The Jan Diaries — Five More Essential Plugins (Part Two)

Red Bull Hrvatska · The Jan Diaries · 8 February 2021

Three weeks after the first five, Jan Kinčl delivered the rest of the list he had promised. Part one covered EQ, twelve-bit conversion, saturation, a Juno emulation and tape; part two is looser and more idiosyncratic — a string machine, a tremolo, a free plugin used entirely against its stated purpose, a reverb and, least glamorous and most useful, a meter.

The second five

Arturia Solina V opens, and the historical note matters more than the plugin spec. The ARP Solina String Ensemble was the string synthesiser of the late seventies, a forerunner of polyphonic synths that turned up on more records across the seventies and eighties than any comparable instrument. Kinčl owns a Roland RS-101, a simpler cousin of the same idea, and still rates Arturia’s replica — largely because it adds modern functions the original never had. Soundtoys Tremolator follows. Tremolo is simply volume variation that makes a note or an instrument tremble; Soundtoys’ version, he writes, is tremolo on steroids, precise and flexible, and the Groove and Feel controls are the reason. Set them right and an instrument starts to dance and move in whatever direction the arrangement needs. He files it under essential.

Wavesfactory Snare Buzz is the outlier: a free plugin that theoretically simulates the rattle of snare wires and practically produces endlessly interesting results on instruments it was never meant to touch. The credit goes to Igor Fabris, who used it on kicks and other percussion while mixing Kinčl’s album; the recommendation is to point it at a kick drum and enjoy the extra dirt. Waves Abbey Road Plates is the reverb, and it comes with a stated bias: Kinčl keeps spatial effects conservative, dislikes mixes drowning in reverb, and prefers dark plates. This one has been his default since release, praised for its dark colour and the space it builds — try it, he suggests, on vocals, trumpet and flute.

The part that stayed

The list ends where most plugin lists never go: metering. Brainworx bx_meter is, in his assessment, one of the best on the market, and the argument for it is that its algorithm delivers insight into the signal and catches problems the ear alone will miss. It is a deliberately unromantic close to a column otherwise full of string machines and tape flutter, and it says something about how he works.