CURATED SOUNDS
FOR PRODUCERS

Decapitator 6 is the version I keep installed on the master bus template now, and the reason has less to do with the saturation engine and more to do with not having to think about it mid-mix. We’ve had Decapitator in the plugin folder since the original. It earned that slot by being the one […]

VYBZ 2 is a texture machine, not a mix tool. If you go in expecting a clean multi-effects rack you can slap on a vocal bus, you’ll be disappointed. If you go in wanting to rough up drums, drown a synth, or turn a field recording into a haunted cassette, seven effects is more than […]

Three compressors, one drum bus, and a mix that either gels or falls apart: that is the whole test. We picked three budget options and ran the same bus loop through each one, and only one of them behaved like something we would keep on the mix template. The other two are usable, but with […]

Drums are where most reverbs fall apart. Put a lush tail on a synth pad and nobody complains, but send a kick and a snare through the same plugin and you find out fast whether it can keep the low end together and whether the top end sounds like air or like gravel. We tested […]

I bought six cheap sample packs from marketplace sellers over the past month. Total spend: about the price of two coffees. What arrived was a masterclass in listing photos versus reality. Some of it was genuinely useful. Some of it was a 400 MB zip of the same kick drum with different file names. Here […]

Free sample packs are a mixed bag. Half of them are recycled supersaw loops with a Kickstart sidechain slapped on top, and you can smell the 2014 from the file names. So when a pack lands in my feed and it’s actually aimed at techno, I open it with one eyebrow raised. The W.A. Production […]