When Louis Cato received this Univox LP-style as a gift in high school, it needed some major TLC. A few years later, it got some practical upgrades and now makes regular appearances with Cato on The Late Show.
By this time, us audience members have been sitting in Manhattan’s chilly Ed Sullivan Theater for about 90 minutes. We’ve gotten our seats, had a bathroom break after getting settled, and had some fun with warm-up comic Paul Mecurio. The first musician summoned by announcer Jen Spyra is drummer Joe Saylor. Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, he jogs out, gets behind the kit, and kicks off an up-tempo second-line groove. Next comes upright bassist Endea Owens and percussionist Nêgah Santos. The band’s trumpeter, Jon Lampley, is introduced, and he’s brought along his bandmates in the Huntertones as guests, so saxophonist Dan White and trombonist Chris Ott come out as well.
Louis Cato feat. Stay Human "Look Within"
The multitalented Louis Cato leads the Stay Human band through a special rooftop performance of his song “Look Within,” from his album, Starting Now.
The audience is now on its feet, the band’s pocket is thick, and the energy is building. When bandleader Louis Cato charges onstage, he reaches his mic on the bandstand and shouts, “I feel good today!” with explosive enthusiasm and a big grin, and the band launches into Jon Batiste’s “I’m from Kenner.” Cato sings the catchy and gleeful refrain: “I feel good, I feel free, I feel fine just being me / I feel good today.” And the audience is feeling the love. Almost everyone is bouncing and clapping along.
A couple minutes in, when it seems like the song has reached its super-positive-vibe, high-energy climax, Cato shouts into his mic, “How do you feel today, Stephen?” And with that, Colbert comes running out from the middle of the set. Cato leaps from the bandstand toward the host as the crowd explodes. The two grab hold of each other and attempt to spin around, but the bandleader, holding his black-sparkle Tuttle T-style, loses his grip and goes sliding across the shiny stage. There’s a second where both are comically stunned—Kevin McCallister Home Alone-expressions on both of their faces—but Cato quickly jumps to his feet, both he and his guitar unharmed, and runs back to the bandstand, where he keeps the song moving along with his bandmates, who haven’t missed a beat.
All this excitement isn’t even for the TV audience! Colbert is coming out for the un-televised pre-show Q&A. In a few minutes, they’ll do a new taped intro that looks more like what we see every night. But they’ve gotten the crowd energized, and we need to keep it up. They need our energy to do their jobs.
The Late Show Band welcomes a lot of guests up on the bandstand. Here, Cato and Joe Walsh boogie down.
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
As Cato sees it, that’s what his role as bandleader is all about: keeping the audience engaged and amplifying the drama and action of the show. “That translates to the energy that the viewers get at home,” he explains. “For all of us here, we’re able to feed off that energy and do the best possible show that we all can.”
Colbert agrees with that job description and adds that the bandleader himself has the same contagious effect on his players. “Louis is an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist,” he says, “whose spirit of creativity and collaboration not only elevates everything the band does musically but inspires me to be better at my job.” He adds, “I’m so happy to call him my friend.”
Beyond his infectious energy and charisma, there are a lot of ways Cato keeps the Late Show Band invigorated from night to night. For one, he keeps the music fresh by tackling a new cover song every day. That doesn’t mean running down rote note-for-note charts. Cato and the band take a reconstructionist approach that fans of his work—whether from his collaborations with artists such as the Huntertones, Scary Pockets, or Vulfpeck, or from his regular Instagram cover-song posts—will recognize.
“Louis is an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist whose spirit of creativity and collaboration not only elevates everything the band does musically but inspires me to be better at my job.”—Stephen Colbert
On this evening, the band runs through a host of multi-genre reinterpretations during the two-episode taping, including a slow-burning and soulful “Smokestack Lightning,” a New Orleans-style “Down by the Riverside,” and a fingerpicked, acoustic-led take of Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” that gets Colbert lip syncing along off camera. On a horn-driven arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” there’s a re-worked bridge that creates a generous feature spot for the guest horn players.
Every arrangement brings a new and unique perspective to a classic track, to ensure the band is “not just a wedding band doing a cover of a song on the radio.” Cato adds, “We’re arranging it and making it our own—because that’s the sonic fingerprint of our show.”
St. Vincent jams with Louis and crew.
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
A Lifelong Path
Listening to the story of Cato’s musical life, it seems that this job—with its demand for a blend of careful strategizing and on-the-fly creative thinking, as well as effortless instrumental skills and charismatic showmanship—is what he’s been training for since the beginning.
On the morning of the taping I attended, I meet Cato in his dressing room. Painted with sky-blue walls and a cloud mural on the ceiling, it’s a comfortable place to hang. The bandleader is wearing slim-fit floral pants, a hoodie over a black T-shirt, and a long necklace. He sits across from me on his couch, next to a guitar stand that holds a few instruments—including his Tuttle, a Jesse Stern-built baritone acoustic, and his Univox LP-style—and a ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue with a Universal Audio Dream ’65 pedal plugged into it.
“There’s not a time in my brain when I was not making music in some way or form,” Cato says. His mother, a pianist in the Church of God in Christ, bought her son a Diamond drum kit that he recalls having paper heads when he was just 2 years old, and she started teaching the toddler to accompany her. “I marvel at my mom,” he laughs. “Like, who buys their 2-year-old a drum kit?” After playing those drums every day for a year, he started accompanying her at services.
The family moved around a lot. Cato’s father was in the Air Force, and Louis was born on a base in Lisbon, Portugal, before moving to Dayton, Ohio. Not long after he started playing in church there, they moved again to Washington, D.C., and when Louis was 5 they settled in Albemarle, North Carolina. A few years later, Louis started playing guitar on a “little burgundy sunburst acoustic. Eventually, I busted a string and busted another string and just kept playing with four strings. I delved more into bass from playing bass lines on the acoustic guitar. So, for my 9th birthday, my dad bought me a 4-string bass.”
“I’d show up to Tip’s and we’d do a week of writing sessions with John Legend or have André 3000 in the studio for a couple of weeks.”
While it was strictly pragmatic reasons that initially drew him to the bass, he says his biggest inspiration was the bass player he knew best: his mother’s left hand. Her playing, rooted in the COGIC (Church of God in Christ) style, “involves heavy left-hand bass. I wasn’t as psyched to play bass in church since the way my mom plays is very defined. But eventually I kind of had to learn how she plays. It was always just her and me playing. And I had to learn to move with that and follow that. She’s a great bass player.”
Along the way, Cato picked up more instruments. By the time he headed to Berklee, he was playing drums, guitar, and bass as well as tuba, trombone, and euphonium. “I was going from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a large pond of super-talented people who had heard oodles of music I had never dreamed of,” he recalls. So, he decided to focus his studies on the instrument he’d played the longest.
Louis Cato's Gear
A glimpse at Cato’s pedals and amp, which mostly live outside of the camera’s eye, behind his stage monitor.
Guitars
- Univox LP-style
- Tuttle Custom Hollow T
- 1961 Gibson SG reissue
- Martin OM-28
Amps
- ’65 Fender Princeton Reverb reissue
Effects
- Boss FV-500H Volume Pedal
- Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
- Dunlop Cry Baby
- 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre
- J. Rockett Archer
- Truetone Jekyll & Hyde
- Xotic RC Booster
- MXR Carbon Copy
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012-.053)
- D’Addario EXL110 (.010-.046)
- Dunlop Max Grip .88 mm
Cato completed just two semesters—fall ’03 and spring ’04—before deciding to concentrate on playing the gigs that were paying his bills. “My rationale was, much to my parents’ chagrin, here’s an opportunity where I can keep learning on the job and be working my way out of the debt I went into in this year.”
Gigging with wedding and church bands gave the multi-instrumentalist an opportunity to keep all his instrumental and vocal skills alive. “My oldest daughter was born soon after that,” he recalls, “so I felt really, really aware of how lucky I was, how lucky any of us are, to make a living and support a family as a musician.” Cato spent five years in Boston, playing various instruments in gigging bands, and he frequented local institution Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club, just two blocks down the street from Berklee, “for self-education and inspiration. When that felt like I hit a ceiling, I looked at where I could go to continue my inspiration and working on the kind of projects I wanted to be working on, and that led me here.”
By that time, Cato’s friend Meghan Stabile, had moved to New York and created the promotion and production company Revive Music, which was dedicated to the kinds of jazz and hip-hop collaborations he wanted to pursue. Cato moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn, with his band Six Figures— “There were six of us; we did not make six figures!”—and would head back to Boston each weekend for the gigs that were paying his bills. Eager to soak up the New York scene, he’d return to New York on Sunday nights and go directly to jam sessions.
All that time back and forth on the Northeast Corridor paid off. A self-described musical “utility knife,” Cato’s multi-instrumentalism, as well as his talents as a songwriter, arranger, producer, and engineer, made him a major asset as a collaborator, and the New York scene took notice. Soon, he established essential connections that would affect his career, forming “an instantaneous brotherhood that continues to this day” with producer Kamaal Fareed, aka Q-Tip. “Through that, I ended up really delving into a lot of relationships and credits.”
The two artists worked on high-level collaborations that not only bolstered Cato’s reputation but served as a major piece of his education. “I’d show up to Tip’s,” he explains, “and we’d do a week of writing sessions with John Legend or have André 3000 in the studio for a couple of weeks. Sometimes things would come from it, and sometimes nothing would come from it. But being in the creative process on that level in a trusted space was invaluable for me. I learned so much.”
Outside of Q-Tip’s studio, Cato was learning from plenty of masters, mostly from behind the kit. “It’s really special when you find yourself learning things you connect to,” he says about his work alongside artists such as bassist Marcus Miller, keyboardist George Duke, and guitarist John Scofield. “And I learned so much about myself from connecting to some of these people.”
Staying Human
Back in 2015, Cato received a phone call from pianist Jon Batiste. The two had never met, but Batiste rang him up about a mysterious project—a theme song for a TV show that he couldn’t disclose. “I had a wisdom tooth appointment back in Boston, and I got a random call,” Cato remembers. “I think his exact words were, ‘I’d love to have your ears on it.’ And I followed my gut, rescheduled my trip, stayed in New York an extra day with an abscessed wisdom tooth.”
The two got together to co-write and produce “Humanism,” which would become the theme song for the Stephen Colbert-hosted Late Show. Batiste played piano, Cato played the guitar, bass, and drum parts and “put on my editing hat.” They brought in Joe Saylor—who would become the show’s drummer—to play tambourine, as well as saxophonist Eddie Barbash. “After the session,” Cato remembers, “I went back, got my wisdom tooth out, and went back on the road with John Scofield.”
Three of the four go-to guitars Cato uses on The Late Show: a black Tuttle T-style, a cherry-red Gibson SG, and a Martin OM-28.
At first, Cato played the multi-instrumental role of his dreams, attempting to surround himself with every instrument he could play. “That lasted about three days before reality set in,” he laughs. “Slowly, one by one, things started disappearing—a floor tom going away here, a Pro Tools setup going offstage there. Eventually, as the band formed out, I moved around to what was needed. I was the utility guy—played a lot of kazoo, a lot of cowbell.”
While on the road drumming with Sco’, Cato got the invite from Batiste to join the show’s band, Stay Human. “It was a huge life shift for me,” Cato explains. “I was making really good money on the road with really good musicians, which was really fulfilling. And I took a chance. I loved the idea of being a part of something creatively from its inception.”
Eventually, Cato settled into a more consistent electric bass role, until Batiste brought in upright player Endea Owens, and he moved to guitar, where he’s mostly stayed. When Batiste left the show last year, Cato took over as bandleader—officially starting this season, back in September—and decided he’d lead from his role as guitarist. “Of all the places I occupied,” he says, “guitar was the easiest and most natural to me to lead the band, in the energy. From behind the drums, it’s a different thing, and we’ve done it when Joe was out. But it just was a really natural progression.”
Same Show, New Job
In just a few months, Cato’s new role as bandleader has had an impact on the show. The renamed Late Show Band’s engine seems to be burning on a new kind of fuel. And it feels as though that energy is coming directly from Cato.
When we talk, the guitarist is deeply engaged, in a kind of hyper-focused way that is not intense but more casually un-distractable. He brings that same focus to the show. While Colbert delivers monologues, Cato is zoomed in on the host, listening to every word, often riffing around on his guitar to contribute musical commentary. During interviews, he’s taking cues and following the tone of the conversation, looking for ways to adapt.
The bandleader gig requires loads of big-picture improvisation, but also lots of prep. Cato explains that each week he makes a set list, but the band will react and make changes in the moment. “My job ends up being a lot of judgement calls that affect the flow of the show,” he says. “We have a group of compositions we wrote for the show that can complement different moments. If there’s a major energy shift in an interview that takes a turn or something happens in the day, like a tragedy, we’ll call one of the songs we wrote for the show for a moment such as that. Recently, we had a guest on that started improvising a song. So, I have on our in-ear mic and call out the key and start playing, and we all jump in, and now we’re doing this instead.”
Cato poses with his black-sparkle chambered T-style, made by Tuttle. “When I’m checking off core priorities in sound,” he says, “if I’m going for rhythmic things, I go to the Tele.”
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
Watching the Late Show Band in person, I see this play out as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explains the steps the U.S. can take to avoid a recession. It’s a heavy and heady conversation, and, frankly, it’s anything but fun. Cato knows he’ll need to pick the audience back up. As he watches from the bandstand, he gives tempo cues to the band, who nod along, so they can effectively shift the energy and get the audience re-focused for the next guest, actor/director Sarah Polley.
As a guitar player, Cato says he sticks to playing things that feel most natural to him so he can concentrate on his bandleading duties. He adds that he considers himself more a rhythm guitarist than a lead guitarist. (It’s worth noting that his delineation is more conceptual than musical: Cato is an inspired and dynamic melodic lead player, but his deeply rooted phrasing and feel is at the forefront of everything he plays, so the rhythm-first thing applies to it all.) “This is not a space as a guitar player where I’m jumping out of the box trying any and everything and exploring,” he explains. “You get to some of those places. But for me, it always has to start from something I can do while leading the band and reading the energy and making judgement calls.”
“We’re arranging it and making it our own—because that’s the sonic fingerprint of our show.”
That rooted, pragmatic ethos applies to the gear he chooses as well. “I never was a big gear person,” he admits. Luckily, he has Late Show Band tech and informed gearhead Matt Mead to help him keep his pedalboard well-stocked. “There’s so many things I’m learning about the job and trying to keep straight in my head that this ends up getting the short end of the stick, and it wouldn’t work if there was not a Matt Mead to make up the rest of that stick and make it sound good.”
“The show throws a lot of curveballs,” Mead points out. “He steers the boat as far as the tones he’s looking for and if there’s a particular sound he’s looking for. Sometimes, I’ll recommend stuff and say, ‘Hey I notice you’re doing this, maybe we should try this.’”
Cato’s collaboratively curated pedalboard is pretty simple at its core: It starts with a Boss FV-500H volume pedal, a Boss TU-3, a Dunlop Cry Baby, and 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre. Cato shows me how he uses the latter for more traditional, Hendrix-style playing, but he points out that the band plays a lot of montunoes, and he tends to use the octave pedal for those. For drive, he uses a J. Rockett Archer and a Truetone Jekyll & Hyde, which are followed by an Xotic RC Booster and an MXR Carbon Copy, all into a Fender ’65 Princeton Reverb reissue, and powered by a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power Plus.
In live performances outside of The Late Show, Cato uses various guitars, but says that the studio’s cold temperature doesn’t do many favors for instruments such as his Gibson Luther Dickinson ES-335 or some of his acoustics, so he’s careful when selecting which guitars come on stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater. The three guitars that most commonly appear on the show are his black Tuttle Custom Hollow T, a cherry red Gibson SG 1961 Reissue, and a Martin OM-28.
Another guitar that sometimes appears on the Late Show is his LP-style Univox, which I ask Cato about in his dressing room. “If I need to be altogether comfortable,” he explains, “I pull out the Univox, because it’s my earliest guitar. I’ve had this since high school.”
Cory Wong "Lunchtime" - The Late Show's Commercial Breakdown
When musical guests visit The Late Show, they get the full-band treatment from Cato and company. Here, Cory Wong sits in for a rhythm guitar showdown of the highest level.
Back when he first got the guitar, Cato remembers, it was in rough shape, desperately in need of wiring and pickup repairs and a new set of tuners. It stayed that way until he was in Boston. When he picked up a wedding band gig playing trombone and guitar, he was lucky enough to have a roommate who could get the Univox performance-ready by replacing the original tuners with locking units, cleaning out the electronics, and swapping the pickups for a pair of Seymour Duncans.
“I didn’t even know there was a such thing as a professional musician.”
But Cato says that even before those repairs, he’s always “loved it because it’s all I had. I remember I was playing a little Vox amp, and this guitar had a feeling out of that amp. This guitar just became home base and felt super natural to my fingers. If I need to just not be thinking at all, this is home.”
Did he ever dream he’d be on television every night, holding this Univox and chumming with a late-night host? “Never! Not once!” he says. “It was just a product of my nurture growing up in a small town. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a professional musician.” And yet, Cato pursued music as fully and single-mindedly as he could. “I just knew that I liked it and felt connected to it.”
If you’ve been recording in your home studio, you know that having the right effects plugins can make your track-cutting, mixing, and production pop. But trying to keep up with what’s out there? Well, let’s just say option fatigue is real.
We’re lucky. As Nashville-based producer-engineers who are also instructors at Belmont University in the Audio Engineering Technology program, we see and—more importantly—hear and use a lot of effects plugins. And while this article is by no means definitive, we are about to present you with an array of choices from the five essential plugin food groups—modulation (chorus, phasing, tremolo, vibrato), time-based (delay and reverb), spectral (EQ and panning), dynamic (compression, limiters, etc.), and filter (low-pass, high-pass, band-pass)—that you might consider investigating to fortify your recording diet. All of these will be easy to work with as long as you’re comfortable with your DAW, and all are compatible with Mac and PC operating systems.
Modulation
You’ve been hearing these effects all your life, in many of your favorite recordings, but there’s nothing quite like getting your hands on the controls of a wealth of modulation options to spice up your sonic menu. We suggest checking out the following.
• IK Multimedia MixBox ($79–$199 street, as well as a free version): One of our favorite go-to plugins is MixBox from IK Multimedia. From both a production and mixing workflow, the creative and sonic possibilities of this 500-series-style plugin are endless! On the topic of modulation effects, in addition to the standards (chorus, phase, tremolo, and vibrato), MixBox offers a unique selection of processors that include AM/FM modulators, Auto Pan, and Slicer. As the name suggests, the Slicer module works great for adding rhythmic slices and random patterns to your audio tracks. I’ve found that using the combination of the Pattern and Freq parameters allows for endless control of rhythmic and tonal variation when used with synth leads, etc. Altogether, this package offers up to 70 effects and processors.
• Eventide TriceraChorus Vintage Tri-Chorus ($99 street): When you think of the chorus effect, songs such as “Every Breath You Take,” “Come As You Are,” and the classic guitar intro to “Run To You” by Bryan Adams will immediately come to mind. This versatile plugin takes on the famed Tri-Stereo chorus, used on sessions by Steve Lukather and Michael Landau, and offers a wide variety of presets and features that can be used on guitar, bass, vocal, keys, and synthesizers to achieve the signature watery/lush and chorale effect.
“You’ve been hearing these effects all your life, in many of your favorite recordings.”
• Soundtoys PhaseMistress Analog Phase Shifter ($99 street): Phase shifting is an essential effect that has been used as a creative layer on numerous recordings over the decades, starting with Jimi Hendrix. And, of course, there’s the opening riff of Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.” The PhaseMistress, whose name alludes to the Maestro Phase Shifter and the EHX Electric Mistress, is a versatile processor that allows you to dial in a variety of sounds that are modeled after the same analog pedals that guitar giants such as Jimi, EVH, and David Gilmour used. With all DSP plugins these days, we’re seeing more additional processing and signal chains. An added feature that really sets the PhaseMistress apart is the analog-style algorithms (Clean, Fat, Squash, Dirt, Crunch, Shred, and Pump) that also add a touch of saturation and compression to the signal you are working with.
Time-Based
These delay and reverb effects can lead you to wide sonic vistas and otherworldly locales, as well as classic guitar tones—creating depth and dimension, and enhancing the spatial impression of a mix.
• Eventide ShimmerVerb ($99 street): We love experimenting with different types of time-based effects for creative effect and spatial cohesion. For creating ambient and ethereal spatial texture, one of our favorite digital reverbs is the ShimmerVerb, a reverb plugin with parallel pitch shifters. The presets alone sound great, and there’s a wide variety of dreamy tones that can work perfectly for both live and recording situations. One of our go-to recording setups is running a Fender Strat with a Lollar Imperial pickup in the bridge through a ’65 Deluxe emulation with a slight touch of tremolo and the ShimmerVerb’s Radiant Caverns setting. Sublime!
• IK Multimedia T-RackS Sunset Sound Studio Reverb ($149 street): To our thinking, the Sunset Sound Studio Reverb should be in every mixing engineer’s toolbox. Based on the hardware at the historic Sunset Sound Studio in Los Angeles, this processor works great across many instruments and musical genres. The plugin offers seven different reverb types that include Chamber, Live Room, ISO Booth, Plate/Spring, and Studios 1, 2, and 3. What sets this reverb plugin apart from others is the ability to control the stereo image of the reverb width.
“One of our go-to recording setups is running a Fender Strat with a Lollar Imperial pickup in the bridge through a ’65 Deluxe emulation with a slight touch of tremolo and the ShimmerVerb’s Radiant Caverns setting.”
• Waves Abbey Road Reverb Plates ($35 street): Of course, whenever you hear the name Abbey Road, you think of the Beatles. This plugin lets you apply virtual versions of the legendary London studio’s reverb plates to your audio tracks—plates that breathed space into recordings by the Fab Four, Pink Floyd, and many others. The Waves Abbey Road gives you four different modeled plates to choose from. Of course, as with most time-based plugins, this processor has built-in equalization parameters, pre-delay, and a dry/wet blend. However, unique features of the Waves Abbey Road Plates are the Drive and Analog options.
Dynamic
And now we enter the world of compressors and limiters, which, when used correctly, can burnish guitar and bass tones with the precision of a sculptor.
• IK Multimedia Lurssen Mastering Console ($149 street): One of our favorite processors to use on the master bus is this plugin suite, which offers compression, EQ, de-essing, and limiting. It has a wealth of features, like a push control for EQ adjustment and an input drive control, that make it easy and intuitive to use. We really like the 5-band EQ for adding subtle touches of low-end beef and high-end sparkle to tracks. We use the term “glue” frequently in the world of mixing. This plugin is the superglue that binds overall mixes together by adding a nice blend of overall dynamic and spectral enhancement. While final mastering is always best left to mastering engineers, the Lurssen Mastering Console makes pseudo-mastering your tracks more easily attainable.
• IK Multimedia T-RackS Comprexxor ($149 street): As soon as we got our hands on the Comprexxor, we were blown away. This plugin is definitely like a Swiss Army Knife. This is one of our favorite dynamic processing plugins to use for heavier/cinematic rock music. The Drum Squash Room setting has proven to be excellent when routing drums for parallel compression. Among the Comprexxor’s exceptional features are second- and third-order harmonic saturation, optical and mid-side processing, and the Tone Color Control parameter.
“We know that there are different benefits and practical applications of the two main types of equalizers: parametric and graphic.”
• Waves CLA-3A Compressor/Limiter ($49 street): The Waves CLA-3A is hands down one of the most effective and dynamic-enriching processors we have ever used. We recommend it for anybody who wants to experiment with mixing in a DAW. At times, it can be frustrating for up-and-coming engineers to grasp the concept of compression. When we use compression, we either want to add punch or beef to audio tracks—say, kick drums or bass guitars—or balance the dynamic range of certain vocals and instruments. Compressors also enhance and add tonal character to your audio signals. When you look at the CLA-3A plugin’s interface, you see two main parameters for controlling the compression amount and the makeup gain, labeled “gain” and “peak reduction.” Pretty straightforward, right? While I always trust my ears, it is also nice to have the CLA-3A’s VU metering display to see where the levels are hitting. For the low price, intuitive controls, and dynamic richness that this processor can add to your tracks, the CLA-3A is a must-have tool.
Spectral
EQ and panning open up an aspect of the listening experience that many home-studio engineers overlook, or at least underplay. For the early rulebook, consult Hendrix’s Axis: Bold as Love, but Radiohead and countless others have made their albums living, breathing organisms by using tools like these to change the sonic field and the range of their tracks.
• FabFilter Pro-Q 3 EQ and Filter ($169 street): Equalization is like sculpting: It’s about carving out space in your mix to make room for all the musical elements. The FabFilter Pro-Q 3 offers a robust set of features that give you enhanced control over the spectral landscape of your audio. The fresh look of this plugin’s interface immediately calls your attention to the parametric curves and the spectrum analyzer for visualizing the overall spectral balance. Two features of the Pro-Q 3 that really stand out are the intelligent solo mode and MIDI Learn. Perhaps you have heard the phrase “search and destroy” when it comes to finding problem frequencies in a mix? Using the intelligent solo mode helps you to better locate such problem areas and remove them from your mix quicker.
• Newfangled Audio EQuivocate Multi-Band EQ ($99 street): As engineers, we know that there are different benefits and practical applications of the two main types of equalizers: parametric and graphic. The EQuivocate plugin is a straightforward, easy-to-use graphic equalizer that gives you access to 26 filter bands that correspond to the critical bands of the human auditory system. In addition to the standard method of manipulating individual filter bands, EQuivocate has a draw curve parameter that allows you to quickly shape the frequency spectrum across multiple bands. If you’re new to the concept of using graphic equalizers, EQuivocate has a bank of custom presets that can give you a good starting place for mixing and mastering applications.
“Your DAW already has enough built-in effects for you to develop an understanding of what they do and how they work.”
• Waves V-EQ4 ($29 street): Neve introduced the 1081 console channel module in 1972 and deployed it in legendary boards such as the 8048. The VEQ-4 is an emulation of the EQ section of the 1081 that, to our ears, sounds just like a Neve EQ. This is a pretty simple box to use. It gives you the ability to add some high-frequency sheen or low-end thump—and everything in between. This EQ works well on just about any instrument or voice, doing subtle tweaks or broad curves. I like to use it on busses, and sometimes on the master bus, to color the entire mix. It’s a versatile and useful plugin for any style of music.
Filters
These frequency wranglers come in three varieties— low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass—and ride the sonic range hard, establishing cutoff levels. The simple explanation: High-pass filters will disable frequencies below a set cutoff point, low-pass will zap those over the cutoff, and band filters will affect only those in a selected band.
• McDSP NF575 Noise Filter HD Native v7 ($79 street): The McDSP Noise Filter is a very sophisticated device for removing low-frequency rumble and high-frequency hiss from your audio. With hundreds of presets and real-time analyzers, this may be the most effective noise filter we’ve ever used, and we’ve used analog and digital filters for many different kinds of audio clean-up. With seven precise notch filters, it’s easy to dial in the parts of a sound you want removed. You can solo a notch filter and hear exactly what you are removing, too. This is a very handy tool when you need to clean up or fix some audio.
• Waves Enigma ($29 street): While we use Enigma primarily as an EQ sculpting tool, since it is extremely useful when used to filter out particular frequencies, it also offers a unique combination of filters, reverbs, delays, and modulation—allowing you to create some totally original sounds. So, the addition of the other features makes this tool much more than just a filter. Using Enigma effectively may take some time experimenting to discover how to best use the different features, but you will be rewarded with fresh sonic possibilities for fixing problems or creating new sounds.
The Upshot
You can do a lot with a handful of simple plugins, so you don’t have to spend a ton of money on them to make great-sounding recordings. Investigate. Be selective. And your DAW already has enough built-in effects for you to develop an understanding of what they do and how they work. Learning to use plugins mostly requires you to simply use and trust your ears in order to get great sounds.