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2. Mixing a hip-hop beat with Ignite VST Vice One

1 Let’s use Vice One to mix a hip-hop beat, using compression to even out volume differences, and saturation to add warmth, bite and harmonics. To get started, create a new 137BPM project in your DAW, and load the WAV files beginning “Beat…” onto separate tracks. Loop it up and listen carefully to the beat for areas in need of improvement. 2 The most obvious flaw in the mix is that the kick drum lacks harmonics and fades away far too quickly. To remedy this, add Vice One to its track so we can reshape it. We want the input signal to hit Vice One pretty hard here, to drive its Saturation section in an obvious way – increase Input Gain to 7.8 3 To push the kick even further, whack the Saturation knob up to halfway. The tone is better, and the added harmonics will make the kick audible on smaller speaker systems that can’t reproduce its low fundamental frequency. It’s still fading away too fast, so let’s now use compression to bring up the tail and add sustain. 4 Set Ratio to 3 and push Threshold up to -12dB. We want precision compression, so select the Digital mode, with a Hard Knee. Now adjust Attack and Release to alter the character of the impact – note how the compression can distort the signal with certain settings, which is useful in itself. We settle on 2 for both controls, for a solid, smooth sound. The kick is very loud now, so turn it down to -5dB in your DAW’s mixer. 5 Next, the snare – whack a Vice One on it, as we want to crush the transient and body together to create a more cohesive punch. Leave Threshold at -25dB and set Ratio to 4. To compact each snare hit, use the Digital mode and set Attack to 0 and Release to 0.5. To intensify the effect and add more grit, increase Input Gain to 7.5, Makeup Gain to 1.5 and Saturation to maximum. 6 The hi-hat’s transients are quite pokey – if we can flatten those down, we can turn them up louder without them getting irritating. Add Vice One, set it to Digital mode with a Hard Knee, then set Threshold to -28 and Ratio to 10. We’ll need a very fast Attack to deal with such quick transients, so set it to 0, and Release to 1 so that the compressor recovers quickly enough to allow the body of the hats through untouched. 7 If you toggle bypass, you’ll find that the compression has actually made the transients even more obvious! That’s because the compressor kicks in just after each hit begins, which emphasises transients. We can use Look Ahead to make it react ahead of time – turn it up to 7 and hear how the transient ‘pop’ disappears, because the compressor is now reducing the level just before each hit begins. 8 To finish off the hi-hats, increase Makeup Gain to 1.5 to bring them up in the mix. Note that look-ahead processing causes latency, and if you’re noticing timing or phasing issues when using it, you may need to disable and re-enable the plugin for your host DAW to properly compensate for the extra processing time. 9 On the Synth part, light compression brings the louder high note into line without ruining its dynamics. And on the Vox channel, we smash the signal with look-ahead compression to bring the delay tails up. All of this adds up to a solid and powerful overall mix, made possible with just a few instances of Vice One. See the video for our drum bus and master compression settings!