Console

ConsoleDemo was a huge innovation. Before this set of plugins, all my attempts to bring analog flavor to the digital buss were forms of coloration or saturation. The full spiel here can be found at the entry for Console2, where you can find the link to buy it: here, I’ll just talk about what changed and how it started.

One interesting thing about Console is that it’s incredibly simple. The encoding plugin, ConsoleChannel, is strikingly simple and the decode plugin, ConsoleBuss isn’t much more complicated. This helped me get richness of tone through not over-processing.

The other thing about Console of course is that it confuses everybody ;) however, it shouldn’t, because you can manipulate it and it’ll still work if not set up perfectly. The basic idea is that you should have ConsoleChannel on all channels, POST-fader if you can, and ConsoleBuss first on the 2-buss. It matches up in that way so that the individual sounds are as near to unprocessed as you can get. All the special ways to use Console are just manipulating what’s ‘inside’ this special summing buss (produced by the combination of the encode/decode plugin) and what’s outside.

Console lends itself to template use: you can set up a template with Console all pre-installed and just go. Since there are no controls on either Console plugin (another thing that confuses people) there’s nothing to fiddle with.

If you’d like the original Console, buy Console2 and ask for the original by email. I’ll send it.