The Magic of Plugin Delta

D-d-d-delta.
I probably should have mentioned earlier in the video that this isn't a Reaper-only technique. It's just what I use, so it helps to have a baseline level of knowledge to follow along.
Let me know if pushing the color of the plugins ended up being too much. I made the LUT, so I can always just make another one. Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure that it's the plugins' fault that they look so drab; it might be my video capture device desaturating everything. Still, I personally prefer the over the top saturation. You ever hear "if you're not redlining, you're not headlining"? I have similar feelings about clipping the rec. 709 color space.
I could probably cut out the second plugin from some of these chains and use the routing I show off when talking about Metaplugin instead, but that'd be even harder to follow, and I like having the flexibility to mismatch settings. Still, that setup cancels EVERYTHING, no matter how random, so it's technically better.
Speaking of that part where I show off Snap Heap and Metaplugin as alternatives for those who don't use Reaper... obviously those might not be the only two options. They're the only two I know of, but it's possible that there's another option floating out there. If I had to start looking for another plugin that could do fun delta stuff for whatever reason, my hunch is that a company like Blue Cat Audio would be a good place to start. But that's just a hunch and I may be totally wrong about that.
The part about downsides was originally going to be longer, but the only other negative I could think of was "you have to use more than one plugin instance for canceling or else it gets confusing!" It felt ridiculous to mention.
Anyway, I have no idea if this is relevant to anyone, but I love screwing around with weird audio techniques, so videos like this happen sometimes.
Part of me wants to be like "vote for which video on the list of video ideas you'd like to see!" to trick people into leaving comments that are interpreted by KZbin's algorithm as engagement, but... I'm just so bored dancing to the tune of business robots, and besides, that feeling of obligation is what's kept those video ideas from becoming videos. I feel like this all works better when I'm flying by the seat of my pants, frantically trying to scrape together something watchable before I lose interest.
That's an admission that this isn't the video I was building up to after the last one. Planning is for politicians and Batman and I leave it to them.
The nonsense at the end was really made by slamming my head against my keyboard. That's authenticity right there.
I'm really, unreasonably proud of how the Mona Lisa explainer part turned out. I messed up a bunch of stuff that I had to fix after the fact, so it was a lot of work, but I think that the sound effects really sell it. It's just the default patch of Mr. Alias 2 and some bleep-bloops generated in SFX8. Not everyday stuff, but free and always handy to have.
In case it's not obvious, I really, really like Fircomp 2. It can be VERY fast, even without the latency-adding lookahead, so it's my go-to for peak limiting, hence it being used a bunch here. If you're not looking to spend money, the original Fircomp is free and just as good if you don't need a more adjustable sidechain filter.
Latency is something I try to avoid where possible, so I use Cramit instead of Xfer's OTT. It's more customizable and otherwise has all the same upsides and downsides.
My "real" clipper chain uses a different clipper called TLs SaturatedDriver. It's free and so old that it probably won't work in some DAWs, and it also doesn't have a good way of controlling how hard you hit it, so I use inversely linked gain plugins on either side of it, plus a separate makeup gain, and the whole thing looked too confusing. Its sound is comparable to StandardClip anyway, just a little darker, so I opted for using StandardClip to keep things easier to follow.
I'm barely scratching the surface of the possibilities here. One of my chains that I didn't show off is two LA-2A emulations canceling each other, then a saturator affecting one of them so that the LA-2A compression timing is only present in the harmonics. At least, that's what I ~think~ is happening. The precise ways plugins interact isn't always clear, but there are A LOT of possibilities here.
It hurts me deeply that society refuses to accept a dash in "reined in."
YOU CAN'T COLLECT TIMESTAMPS, BUT HERE THEY ARE ANYWAY
00:00 - 00:36 - Reality is what you change it to in post
00:36 - 02:05 - Explaining some basics you may need to follow along
02:05 - 03:49 - FX chain: "transient/tonal EQ"
03:49 - 05:19 - FX chain: "transient/tonal clipper"
05:19 - 06:54 - FX chain: "reined-in OTT"
06:54 - 07:52 - FX chain: "fancy weird panning"
07:52 - 08:47 - FX chain: "reverb only on loud sounds"
08:47 - 09:33 - Effects with a random component don't cancel out
09:33 - 10:41 - Options for those who don't use Reaper