It seems the modern trend of adding authentic noise to plugins is not impressing the professional audio community. Score mixer Alan Meyerson shared his concerns to his Facebook page. We are sharing them with his permission.
Posting to his Facebook page, mixing legend Alan Meyerson (Dunkirk, The Dark Knight, Wonder Woman and 200+ more movies) said;
“Plugin manufacturers! Please! I beg you. Again!! Set your default to noise off. If you don’t I will stop using the plugin. Nuff said?? I’m serious. When I have to run multiple stems of reverbs and process it’s way too much.”
What Alan is referring to is the modern trend of plug-in developers shipping their plug-ins with noise added and with that default to being on, rather than allowing the user to switch it on if they wish.
It wasn’t long before over 150 were agreeing with Alan, many of them also some of the most influential names in music and post.
Steve Genewick from Capitol Studios in LA commented,
“I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to get rid of noise, and now everyone wants to put it back in.”
Steve is right. For many of us removing noise has been the holy grail, in the days of tape we did everything we could to reduce the amount of noise introduced during the recording process. With the advent of DAWs, the days of noise caused by tape were largely gone, then some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to add it into plugins, all in the name of realism!
Rich Aitken, score mixer at Nimrod Sounds was clear about his view of this modern practise,
“It’s not 1986. We’re not mixing 24 or 48 tracks. I’m on 300 to 400 tracks these days; and I know Alan and Phil are mixing more than that!! The whole analogue modelled noise thing is just not part of where we are. Zero it out!”
Scott Micheal Smith (The Revenant, The Handmaid’s Tale) wasn’t pulling any punches;
“Agreed, I am perfectly capable of f*cking up my own mixes thank you very much.”
One plugin developer suggested that the user could switch off the noise and then save it as a new preset, Alan Meyerson was clear on how he felt about that idea;
“Why should I have to? I’m going to bet that most users would prefer to start clean and then have the option of adding analog noise.”
Whilst we all like to consider that plug-in manufactures are doing their best to model vintage hardware in every detail, the addition of it as default is vexing.
Track counts in modern music production and score mixing can reach several hundred tracks. The addition of noise across a mix of this size can be awful. Additionally, hunting down the offending source of the noise can cost time. Time is something many professionals do not have to spare, both with tighter deadlines and smaller budgets. Plugin developers need to consider who is using their products, empathise with their situation and make their life as easy as possible.
What do you think? Should the noise on plugins be switched off as default?
Image: Mix with the Masters