For the letter R in our ongoing series of the A to Z of Waves, we have chosen Renaissance as the topic. This article is going to look at 3 Waves Renaissance plugins - Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance Bass & Renaissance Vox.
Waves Renaissance Compressor
The Waves Renaissance Compressor is a very handy compressor plug-in. It features a simple set of controls that are easy to set for achieving transparent compression results. Renaissance Compressor has two different compression modes - vintage opto and modern electro, both add subtle changes to the compressor characteristics. What's nice is that the Renaissance Compressor has a key input, this enables the use of sidechaining when pumpy compression is needed to be driven from a different track such as a dance kick compressing a synth pad.
Waves Renaissance Bass
Waves Renaissance Bass does one thing - It effortlessly fattens up low-end. It achieves this in a very different way to low-end boosting with EQ. Renaissance Bass uses Waves MaxxBass psycho-acoustic technology. Renaissance Bass (R Bass for short) fattens up low-end by creating higher harmonics from existing bass within your tracks - this in turn, tricks your ear into hearing bigger bass. This is a very useful tool for exaggerating bass within tracks in your mixes for smaller playback systems. A great application for R Bass in on close mic drum toms that sound thin. Tune the frequency to the fundamental of each tom and increase the intensity to taste.
Renaissance Vox
Waves Renaissance Vox offers a simple one-stop solution for cleaning up and levelling a vocal in a mix. It's one of the simplest compressor plugins and a firm favourite amongst the Pro Tools Expert Team. Renaissance Vox (R Vox for short) is the best vocal compressor when transparent compression is needed in a hurry.
Compression, gating, limiting, and level maximisation in one plugin
Soft-knee compressor with auto make-up gain
Gentle downward expander for noise gating