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There is no question about the great success that Charles Dye has had thanks to his talent
and his own techniques for mixing. He's been using DUY plug-ins for a long time. Through his
"Hard Disk Life" column in Digidesign's Digizine, he has explained to thousands how DUY's plug-ins
are a very important part of his final sound.
He insists he never does a mix without his collection of DUY plug-ins
(DUY Global TDM Bundle). He says: "If it's on my discography, I've used DUY plugs on it". You can listen to Charles Dye's most
recent mixes on Ricky Martin's Almas del Silencio CD, and on his mix of Ricky's new single 'Juramento'. Othe artists the Grammy
Award-winning engineer, mixer and producer has worked with include
Shakira, Aerosmith, Jennifer Lopez, Lauryn Hill, Thalia, Jon Bon Jovi and Sammy Hagar.
Patricia Manterola and Giselle. He's currently working on his
ProTools|HD system with 7 cards on Ricky Martin's upcoming English release.
Charles Dye is especially a great fan of DUY's DaD Valve, DaD Tape,
DUY Wide and DUY ReDSPider plug-ins. He now shares with us some of his techniques when
using DUY software:
DUY DaD Valve and DUY DaD Tape:
- Drums (bass drum, snare drum and Toms especially): "A combination of Valve and Tape give clean
and boring sounding drums an incredible 'SMAAACCK!!!' I use the Valve Snare
preset on all three sounds most of the time. It just makes the kick, snare and toms
incredibly fat and punchy with a great attack." Charles Dye then compresses and EQs the
sound and makes it go through to Tape, "because it adds a great crunchie saturation that
really thickens up the sound".
- Electric and Synth Bass: "With Valve I usually use the 'Electric Bass' preset, but
sometimes one of the two Acoustic Bass presets sounds better. Valve makes the Bass
warmer while adding some musical harmonic distortion. After compressing and EQ'ing,
DUY DaD Tape (usually with the 'Ideal Tape / 30ips / Noiseless' setting) provides a real
nice levelling and sustain to the bass notes. Very PHAT."
- Acoustic and Electric Guitar: "I usually just use Valve to add warmth, but I
sometimes use the thickening quality of Tape as an extra addition as well!!".
- Horns: Charles Dye explains that digitally recorded horns seem to often have a very thin sound.
This is the reason why he also uses DaD Valve and DaD Tape for fixing this lack of warmth:
"I usually use the individual presets of DaD Valve (Trumpet, Sax) on the separate tracks, and then use
Tape across a stereo submix of the horns."
- Stereo Mix Bus: Not only does Charles Dye make use of these plug-ins on individual tracks. He also
delivers his entire mix to let DUY
give an extra final touch... "I normally set DaD Tape to 'Ideal Tape / 30ips / Noiseless' and then
adjust the input level to achieve the desired saturation, with the level
usually hitting around -6 dB. Tape can really glue a mix together in a very
nice way, as well as adding a fat, gelled low end to it. I will use an EQ
to pre-emphasize the top end a bit to compensate for any brightness that may
be rolled off by using Tape and sometimes to de-emphasize the low-mids
in case Tape makes it too thick."
DUY Wide:
Charles Dye also uses DUY Wide extensively: "It's an extremely cool effect, very transparent as far as phase problems
go... There simply don't appear to be any, and it's totally mono-compatible. It just
delivers on that elusive and magical, big time mixer, 'wider than the
speakers' sound!!".
He explains that he never does a mix without DUY Wide across the mix bus.
Although it's a rather subtle effect, he can also choose to make it very dramatic: "It broadens the stereo spectrum beyond
the left and right speakers, opening up the depth and space of the mix. I
generally set the Amount somewhere between 17% to 23% and the Input to -4 dB
(to make up for the gain added by the Amount setting). At this point on the
mix bus some of the plug-ins have smoothed over the transients and I now
have more headroom on the bus than earlier. So, to optimize the mix output
level I then turn up the Input on DUY Wide until the mix peaks at about -0.5
dB using Wide's numerical peak output indicators. At the end of the mix, I
then listen to it a number of times with all the plugs in and then make any
adjustments that might be necessary. Normally it's just a few panning
tweaks. Since the mix is wider a few things are now too far to the left or
right, so I pan them a little back towards the center". Charles also uses Wide for background vocals or synth pads:
"when I want certain stereo tracks to
pop out of the mix wider than everything else, I'll push the Amount for this
effect as far as 30-50%".
DUY ReDSPider:
When it gets to mixing, some unusual effects may be useful to add extra originality to the final result of the mix.
To achieve this, Charles Dye uses DUY's ReDSPider library of plug-ins:
"ReDSPider does effects that no other plug-in can do". He admits that his favourite presets are the 'AM Radio'
simulator and the 'Vinylizer' record effect.
CHARLES DYE'S TIP
"To get the most realistic results, I always keep in mind the way I would do
something with the analog equivalent, so I usually insert the plug-ins in
the same order. Also, on the stereo bus, because Tape and Wide are so important to my mixing method, I put
them in at the beginning of the mix and leave them in bypass to reserve the
DSP, presetting them with my starting point settings. Now, I usually
mix at a pretty low level, so whenever I go to play the mix back to the
client I have to turn it up (they always want to hear it much louder than
I mix), and I add in Tape and Wide. I definitely don't tell the client I
added them. This is key. It creates a real WOW factor on their part, because
the whole time they've been hearing the mix at such a low level; when
they hear it back not only is it louder, but it is now somehow much BIGGER
than they thought it was."
Find out more about Charles Dye at www.charlesdye.com
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