APOGEE CLEARMOUNTAIN DOMAIN
This new multi-effects plugin promises to bless your tracks with its divine mixing touch, but you’ll need to be seriously committed to the cause…
One of the greatest mix engineers in the history of rock and pop, Bob Clearmountain is known for – amongst other things – his mastery of evocative spatialising treatments. With a body of work that takes in the likes of Springsteen’s Born In The USA, Brian Adams’ Run To You, Bowie’s Let’s Dance, Chic’s C’est Chic, Roxy Music’s Avalon and Tears For Fears’ The Seeds of Love, Clearmountain’s big, lustrous sound is instantly recognisable, and a lot of that comes down to his imaginative collective deployment of reverb, delay and pitchshifting.
Now, thanks to a collaboration with high-end hardware manufacturing and software development outfit Apogee Electronics, you can call up the great man’s “personalized” effects chain – as used on countless hits – in your Mac or PC DAW. Described by Bob himself as a tool for creating the space “where your mix lives”, Clearmountain’s Domain (VST/AU/AAX) is a multi-effects plugin that aims to keep the workflow fast and the results spectacular.
Clear-headed
With its long-throw sliders and flat, functional GUI, Clearmountain’s Domain looks charmingly old-school. The launch page houses a vectorscope that visualises the stereo ‘energy’ of the plugin’s output, plus Input trim and dry/ wet mix sliders. This is a good vantage point from which to survey the preset library, which gives instant access to some of Clearmountain’s signature sounds – ‘Born In the USA Snare’, ‘Let’s Dance Horns’, ‘Run To You Guitar Solo’, etc.
These iconically referential patches make a fantastic first impression, but with only 21 of them onboard, the fun is over all too soon – very disappointing. There’s also a parameter randomising function that’s handy for instant inspiration, A/B switching for comparison of two distinct setups, and a control panel for tweaking the appearance and contents of the Visualizer.
The Signal Flow graphic on the left represents the processing path. Clicking one of its four module groups switches to the corresponding tab in the main interface: Input, Delay, Pitch/ Reverb and Mixer. Of course, you can also
“These iconically referential patches make a fantastic first impression, but the fun is over all too soon”
navigate using the tabs themselves.
The Input stage sends the signal off in parallel down two paths, each fronted by a de-esser and EQ, the latter comprising an 18dB/octave highpass filter, a 12dB low-pass, and a parametric peaking filter with up to +/-15dB of gain. After those, it’s onto a stereo delay feeding into a pitchshifter on one path, and a parallel bank of three convolution reverbs on the other. The five resulting output signals – Delay, Pitched Delay and three reverb channels – are brought together for levelling, independent left/right channel panning, muting and soloing in the Mixer tab at the very end.
Domain name
The Stereo Delay section features separate control panels for the left and right channels, with Link options for Spin (feedback), delay time Offset and EQ (identical to the Input EQ). Delay times are set synced to host or unsynced up to 1000ms, and the feedback circuit can be crossfed between left and right. The Blur slider introduces tasty analogue-style distortion within the feedback circuit; and, cleverly, an automatic offset is applied to the Spin sliders when they’re linked, ensuring that the feedback decay is always the same length for both channels, regardless of their delay times.
The Pitch/Reverb tab is divided between the stereo pitchshifter (positioned after the delay feedback circuit by default, but movable into it for cumulative shifting) on the left, and the three parallel reverb modules on the right – see Spaced out. As touched on earlier, the pitchshifter actually routes the shifted delays to their own mixer channel, so you can blend them with the unshifted delay signal.
Up to an octave of overt independent pitchshifting in either direction is on tap for the left and right channels via the Semitone spinners, while the Cents sliders can shift the input by up to +/-50ct in Fixed mode, or randomly up and down by up to 20ct in Random mode. This last function is ideal for creating convincing ADT and working in some general ‘humanising’ pitch fluctuations. You can also offset the pitchshifted delays from the unshifted delays by up to +500ms.
’Mountain pass
Although it would certainly be tricky to mirror Clearmountain’s Domain using separate reverb, delay, EQ, distortion and pitchshifting plugins, it’s perfectly possible to get something closely approximating it in any DAW with a flexible routing/racking system – albeit without the same impulse responses, distortion character, EQ filter tuning and so on. Taking that into account, while we appreciate the concept here – putting the specialised real-world effects rack of a bona fide mixing legend ‘in the box’ – and the all-in-one convenience of the thing, there’s little here that’s qualitatively unique or essential, which makes that jaw-dropping price very difficult to justify. And the uneditable reverbs and paltry preset library don’t help either.
If money’s no object, then, clearly, there’s no better way to add Clearmountain’s special sauce to your plugin larder than this – and it really does sound top notch in every regard. However, we’d need to see at least $100 knocked off the bill before we could wholeheartedly recommend it to all but the most devoted of Clearmountain fans.
“There’s no better way to add Clearmountain’s secret sauce to your plugin larder than this”