pro tools op

Ease of Use
7

% of Projects that I use it on
90 to 100

Sound Quality
10

What Is It?
Analog tape emulation plug in, adds harmonic distortion to your signal.
It has 5 different settings (each one shows up separately in the plug in folder category “harmonic”) to emulate various types of tape.

Iridescent – Most transparent of all. I use this one the most and typically reach for it first when I use this plug in. The good thing about Phoenix is that it works well in a cumulative sense. You put as the last plug in on all your tracks and if you turn it all off (command-option click on the plug in) you’ll notice how small everything sounds in comparison.

Luminescent – Slightly colored, and more so as you feed it hotter signals. This one sounds most like tape to me… Full but not overly distorted. I reach when I want a tape effect that’s noticeable, but subtle. Often good for a master drum bus

Radiant – I don’t use this one as much. It’s somewhere between the iridescent and Luminescent… I think of it as being a bit more distorted but not always in a useful way…

Luster – very colored. Huge bottom end. Sometimes a bit muddy. Not quite as colored as Dark Essence. Most usefeul on Kick and Bass. Not terribly useful on acoustic guitar unless there’s just no bottom in it whatsoever (can make it very boomy or muddy)

Dark Essence – Super colored. Almost like adding distortion, but if you have a boring sound, this thing will make much less boring. Lots of beef.

Meanwhile, each of these plug in has 3 different colors which are basically eq curves.
One is transparent, one is bright and one is warmer and darker. I find that I use the transparent and the brighter ones more than the darker one… sometimes the dark one seems to add a bit of mud.

There is a process knob that determines how much of the tape effect is blended into the original signal
There is also an input setting that determines how hard you “hit tape” or engage the process. Sort of like the setting the input to the threshold on a compressor.

Problems it Solves
Digital harshness
Thin sounding sources
Mixes that need to gel together
General eq and light compression

What you like about it
- sounds amazing
- it’s like compression and eq in one
- has so many different flavors that it is always useful
- incredibly DSP efficient so you can always use it and not worry about it
- makes mixes sound fuller, deeper and more interesting
- can seal a mix together when used on a master bus
- Luster and Dark Essence settings turns an anemic kick or bass into a massive ball of thunder
- with 3 eq settings you can either warm up or brighten any source. Having only 3 choices might seem limiting, but the 3 presets sound so good, it’s sometimes the only eq I need on a given track

What you don’t like about it
- have to go through plug in menu to change between types of tape compresssion
- no knob for the input setting means it’s harder to use (has to be entered numerically

Tricks you can do with it / Examples of Use
- Put it as the last plug in on every track. It makes the plug-ins that come before it sound better too. Makes digital sound so much more smooth.
- Use Luster to beef up a kick drum or a bass track. Makes subwoofers come alive. Be careful not to use too much because it can really easily throw off the balance of a mix by adding too much bottom. I use a subwoofer to hear how much it’s doing. Also helps to have a frequency analyzer
- Use iridescent as a master bus compressor at the end of your mix chain. Makes things sound bigger and more glued together. Sort of like a soft limiter.
- Use the eq settings on aux channels that are fed from multiple sources like drums or backing vocals. Makes them gel nicely. Also using one of the three eq settings can be just the trick if a track is either too present or too dull.
- Stack several in a series to distort and compress the hell out of a track