worth checking that all those plugins are actually achieving what you expect or intend.

On a more practical level, fewer plugins makes for a simpler mix and a simple mix is easy to navigate and for collaborators to understand if you have to work with others. I see it as the equivalent of a tidy desk or workshop. Creative people are often messy and disorganised and while I think that has to be understood and accommodated, I’m not sure I’d encourage it. I think in this case no-one is “wrong”. After all, if it sounds good it is good. Who would I trust to mix my track? Personally, all other things being equal I’d put my trust in Occam’s Razor and go with the person who used fewer plugins…

3 Quick Ways To Check Processing In Pro Tools

The keystrokes below are for Macs, PC users should substitute CMD for Ctrl, Option for Alt and Ctrl for Start.

If you have a track which might be overburdened with plugins the first thing to do is to select that track by clicking on the track name and hitting Shift+A to bypass all plugins on that track. Your gains should be balanced so there isn’t a level jump between bypassed and active. If there is a discrepancy, rather than going through each plugin one at a time and balancing the gains, put a Trim plugin at the end and balance it by ear.

To Bypass individual plugins one by one CMD+click on the plugin you want to toggle between bypass and active. To bypass all the plugins from a specific point in a chain of inserts use Ctrl+click to bypass the plugin you have clicked and all subsequent plugins.

The nuclear option is to bypass all your plugins across the entire session. To do this Option+click on any track name and then use Shift+A to bypass all plugins on all selected tracks, in this case all the tracks. If you are using a limiter on your 2-bus you’ll probably hear a big drop in level so it probably best to exclude that from the toggling by making it inactive, alternatively you could exclude the 2-bus master fader from the bypass toggle by command-clicking the master fader to deselect it. It depends on whether you put bus processing on the master fader or on an Aux feeding the master fader but the differences between these two approaches is beyond the scope of this article.

There is a lot more to be said about keystrokes for bypassing groups of plugins, Watch the video below for a demo of some of these keystrokes.