Waves Plugin: 'Broadcast & Production'

sbaileymediaman

sbaileymediaman

Active member
Hi, Our sound guy is thinking of purchasing 'Waves: Broadcast & Production' plugin for Pro Tools. Is it a good buy though?

He will be using it for TVCs, corporate videos, documentaries, interviews and possibly a few TV segments.

A lot of our audio is recorded in less than perfect environments such as busy streets where although we've got good shotguns and lavs we still pick up a lot of unwanted background noise.

Does anyone have experience with this? A friend of our sound guy said that this is what is needed for broadcast audio production where the original audio is often lacking but deadlines tight.

Thought I'd put it up here and find out your thoughts on Pro Tools and Waves plugins as it sounds like they could make our lives a bit easier here.

And if you don't use this, any recommendations for us and other dvxers on what works for you?

Cheers!
 
That's a great set of Waves plug-ins. The L2 is a lifesaver, and the Renaissance plug-ins are fantastic.
 
Yeah I like wave's stuff. They have saved my butt many times. Although be warned that some of the plug-ins take a while for you to figure out how to get the most out of them. But once you do you never want to do a job without them.
 
My experience with Waves has been mostly negative, but I may be in the minority. What I didn't like was very crashy - admittedly this was awhile ago and I don't think this is an issue now. Really pricey upgrade policy, this has changed but from what I hear now you have to pay every year to get updates or you end up paying a steep upgrade price when you do upgrade. So this still comes off negatively to me. I thought they sounded OK but I preferred others then, and now there are only a few things I would probably like but... I don't think the bang for buck ratio is all that good. They also have had some serious delays in getting things compatible with new versions.

That said my experiences are mostly 5-8 years back so YMMV.

Of the pack what I have instead is the Massey limiter, TL Space for convolution reverb (and WizooVerb which I like but I think it's been bought by Digi and shelved), EQ's and Expander/ limiter by Roger Nichols, iZotope's RX for Noise Reduction. PT comes with pretty decent EQ, deesser, etc. I really liked Metric Halo's channelstrip but they took FOREVER to get compatible with OSX so I had to stop using it. But it's a really nice option. All the above could be had for under $2,000 US which puts it at well under 1/2 the price of the WAVES bundle. I would probably swap out TL Space for Audio Ease Altiverb (or splurge and get their Speakerphone also) and you would still be under 1/2 the WAVES bundle.
 
Looks like an awesome set of plugs. Not only are the reverbs and dynamic plugs awesome, but you have hum removal, as well as noise, click & crackle removal. All essential production tools. There is even a simple auto-tune plug for foxing your kids karaoke recordings!

Personally the one I use the most for broadcast is the Renaissance channel. It has an EQ, noise gate and Compressor all in one. So you drop that on any VO and can make it sound fat. I use the L2 Ultramaximizer to master all my mixes. That and a little EQ will finish off any mix, and pump it up as loud as you want without clipping.

You'll be set. Just don't try to use them in FCP - it's a bad trip because FCP doesn't present you with a user interface, only sliders, which can be very tiresome. I'm pretty sure they'll open in Soundtrack pro or any grown-up audio app.
 
Thanks guys,

Some very helpful answers there!

I'll tell my sound guy about it,

As for FCP we're actually swapping over to Avid MC so be interesting to see if it works in that,

Thanks again!
 
actually, take a look at the sony oxford plugins and the BEST audio cleanup app going right now is iZotope RX...amazing what you can do with these plugins.
 
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