Do you record with plugins? If so which ones?

Question

Just wondering if you record with plugins or not. Like so the effect - whatever it is - gets recorded for good onto the track. I have thought about using a gentle compressor to even out the vocal track as it comes in. Is this good practice or not?

Answer 1

I do exactly that. A super light compressor coming in on vocals usually. It's the same as running it through a pre amp that has compression / gate / etc.

Be careful with gate though, coming in. I had a bad experience once where the gate was robbing some of the tail ends of the vocalists notes, and it got recorded that way, and we had to re-record at a less than convenient time.

Just remember whatever you record in with is there forever - you can't remove it later if you decide you don't like it or it's too much.

I even struggle with whether or not I should let the guitarist have reverb on their guitar while recording. Have you ever had to add distortion or gain to a guitar track that has reverb? Worst sound ever!

Answer 2

So here comes the old dude with tape and a mixer.

I don't add too many effects after the fact. I'll compress a little, eq, compression and use what's on my board. But distortion, sometimes reverb and the guitarists "sound" is dialed in pretty carefully before recording. That's probably one of the main differences in tape recording vs computer recording. With tape, you spend a lot more time up front making sure things sound perfect. Because you don't have the opportunity to do much with it later. Great question!