As the Buddhist said to the hot dog vendor: 'Make me one with everything.'
- Virtual Mix Rack - Slate Digital.
- Home / Brands / Slate Digital / Slate Digital VMR 2.0 Virtual Mix Rack Plug-in Bundle (download) Sale! Slate Digital VMR 2.0 Virtual Mix Rack Plug-in Bundle (download). Just press the right arrow and everything currently on path A is copied to path B. Once cloned, you can change some parameters on the alternate path, or even swap out entire.
The source for every single installer featured in the Everything Bundle. The source for every single installer featured in the Everything Bundle. Head to your account to download the expansion packs. FG-X MASTERING PROCESSOR. – VRS8 v1.03 (macOS ONLY) SLATE DIGITAL. Slate Digital was co-founded in 2008 by Steven Slate and Fabrice.
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A highly recommended all-in-one solution which could well be the future of plugins.
My old mixing computer finally gave up the ghost in the middle of last year, so I was faced with the task of setting up a whole new system for mixing on. I felt I could comfortably start again with whatever plugins were best in 2017, and hoped to replace the confusing bundles of plugins I had amassed over the years with a few simple, high-quality and reasonably-priced ones that would cover the basics: EQ, compression, reverb and delay. My goal was to use some good solid plugins for these workhorse effects that would satisfy me and stop me wasting time trawling the internet for more.
At was then that I hit on Slate Digital's revolutionary new subscription-based plugin model. Instead of paying 200 for a reverb, and 200 for an EQ and so on - I could simply pay a monthly subscription of $14.99 and get access to all of Slate Digital’s plugins for not much more than the cost of Netflix. Slate would update the plugins as time went on, new plugins would be added as developed and I would never be left hanging. This sounded good to me, so I signed up to their one-month trial, liked it and am now almost all-Slate. I have recently finished mixing an album with this new setup and am pleased with the results.
Rather than review every single plugin that comes with the Everything Bundle, I will stick to those that provide the basic everyday effects that I use in mixing and save reviews of the other effects, such as the S-Gear amp simulation for another time.
Channel Strip: The Virtual Mix Rack
At the heart of my decision to go Slate was my experience with Slate's Virtual Mix Rack plugin - which is essentially a single plugin which contains up to eight 'modules' of common plugins like compression and EQ. You can add move these modules around your virtual as if it was an API Lunchbox. It contains Neve-like and SSL-like EQs, 1176 and LA2Aish compressors, and a few tube and solid-state preamp models for adding a little harmonic saturation. I figured this plugin could take care of most anything I could want to do to a channel insert bar actual modulation.
Compressors
The FG-116 compressor is based on the classic 1176 FET compressor, and like it can deliver ultra-fast attack and release times and is useful for shaping snares and adding a sharp attack to anything from drums to bass.
The FG-401 then is rumoured to be modelled on the Teletronix LA2A, albeit with more control over attack and release than the original. It adds a certain magic to anything that you put through it, and particularly shines on vocals.
Both compressors contain mix controls not found on the original devices, allowing you to perform parallel compression such as The New York Compression trick on drums, without setting up complicated bussing arrangements in your mixer.
EQ
There FG-S EQ is based on the SSL E-series EQ – familiar to anyone used to mixing with the original console or the Waves SSL plugin. It is a great EQ that makes it easy to reach musical bands to cut and boost and do so transparently.
The FG-N EQ is obviously based on a Neve 1073 and has much the same functions – a more coloured and aggressive EQ than the SSL, but with very well chosen bands and Q widths that seem to suit everything you put through it, from adding shine with its top band to clearing up mud with its high-pass filter. You can even drive this EQ to add an extra layer of that classic Neve saturation.
These two EQs will cover most of your musical needs without talking your head away from the bigger picture, but they are not for more surgical applications such as notching out troublesome frequencies – but chances are your DAW has a fully parametric EQ built in for these occasional applications. It is a minor pity that Slate chose not to add a low-pass filter to go with the high-pass ones, though I rarely use high-pass filters except as an extreme effect, and have other filter plugins I can use for this.
Preamps
The VMR even has two models of preamp built in, should you want to add some subtle harmonic saturation to your tracks: The FG73 brings us to solid-state Neve-land again, while the FG-76 adds a little tube enhancement when driven hard. These can be used as a subtle sweetening or as aggressive dirt boxes on things such as synths or even vocals.
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Along with this, Slate has added a plugin called 'Revival' – which is a bit of a black box of analogue gooiness – it contains a 'Shimmer' control which adds some extra harmonics to the top end in the way that tubes do when pushed, and a 'Thickness' control that adds some of that low-mid bump that tape does so well. Slate is a bit vague on what this plugin is actually doing – but it seems to add pleasing non-linearities to your digital mixes. I have found a few situations where putting it on a drum buss got me a certain dirty thickness that I missed when I took it off.
The Virtual Console Collection
Continuing with the theme of analogue enhancement, the VMR also comes with the Virtual Console Collection – which, like Waves NLS, is designed to have a single instance used on every channel on your mix, which integrates with an instance on your master bus: When set up like this, the VCC can emulate the saturation characteristics and summing of several vintage analogue consoles – purporting to get you closer to the sound of a mix actually summed on these consoles. It emulates everything from G and E series SSL desks to a Neve 8048, an API, a Trident and even an an old RCA tube mixer. Its effect is subtle, but that’s as you’d want it. It adds that special analogue something to your mix without fuzzing it up. I have it set as a permanent fixture on all my mix templates now, allowing me that slight mid-forwardness that an old Neve desk gives you.
Verbsuite Classics
The Verbsuite Classics Reverb is an impulse response-based reverb that offers configurable presets based on several classic and contemporary hardware reverbs from the Lexicon 480 to the EMT 250 to the Bricasti M7. As such it covers most of the bases that you could want in your reverbs much as if you had access to the original units. I still like to have a few plugins that can take care of sounds such as springs and plates to augment this (Though the ‘London Plate’ in the Bricasti M7 section is a respectable EMT 140 emulation).
With all of the reverbs you can alter the decay time, pre-delay, attack and chorus to taste while keeping the flavour. The impulse response technology used in this plugin seems to be able to capture modulation characteristics of the reverbs, which many IR based reverbs cannot do. This reverb can basically take care of my digital sounding reverb needs – and it’s is nice to have it all within one plugin, rather than jumping back and forth between various plugins as I used to do.
Repeater Delay
For delay I tend towards the vintage, loving the gritty deteriorating sound of a good tape delay from an Echoplex to a Roland RE201 to a Watkins Copicat. In keeping with Slate’s seeming attempt to make each plugin the ‘only plugin you’ll ever need’, the Repeater does many flavors of delay including oil-can, tape and digital. It is simply laid out and can automatically sync with the tempo as set in your DAW. It allows you to choose whether you want 16th, 8th or triplet delays and so on, and choose the delay settings for the left and right channel independently of each other.
It doesn’t give you access to modulation characteristics, but its not as if you’d miss them – everything you need to set up a useful, musical-sounding delay that blends with your track is right there. When Slate released this plugin and I’d played around with it for a few days, I actually sold my Watkins Copicat – as the plugin gave me the sound I needed without the hassle of cleaning heads and syncing.
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The Virtual Tape Machines
The Slate Virtual Tape Machine follows plugins such as the Waves J37 and Kramer Tape in offering a tape plugin to get that slightly gooey tape sound that so many of us seem to miss from the old days. Like the Virtual Console Channel – it can be placed on every track and on the mix buss, to emulate the effect of recording on a multitrack tape machine and mixing to 2-inch. The Plugin models two tape machines: A 16 track Studer and a 2 inch Studer mastering deck, so is perfect for this type of setup. As you’d expect, you can choose from 2 types of tape – Ampex 456 or Quantegy GP9, change the biasing of the tape from high to low and run them at 15 or 30ips.
A great feature of the plugin is that the input and output gains are linked, so that as you crank up the input to get a little more saturation, the output gain is automatically reduced by the same amount – so you can dial in the amount of tape sound that you need without having to worry about clipping your mix buss. There are also deeper parameters that you can set, such as the noise level and
This plugin now lives on every track and the master buss of all my mix templates. It is a subtle effect, but it definitely adds density and a mild smoothing of transients that can make a mix creamier and less fatiguing.
In Conclusion
Installing the Slate Everything Bundle was a bit overwhelming – as it is essentially installing a lifetime’s worth of plugins all in one go. Although most are pretty standard effects, none of them contains any significant learning curve and the GUIs are all pleasingly familiar- looking. Perhaps the only thing that might take some getting used to is the idea of using the VCC on every channel and the mix bus to take care of your summing for you – though if you’ve used Waves NLS before, this is basically the same concept.
What the Slate Everything Bundle has done for me is to give me state-of-the-art plugins for taking care of 90% of what I do when I mix. Because my subscription takes care of all the EQs, compressors, reverbs and delays I could need – I can spend my time doing what I should be doing – mixing music and not wondering if yet another plugin company is having a special on their perfect model of an LA2A this week. It’s a good way of avoiding plugin-related G.A.S. – I can no longer convince myself I need better tools, and if my mixes leave anything to be desired, it’s probably my fault not my software’s.
Of course Slate’s subscription-based model will ruffle a few feathers in the plugin world – in essence I am paying to rent these plugins, and relying so heavily on them could cause me problems in the future should Slate decide to close up shop and leave me stranded. That said, while Slate is around it’s nice that they are busy working on updates and new plugins and send me emails every now and then telling me that something new is ready for download. So for now, I’m a happy customer and would heartily recommend this way of working – though I know it’s not for everybody.