If you have been watching my videos for a while, you probably know that I love Leapwing Audio’s plugins. I love the products, and the company, and I use their plugins all the time when we are mixing in the box! Today, I will be doing an overview of my favorite Leapwing plugins: RootOne, DynOne 3, CenterOne, and StageOne.
RootOne is the one you have seen me demo most recently. What I love about this one is that it adds all these different sub-harmonic frequencies. There are so many of you out there that want to get great drum sounds without using a lot of drum samples, and this plugin is really going to help you define your low end. Since you can really get in there and focus on what you want to do with the bass and the kick, it is a very powerful tool for shaping that low end.
For example, on a bass where there is a pumping low end on one note, that totally disappears on the next note, using this plugin to control those dynamics is going to help you get consistent low end pumping the whole time. It also saves you from having to use additional compression and EQ, etc.
DynOne 3 is a 5 band parallel compressor. With this plugin, I can bring a ton of energy into the track, and it is crazy how much control you have with this plugin. On the track we mixed in the video, we could have shaped the honky mid-range with EQ, but what we are doing here, instead, is we are parallel compressing the band and then squishing it underneath, so it is being introduced back in, giving it more energy in that area. Of course, you could do this with multi-bands of dynamics, but the thing about parallel is that it keeps the original dynamic signal and then puts that energy underneath. I love parallel compression anyways, but then of course EQ dependent parallel compression is going to give your track just a little bit more energy!
Some of you will know that I am not big into widening plugins, but CenterOne is not a widening plugin as such. This plugin allows you to control you left, right, and center individually. This plugin is great because you can get in there and you can control which frequencies you want to push and pull, particularly in the centre. With CenterOne, you could go in and just select the low end, or you could go into something like the high mids, and select that for the vocals regions, snare drums, etc. CenterOne is a really nice way to control your stereo imagery without messing with the phase!
StageOne is really that magic plugin! We talked about how CenterOne can help you bring up the sides, control the center, and how it is a way of getting control of your centre and your width without causing any phase issues. StageOne takes that to the next level, because it can actually increase the width. This is great for mastering engineers, for people mixing really powerful loud EDM, heavy rock, or anything else that is super dense where they are trying to get that extra depth and width out of it. If that is you, then this is the plugin for you! After using StageOne I feel like I’ve got more front to back and like I’ve got more width, but I don’t feel like somebody put it through some kind of mangler, it just feels like I’ve mixed it a little better!
Watch the video below to see each of these amazing Leapwing plugins in action!
