Waves Audio – Tony Maserati Collection – The Test

The Tony Maserati collection represents a meeting of enterprise titans. Waves, one of the earliest and most enduring audio plug-ins companies, has made its reputation on first-rate bundles of their plug-ins, including the Gold, Platinum, and Diamond bundles, as well as emulations of a number of the most respected names in studio hardware from API to SSL. Tony Maserati is a multi-platinum, Grammy triumphing engineer with mixing credits which include Mariah Carey, Destiny’s Child, the Black Eyed Peas, John Legend, and Kelly Clarkson. What Waves and Tony Maserati have finished is to put together some of Tony’s attempted and proper combinations of EQ, compression, and consequences into a simple, intuitive package. We are being invited into Tony’s audio global and getting a danger from his experience in our mixes.

What You Get

The Maserati series is six plug-ins mainly designed for the number one units of maximum mixes. They are the VX1 for lead and concord vocals, the ACG for acoustic guitars, the GTi for electric powered guitars (and horns relying on the present), the HMX for keyboards, the B72 for bass, and sooner or later the DRM for all the individual drums in a well-known studio package. The Maserati collection is atypical of most EQ and compression plug-ins, giving built-in results on six plugs. These effects include reverb and a few times a delay as nicely (like at the GTi and VX1). However, the FX knobs manage the overall impact in an utterly fashionable manner. On event, you are additionally provided a few extra controls like a “Wet” knob(at the HMX), a “Tone” manage (at the B72), “Excite” and “Pre Delay” (at the ACG), or even “Vibro” and “Chorus” (at the Gti). Overall, the outcomes are nicely notion out, appropriate, and sound super.

The Look and Feel

The first element I observed in the Tony Maserati series is that, visually, it stands apart from quite a few available audio plug-ins. Its design is extra fanciful and inventive and would not have hardware equal within the bodily equipment global. The best description I can supply might be to mention it looks like a pass between a vintage wooden radio and the dashboard of a few antique automobiles. The knobs paintings and the lights glow have a pleasing, warm appearance and feel. There’s a way to this insanity as nicely: By leaving out actual frequency notations, postponing instances, and almost all numbers, we’re pressured (within a friendly, feasible manner) to use our ears and no longer our eyes to combine. This is a borderline radical belief nowadays when we’ve grown used to typing 200hz and minus 1.5 into the windows of our EQ plug-ins. By changing our workflow, we’re compelled to pay attention in preference to virtually anticipating a result that we’ve got masses of instances before.

Download and Setup

There’s absolute confidence that the oldsters at Waves spend tons of time considering their advertising as they do their plug-ins, as indicated on their website. As a promotional tool, Waves has a web page with video interviews of various engineering and manufacturing luminaries. To immerse myself in Tony’s international, I watched his video that takes us through New York and into his studio as he discusses his mixing method in trendy phrases. It’s not an accident that Tony’s interview mirrors his plug-in collection.

He would not talk much about the details but, as an alternative, addresses his usual philosophical and emotional method and leaves as much as we can concentrate on his paintings as evidence that the details are operating. Make no mistake. The video isn’t always designed as “the way to” for the plug-ins. Tony briefly discusses the plug-ins on end, and even as it’s now not an awful lot, it is beneficial to hear what he has to mention. He discusses how the plug-ins aren’t supposed to mimic any unique piece of gear but as an alternative to behaving like a device based on his favorite presets. While we do not get any actual nuts and bolts recommendation on the way to use the plug-ins, we do get to hang around with a multi-platinum, Grammy-triumphing engineer for approximately half an hour, which is quite cool.