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Anwidasoft products first came to our attention as we were searching for a nice 31 band equalizer plug-in for our host application during a mixdown session at the studio. We downloaded the trial version (which emits an annoying tone every 60 seconds or so, which was the first indication that we really need to buy this product) and loved it from the first minute of use.
Soon after trying out the graphic equalizer, we found ourselves at their web site drooling over the descriptions of the rest of their products. There were compression units, reverb units, delays, parametric equalizers, and it was like musical Christmas here at Demon Digital! Our long time sound engineer, Brad Krug was impressed and recommended we get the software, so...we did. :-)
What follows is our in depth testing of the plug-in software from Anwidasoft. What we did is write a quick 2:30 song and record it completely dry, then use the new Anwida products to make the song sound good.
First, I jumped on the 5 piece drum kit and recorded the drum track to the computer. We used 8 microphones on the kit, 6 of these were routed through a 24 channel Mackie sound console so we could send a strong enough signal to the PC. Note that no equalizing at all was done on the board, the drums were dry as dry can be. No hardware compression or gates, nothing.
So after 247 takes, I got the drum track right :-) And it sounded like crap on the PC, which is what we wanted. Just no clipping or overdriven channels is all we were going for so that the Anwida plug-ins would have to do all the work.
Then I recorded a bass track, which sounded pretty good dry because my bass pre-amp rules :-)
Then a guitar track, and finally the vocal track and harmonica solo.
Now we have our complete song sounding like a really bad 50's recording with extra bad added.
I will now outline what we did for each track and provide screen shots of the plug-ins to show the settings that transformed this recording from terrible to great. (Please keep in mind that "great" is a matter of your own taste, we like how this turned out)
We have the song on 14 tracks within our host recording application, so we start with track one which is the kick drum. Below are the settings and plug-ins used for it.
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GEQ15V - Tweak to the best sound possible.
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GEQ31V- Tweak more precisely frequencies not singled out by the 15 band.
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PEQ1V- Use the parametric equalizer to remove bad frequencies in a very precise way. In this case, we had a low hum that needed to go and was eliminated by the Anwida parametric equalizer.
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LV1 - Use the limiter to smooth out the kick across the board, and also stop any clipping.
Track two is the snare drum, here are the settings used for that.
- GEQ15V- Tweak to the best sound possible.
- GEQ31V- Tweak more precisely frequencies not singled out by the 15 band.
- PEQ1V- Use the parametric equalizer to remove bad frequencies in a very precise way. We had a paperish sounding frequency between 1K and 2K that needed to go, so away it went.
- CX1V - Use this compressor to give the snare that poppy sound and to smooth it out across the board.
- Spazio - This was the reverb unit of choice for the snare because of the easy adjustments and great sound it gave us.
Tracks three, seven and eight are the hi hat, and overhead mics for cymbals. They are all tweaked pretty much the same so I will combine them here.
- GEQ31V- remove frequencies that are annoying or may be picking up other instruments, IE: you don't want your hi hat mic to amplify your snare.
- PEQ1V- Use the parametric to precisely remove frequencies that may be causing sounds as explained above. In this case, we had to remove around 500 to get the snare out of this mic, and also remove 6K which was producing a very annoying high pitched sound when a cymbal was played.
Tracks four, five and six are the toms, they are all set very similar so I have condensed them into one for this review.
- GEQ31V- Used this equalizer to get a nice tone from each tom, it worked great.
- PEQ1V- There were multiple other drums and sounds bleeding through these mics, you can see the frequencies we dropped in order to minimize this problem.
- Spazio - This was the reverb unit of choice for the snare because of the easy adjustments and great sound it gave us. Slightly different settings than we used on the snare.
This covers the drum set, now we move to guitar which did not need much tweaking. The amp sounded fine and any compression or limiting would be done in the final master mixdown using the Anwida CX1V and LV1. Here are the guitar settings.
- DXReverb - This produced a nice reverb for the guitar track, which we were happy with almost immediately.
The bass only needed minor tweaking as well, here are the settings used.
- GEQ15V- I brought up some mid to accent the slap tones of the bass on this particular song.
Vocals were fairly easy to get a good sound from as well, compression to smooth out the ups and downs, some equalizing using the 15 band and a little reverb.
- GEQ15V- Just needed to pull out the lows to get rid of the poofs from P's and B's, and take out a little mid to lower the vocals into the song rather than a harsh sounding vocal that seems to ride over top of the rest of the instruments.
- CX1V - This unit smoothed out the high spots and brought out the low spots, perfect for vocal tracks.
- Spazio - Again, some different settings for the vocal track, a bit less reverb for this task.
For the harmonica solo, a little reverb and some slight equalization to take out the harshness were enough.
- GEQ15V- Mostly used this to remove all low end so a listener would not hear the musicians breath or hands hitting the mic.
- DXReverb - Very slight reverb just to carry the notes for a smooth sound.
After using these products, we have come to the conclusion that if we want to produce professional results, we would need to use them regularly.
Below are the comparison MP3 files of the song. Please keep the following in mind when listening.
- The lyrics are goofy, the music is simple, but the groove is good :-)
- The song is called "Whole Lotta Waitress", if that offends you then don't download it.
- I am NOT our drummer, I am the bassist so no criticising my drumming please (Just kidding, rag on me if you need to)
- The lyrics and song do not reflect the views, attitudes or any other blah blah of AnwidaSoft.
- Wait at least 15 seconds after clicking the link for the download to begin.
- We suggest you turn off any equalizer on your player so you get the full effect of how different the two files sound.
- Download the DRY VERSION of the song here.
- Download the Mixed ANWIDA VERSION of the song here.
- Short drum demo dry - Download
- Short drum demo wet - Download
Huge difference huh? Remember, we did not use anything but the Anwida products for equalizing and effects. The host recording application was only used for leveling and panning. We did not even use the three band eq on the mixing board, it's all the plug-ins you hear doing the work!
Rating: 5 stars of course!
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