FIVER FRIDAY #529: TAKEOVER: Good ol’ Saturation and much MORE!

Philipp from the german team here! While Andy and Oli are on their trip through Vegas i have the honour to share my personal top 5 here – LETS GO!

1. Plugin(s)

I am more and more falling in love with using saturation when mixing. Its kind of an old shoe but i anyway would like to share my approach to it:

What i love doing when starting out with raw tracks is to act like i would record them again to my taste. What that means for me is to put a nice channel strip on each track as a first insert and give it some preamp gain and small suttle tweaks on the EQs if necessary. Keep the mindset of a recording engineer – not a mix engineer! No drastic moves but it will add up to a much more round and easy to mix session.

My personal faves for that: The Lindell 80s strip and the API Vision Channel Strip. Obvious choices but two absolute Legendary sounds!

And when i start mixing i love to set up the KiiveAudio NFuse with the “DARK” and the “SHINE” circuit turned up quite a bit.

Two more free saturators that i use very much are of course the Softube Saturation Knob – love it on everything Brass and Bass! And also the KLEVGRAND FreeAmp wich gives a nice hi-mid glue to strings, percussion and many more!

2. Inspiration

For me it was amazing to see Trent Reznor re-imagining his work and bringing it to a whole new level with Boys Noize. A 60 year old guy –  a legend in what hes doing already since the 90s – but anyway he’s still pushing himself—changing things up, experimenting, and not being afraid to revisit his old work and transform it into something new.

That’s what makes it so interesting: it shows that even after all these years, he’s still curious, still creative, and still willing to take risks instead of playing it safe.

3. Music

Got that one stuck in my head since at least two weeks

4. Web/Social/Whatever

Actually i am at that point again where i want to reduce my screen time and control mindless scrolling habits. Screen Zen is a big help for that. Shoutout to Fabi from the german team for the tip!

5. Imaging

I want to use the chance to highlight Benztown Production Music – a collection of 100 Albums, compiled from our most favourite musicbeds with a huge variaty of genres and for many uses. A Best-Of of more than a decade of non-stop music producing!!