Audified

Created in collaboration with Drum
Workshop, manufacturers of arguably the
inest drums in the world, Audiied’s latest is a
multiefects processor that combines gating,
compression, EQ and tube-style saturation in a
single plugin (VST/AU/AAX), tuned explicitly for
the processing of multitrack drums and drum
buses . The partnership is a bit of a puzzler,
though, as building drums and mixing
recordings of drums are two completely
separate things. There’s talk of the involvement
of “DW engineers” in the blurb, but we don’t
know whether that refers to audio engineers or
drum design engineers…
On the DW
Anyway, with DW Drum Enhancer loaded onto
every channel of your drum kit mix, or just the
group bus, you’ll generally want to start with a
setup from the drum/task-speciic preset
menus. These are categorised ‘Bus’, ‘Kick’,
‘Snare’, ‘OH’, ‘Room’, etc, and each category
contains a good range of descriptively-named
presets. The naming of certain entries as ‘DW’
presets is a bit meaningless, though. Apparently
they were created by processing DW drums, but
that obviously has no bearing whatsoever on
the sonic outcome, as that depends entirely on
the drums you’re treating.
When it comes to dialling in your own
settings, the irst thing to do is choose one of the
three options within the Snare, Kick, Toms or
Other quadrant of the Drum Type selector. For
the irst three, these are Modern, Heavy and
Vintage, while the Others are Room, OH
(overheads) and Bus. Your selection here has a
profound impact on the sound of the plugin,
reconiguring the inner workings of the four
processing blocks – see All change below.
The irst block in the chain is the noise Gate,
featuring a Threshold knob and a choice of Hard
or Soft knee. Next comes either Compressor or
EQ, depending on the status of the EQ Position
switch. Compressor gives access to Threshold,
Mix (for parallel compression) and Make-up
gain, while EQ simply ofers gain knobs (up to
+/-12dB) for its Hi, Mid and Low bands, and on/of
switches for LP and HP ilters.
At the end of the chain, the Saturation knob
applies valve-emulating distortion to the output.
Five Saturation algorithms are available,
between them presenting a wide range of
harmonic-enhancing lavours, all with an
authentically analogue sound.
Non-surgically enhanced
While the four modules sound great –
particularly Saturation – the inability to tweak
attack/release times and EQ frequencies is a
hindrance. Indeed, this is an inevitable issue with
any ‘boiled-down’ system that merges and
conceals complex parameters under the hood in
the interest of maximising operational
simplicity; and although DW Drum Enhancer
strikes a good balance, by and large, the lack of
precision can become an issue.
DW Drum Enhancer probably won’t replace
your established drum mixing chains, but for
getting quality results with a minimum of user
input, it’s largely successful. And being so quick
and easy to use, it’s an empowering plugin that
mixing novices should certainly check out.
Web www.audiied.com
A u d i fi e d
DW Drum
Enhancer
$199
Bringing four essential mixing processors together in one simpliied
interface, is this new plugin really all you need for perfect drums?
Verdict
For Very easy to use
Focused, convenient drums processing
Comprehensive preset library
Very tasty saturation and distortion
Against Meaningless DW presets
Not enough control for deep tweaking
No next/previous preset buttons
Confusing Drum Workshop tie-in aside,
DW Drum Enhancer is an intuitive and
broadly efective mixing tool for drums
7 / 1 0
Alternatively
iZotope Neutron 2 Advanced
252 » 9/10 » £389
If you want to streamline your
drum-mixing worklow, Neutron 2
does the hard work for you
Slate Digital VMR
214 » 9/10 » $199
Start with four classic processors
and add more from an ever-
expanding library as you see it
At the heart of DW Drum Enhancer, the Drum
Type selector tailors the Gate, Compressor
and EQ modules to the speciic drum and
sonic style – or ‘Other’ signal (Room, OH or
Bus) – chosen from among its 12 circularly
arranged options.
For Gate, the parameters governed are
attack and release times. Compressor’s
attack and release are also established
entirely by the Drum Type, as are the shape of
its knee, the sidechain ilter frequency and
the style of compression applied, with the
Heavy and Vintage settings deploying “two
popular transistor” models, and Modern
using a “pure digital” one.
With EQ only enabling hands-on control of
gain and ilter on/of via the front panel, it’s
left to the Drum Type to determine not only
the centre frequency of each parametric
band and the cutof frequencies of both
ilters, but also the shape and steepness of
the roll-of slopes.
All change
98 / COMPUTER MUSIC / June 2018
> reviews / audiied dw drum enhancer
CMU256.rev_drumenhancer.indd 98 03/04/2018 15:44