So I spent the night meticulously testing plugins. Matching levels. Sine wave sweeps. Inverting phase. All that nerdy stuff. The reason? Well, since I starting making music in a DAW, I have been looking for plugins that perform well on the 2-bus. This is necessity to get my mixes loud, without sounding like trash.

The age old question of how to get a clean loud mix is actually pretty simple. Sculpt your individual tracks with EQ and a bit of well implemented peak control. Duck elements out of the way of each other where appropriate. And finally, hit your 2-bus with some clipping, then a bit of saturation depending on the genre, and finally add just a bit of transparent limiting.

Now, this is all pretty easy, until you hit your 2-bus. That's where the quality of your plugins REALLY starts to show. With the exception of clippers and active EQ, I can get away with pretty cheap simple plugins for most individual tasks. For the 2-bus though, they ALL fall apart. There is not one "do it all magic" plugin I've ever owned, that TRULY handles the 2-bus well. Nor is there any cheap, stock or "I have a youtube channel so I made a plugin" plugin that could either.

So with roughly 300 tunes to finish mixing, I REALLY needed 3 things. #1 a better saturator. #2 a MUCH better clipper. And #3 an actually GOOD brick wall limiter. This without having to spend weeks learning a new complicated plugin, or blowing 900 bucks on frickin pluings.

The thing I notice about a lot of plugins these days is, they either give you way too much control which leads to a steep learning curve and decision paralysis, OR, they give you way too little, which leads to endless guessing about even basic info like, how much is this plugin ACTUALLY clipping my 2-bus? Most of these new fancy pants AI enhanced "super" plugins, falling into the later category.

So, for what feels like the millionth time, I go on line, searching for a GOOD, simple to use, effective plugin. Something that gives me all the data/functionality I NEED, with none of the ridiculous bells/whistles/UI graphics I don't.

I start by looking for a limiter. I find the typical "super professional special tech" type of crap I usually run into, that's literally 300 dollars for a single plugin. You know, the ones where YOU TWO can NOW be LIKE "so and so famous mixing engineer with the funny last name". The kind of plugins that always, always, ALWAYS seem to require jumping through hoops to even install/authorize.

I take one look at that and I'm like AWHELLNAH.

So I keep looking, not expecting to find anything different and I stumble across this company: https://www.voxengo.com/ I remember running into them some years back. Never tried their stuff. Looks kinda jank and old school, so I figure, ok, I'll give it a try. Turns out, they have the most amazingly easy simple demo/purchase/install/authorization procedure I have ever encountered. Fully functional demos. No BS. No internet connectivity needed. Lacking all hoops to jump through and dare I say, just about idiot proof. The install folder even comes with a short cut to open the mac OS folder I need to drop the file into. OMG thank you!

The first thing I do is test their clipper: https://www.voxengo.com/product/ovc128/

Now, before I get into the results, let me explain why I HATE the numerous clipper plugins I already own. 2 words: Aliasing distortion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing (yes it happens in digital sound as well as visuals). This distortion is the bane of every clipper I had previously tried. It makes the mix harsh and painful to listen to. Some plugins were slightly better. Having onboard 8x oversampling, that often crashed my CPU yet never actually got rid of the aliasing noise. While some were worse, with absolutely no oversampling what so ever. For me, this was the waste of money called a BlackSaltAudio product.

BlackSaltAudio. One of those "I have a youtube channel and I'm going to tell you a secret THEY don't want you to know! Did you know all clippers are the same!? That's right! You've getting over charged for your clipper plugins! But now for the low low price of just 59 USD, you can use my very own clipper plugin! I made it for YOU! Because I know what it's like to be a busy music producer".

A text book example of what happens when gullible people meet youtube influencers who think because they downloaded a "make your own plugin at home" program, it suddenly makes them a competent design engineer. Spoilers: Not only does it not, but the fact they can't hear the HORRID shrill aliasing noise their plugin craps into your mix, makes you question if they are even any good at music production in general.

So back to my tests and this new company Voxengo. The first thing I notice with their clipper (the OVC-128) is, it's got oversampling. Like, MASSIVE oversampling. Like, the dude she says you don't have to worry about, kind of massive oversampling. Forget this 4x, 8x or even 16x oversapling sheet. Voxengo clipper got baaaaallz, wit 127x oversampling.

I figure, ok, that sounds kinda ridiculous but maybe enough to actually get rid of aliasing noise. I think to myself though, they can't really have given it 127x could they? And if they did, there's NO WAY my rinkydink computer could run it. It crashes with just 8x oversampling. Well, to my shock, not only did it run well but yes, it is the first clipper I EVER used that has NO aliasing noise, even above 10khz.

At least that's what my head to head test results were. Running +3db and +6db clipping on sine sweeps, with my headphone volume set stupidly low, so I don't frickin DIE. I guess Voxengo is just more proof that in the digital world, optimization and good design is king. And yes, I know some people will disagree and say stuff like "oh, oversampling makes your clipper not clip to exact zero" or "it dulls your transients". I honestly don't care. From my experience, aliasing noise can be annoying and the more of it there is, the more annoying it gets. We're also talking about clipping the 2-bus, not a drum bus. With Voxengo's clipper, I didn't run into any problems. I adjusted the gain stages to work the way I want and I leave a limiter as the last link in the chain.

I was stoked to say the least and in all irony, Voxengo's clipper is roughly the same price as that shite BlackSaltAudio clipper. Which kinda made me go ". . . . . . >.>; . . . . . mmmmm, yeah, I got some salt for ya there buddy".

Anyway. It doesn't end there. Next I tried Voxengo's saturator: https://www.voxengo.com/product/varisaturator/ . Unlike all the other similarly priced if not more expensive saturator plugins I have, this one gave me more loud with less smear and less spectral tilt than the others. Right out of the box too, with actually useful presets!

So lastly, I'm sure you want to know about their limiter: https://www.voxengo.com/product/elephant/ Well, it's late and this journal is already mad long, so I'll wrap this up. Eeyup. It's awesome. Akin to it's name, the Voxengo Elephant, fattens dem peaks and does it without sounding like ass. Finally, a simple to use, effective "transparent" limiter, I can use on my frickin 2-bus without worrying about it falling apart if I dare push it past a single db or so of reduction.

The funny thing is, even if you buy all 3 of those Voxengo plugins, it's STILL cheaper than the original "super duper AI driven used by that guy with a funny last name" limiter plugin we started this journal with. I can't help but lol at the jank UI graphics too. No joke, I love that retro early 2000s "reason by propellerhead" look. You know what I don't like though? Low rez number readouts with horrid color skins. Fortunately Voxengo doesn't have that problem. As low rez as their UI looks, it's crystal clear and you can customize, in detail, the skin colors. I especially liked that this company makes a point to tell people NOT to buy until you've FULLY tried the demo and are SURE it works the way you need!

Now I'm going to have to go back and edit all my journals talking about plugins and clipping lol.

Peace yall. : P