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Perfect Plugin Pairs: 7 Waves Combos Every Producer Should Try

Nov 12, 2024

Some things are just better together—like peanut butter and jelly, Lennon and McCartney, and in audio, EQ and Compression. Besides the last example, what other plugin combinations are there that work best together to help take your production and mixing workflows to the next level?

Perfect Plugin Pairs: 7 Waves Combos Every Producer Should Try

At Waves, we’ve developed and released a lot of plugins over the years, and with so many options available, discovering which plugins to use can be a hard one. Our blog has covered countless topics on how specific plugins work and how certain plugin types can help you enhance your mix, but in this article, we’re focusing on powerful plugin pairs, think power couples that best compliment each other in all styles and demands of music production.

CLA-2A

Vintage compression? Pair it with an analog EQ for even more vintage mixing flavor goodness.

Waves CLA-2A compressor and PuigTech EQ plugins

We couldn't start this article without first a nod to the ultimate plugin power duo—EQ and Compression. They’re the bread and butter of mixing (yes, pun fully intended!). But let’s dig a little deeper and explore how analog versions of these classics can add serious flavor to your sound.

If you’re using the CLA-2A, our model of Chris Lord-Alge’s very own optical compressor, then you’re certainly in the mood for some vintage analog flavor. Not only that, you also appear to want to use a plugin with a focused set of controls that you simply set and forget. As with any great analog gear, it’s all about the sound, and this finely tuned vintage compressor/limiter is a go-to for countless engineers and producers, especially for vocals.

A great pairing for this legendary compressor is our PuigTec EQs. These plugins model early passive EQ technology from the racks of studio legend Jack Joseph Puig (John Mayer, Lady Gaga, Rolling Stones). Similar to Lord-Alge’s ‘2A, you won’t find any modern conveniences or complicated controls, instead you’ll find a unique, organic sound that can easily enhance a channel’s tone with that special something – the indescribable mojo that’s only available from timepiece analog gear.

So, which order should you use: compression first, then EQ, or EQ into compression? Like many mixing choices, there’s no single right answer—it depends! A full explanation goes beyond this article, but you can check out our video below, where we dive into the benefits of using EQ and compression in both orders.

H-Delay

Works perfectly alongside Abbey Road Reverb Plates

H-Delay and Abbey Road Plates plugins

Anyone looking to mix with H-Delay might well be motivated by analog-style sound, but not fully, The H-Series of plugins is all about marrying the best of analog to the best of digital, with analog-style controls and sound, but a few somewhat more digital features like Ping Pong delay and modulation – although these can often to found on analog delays too. It‘s H-Delay’s immediacy that makes it people’s “Desert Island Delay”, and under this light, its pairing makes perfect sense.

Another spatial effect that complements H-Delay very well is Abbey Road Reverb Plates. There’s nothing digital about this one, of course, but when you’re talking reverb, it’s hard (although not impossible) to beat the sound of real reflections. H-Delay is a great delay to feed into Abbey Road Reverb Plates, with each bringing its own advantage to your signal, and each touting that lovely Analog dial to make its processing more and more interesting.

CLA Vocals

Pair it with Clarity Vx to get an even more polished and perfect sounding vocal

Clarity Vx and CLA Vocals plugins

If your vocals need to get into shape quick, then CLA Vocals is the way to go. Using Chris Lord-Alge’s tried and tested vocal processing methods in a single toolbox is better than many amateur mix engineers can achieve with way more time and way more plugins – there’s simply no substitute for experience.

But there’s also no substitute for good-quality vocals as well. To get the best out of any vocal take, you’ll need to make sure it’s free of background noise and any other unwanted sound. That’s where Clarity Vx comes in. This AI-powered plugin is trained on perfect vocal takes, and it will practically make any unwanted background sounds disappear in real-time in your DAW.

For best results, insert Clarity Vx in your plugin chain before CLA Vocals as the creative effects applied in CLA Vocals work and sound best when the source material is as clean as possible in the first place.

Waves Harmony

Try Space Rider as a companion to make your harmonies sound amazing

Waves Harmony and Space Rider Plugins

Need some backup singers, but need them a bit more instantly? With Waves Harmony, vocal harmonies can be made automatically and very easily. There’s also plenty of creative scope to tweak your sound and come up with something that’s totally your own. There’s pitch, formant, panning, delay, filtering and modulation to be had here as well.

But Waves Harmony’s built-in effects aside, you can go one better in the harmony stakes by picking up Space Rider. This plugin was built for amazing and deep spatial effects, and it’s got miles and miles of creative space to give when you’re working with vocals. Space Rider features a delay, reverb and chorus effects, but it’s the envelope-following ‘rider’ slider that takes things up a notch, reacting to your signal’s amplitude to blend in more or less of the effect dynamically. It’s a great effect for vocals, and an amazing solution for harmonies that fit into the mix with a character all their own.

OVox

Silk Vocal makes your vocal transformations smoother and more mix-ready

OVox and Silk Vocal plugins

This vocal playground lets you control synth tones with your voice, process it through classic vocoder and talkbox effects, and can even trigger MIDI notes to divert out to another synth of your choice. OVox even gives you six effects and tons of modulation to completely transform any input vocal into something completely out of this world.

With such a transformative plugin effect in OVox, how about another one to take the edge off? We’re talking Silk Vocal, the smart EQ and dynamics processor that if you insert after OVox tames the frequency response of your vocals, suppressing resonances here and compressing there, until your elaborate effects are ready to sit in the mix – all without ever losing their edge.

Any Abbey Road Plugin

Love analog? How about teaming this ‘dream hardware’ that never actually existed?

Abbey Road plugins and Magma Series

The Abbey Road Collection, along with classics like the PuigTec EQs, CLA-2A, and other Studio Classics, faithfully recreates real analog studio gear. Any two plugins in the Abbey Road collection would be a perfect pair, but here’s a twist. How about mixing and matching analog styles between the best of Abbey Road Studios and our very own Magma Series. Including Magma Springs, Magma Tube Channel Strip, and BB Tubes—we took a different approach with this series of analog inspired plugins. We set out to create our dream analog studio gear, tools that didn’t exist in the real world but we wished they had.

The result? A unique twist on analog processing—unrestricted by traditional designs yet full of easy to understand controls faithful to the analog plugin genre. The Magma Series is crafted so you're always in the sonic “sweet spot.” Pair an Abbey Road EQ or channel strip with the lush Magma Springs Reverb for warm, atmospheric depth, or kick off with the Magma Channel to shape your tracks, layering in Abbey Road Reverbs afterward. The choice is yours!

Waves Tune Real-Time

Pair it with Key Detector to save time and stay in the flow state

Waves Tune Real-Time and Key Detector plugins

One of the most popular Waves plugins, Waves Tune Real-Time is a solution for tuning vocals, whether that’s to pitch correct them or to get fast creative tuning effects automatically. A vital part of the workflow when using this plugin is to select the key your vocal (and therefore the song it goes over) are in. But if you don’t know the key of your song or vocal already, sitting and working it out can be tedious – and you may not be quite sure if you did it right until the vocal tuning starts sounding suspicious.

Enter Key Detector, the simple solution to finding the key of any material you place it over. Key Detector’s AI underpinnings mean that it can be scarily good at finding the scale of what you give it – and it also serves you some Alternative Scales that fall within the detection parameters, should you wish to compare them as candidate scales or get some inspiration for other scales that will work with the material you have so far.

Outro

With that, we hope we’ve given you some useful tips to help point you in the direction of plugins that work best together.

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