Your Very Own Custom Plugin Presets

What do we do when we buy a brand new plugin for our DAW? We throw it on a track and start flipping through presets. Why? It’s simple: we trust the plugin manufacturer to know the product well enough to have created some great starting points for our tracks. And truly, presets are a great way to learn your way around a plugin, discovering what it is capable of.

Your Own “Signature” Presets

But the reality is, as fun as plugin presets are, they can only help you get so far. The plugin programmers have no idea what kind of music you work on, the quality of your recorded tracks, or the sonic vision you have for your mixes. How could they? Consequently, many of us avoid using presets and instead learn the tools well enough to set our own settings as we see fit. Seems reasonable.
 
But what if you could take that a step further? Who knows your musical tastes, vision, and direction better than you? No one! What if YOU created plugin presets with your plugins that were totally relevant to YOU and YOUR needs? You should! It’s like you were brought in to create some custom, signature presets just like Chris Lord-Alge or Dave Pensado.

Start With Your Mix Buss

Now, you can’t possible create a preset for every conceivable mixing scenario. That would be a royal waste of time. You can, however, create a handful of great starting points for the common mixing moves you do everyday. For me this starts with my mix buss.

I generally use the same 3 or 4 plugins on my mix buss with virtually the same setting for every mix. Why adjust the same knobs over and over again from mix to mix when I could create my own presets for my mix buss compressor, my EQ, or even my tape saturation plugin? I literally have presets called Graham Mix Buss on each of my favorite mix buss plugins. I’m one click away from my favorite starting points.

Consider Your Drums Buss And Other Group Tracks

If you like to mix with group tracks for drums, guitars, and vocals then you’ve probably started implementing some helpful buss mixing techniques. If that’s the case then (as with the mix buss) you should really consider saving some custom presets for your Drum buss EQ and compression, as well as any other effects you use. For me this might be an EQ cut on the drums at around 500hz, a shelf boost at about 8db, and a little light compression to squeeze the drums all together. Two clicks and I’m set with a great starting point.

With your guitars and vocal group tracks, you might at least consider a high pass filter on the buss. That way you are freeing up some headroom no matter what runs through that group track on its way to the mix buss. Sure you could just grab a high pass filter manually, but if you have the option for a preset, use it!

Lead Vocal Starting Points

Over the years I’ve developed my own method for EQing and compressing lead vocals. Granted every vocalist (and microphone) sounds different, but there are some starting points that I constantly go to, no matter what, to get things rolling. Why do these manually each and every mix when I could have a channel strip preset that has starting EQ and compression that’s merely a click away.

It’s fast, it’s simple, and it at least gets my vocal in the ball park. You can do this with a simple EQ and separate compressor plugin too. Just find whatever settings you generally reach for, note them, and save them as a preset for next time.

Mix Better, Faster

Remember, presets are only good for one thing: speeding up your mixing workflow and getting you trusted sounds sooner. I think mixing fast is a great goal. Not at the expense of delivering a great mix, but because it actually helps you deliver a better mix. Having your own custom plugin presets on the plugins and tracks you use most will give you just that much more of an edge on your former, slower self.