The Ultimate 808 Mixing Toolkit: StudioRack Unchained

Jul 01, 2020 | 16,133 Views

Producer/mixer Damien Lewis (Rihanna, Katy Perry) takes you through his ultimate 808 processing chain for Waves StudioRack, to help your 808s hit hard with punch, depth and density.

The Plugins

The Waves plugins that make up this powerful StudioRack chain preset include two types of distortion from Berzerk and Abbey Road Saturator. For tone, the PuigTec EQ adds a rich layer of sizzle and thump. Several dynamics processors take care of the punch, including the Smack Attack transient shaper, R-Vox, and the L2 Ultramaximizer. Finally, most 808 mixes wouldn’t be complete without some form of subharmonic generator: Damien chose Submarine as the best tool for the job.

The Macros

Saturation effect amount
EQ Boost 100Hz and 3kHz boost and output level attenuation
Comp parallel compression amount and output level attenuation
Sub parallel sub-bass amount
Attack Transient shaping
Distortion mix level
Spread wide value
Limiter threshold value

Several of the macros in this chain preset were edited cleverly to bypass plugins in the chain when the macro is fully clockwise. Damien’s philosophy behind incorporating bypass into the macro was to give users a completely clean and unprocessed sound as a starting point.

Several of the macros assigned to controls that increase or decrease plugin levels, also have output level controls assigned, so that the overall levels can stay consistent throughout the travel of the macro.

(In this video you will notice that the macros were not adjusted with the cursor. This is because Damien is using a control surface which enables full control over the 8 available macros in StudioRack.)

Damien Lewis about the ‘DL 808 Toolkit’ StudioRack Chain Preset

“I've always wanted the ultimate 808 processing plugin. Well here it is. With just 8 macro knobs you can sculpt your 808s like never before. These processing chains running in parallel and multiband split would be nearly impossible to set up and route in the box. Now with a single plugin you can do everything to your 808s – EQ, compress, saturate, multi-band distort and add punch. It's all here, everything you need to create insane 808s.”

Download StudioRack free including this chain preset.

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