Nobody will ever dance to your latest house music production unless the drums are beefy, the low end is punchy, and those open hi-hats are bright and lively.
Long story short, house music’s danceability thrives on having a well-polished mixdown. While it used to take seasoned engineers decades of practice to get this high-level professional result, nowadays, you can get amazing results using just a few powerful plugins.
Nobody has been at this longer and knows this better than Paris’s Shiba San, so we sat down to chat about his favorite plugins to get perfect mixdowns in every one of his house music tracks.
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Stream Shiba San’s “Bam Da Bam” Below
The only way to know what a fantastic house music mixdown is is to hear a master at work. Shiba San’s latest single is a masterclass in how much a tight and powerful mixdown can add to your track.
The minimal arrangement of the release allows Shiba San to get the maximum amount of volume and energy out of the few elements and layers included in the track. The vocal chops, lead synth line, and drums can work their magic in plain sight without convoluted layers and backing atmospheres clouding the mix.
So listen to Shiba’s latest release below (a few times if you’re serious about your production) to cement what an amazing house track sounds like in your head before dicing into the plugins Shiba used so well.
Izotope RX10
This one is an essential plug-in for me.
This plug-in lets you clean up samples, Declip, Declick, denoise, etc. The best part is the rebalance tool, which helps isolate stems.
If you only need a song’s vocal or instrumental, you can isolate the parts you need and easily export them.
Learn More About This Plugin Here
Izotope Insight 2
This is an audio metering plug-in that you can put at the end of the chain of your master channel for mixdown or mastering. You get a great and quick view of the levels, frequency content, stereo spread, and dynamic range.
Nowadays, the most important thing to check is the LUFS. With this, it’s obvious and you have all the parameters for the different streaming platforms if needed.
Learn More About This Plugin Here
Izotope Ozone 10 Maximizer
I don’t have much to say about this plug-in except it works so well!! It includes the True Peak limiting I don’t see in many limiters.
It also includes an automatic match gain when you bypass the maximizer. This means you can hear the signal with the maximizer at the same volume and without. So you hear it if it keeps the sound clean and it doesn’t kill the transients when it’s on. This is the only plug-in I use that doesn’t cut part of the low ends.
Learn More About This Plugin Here
Mastering The Mix: Bassroom
An incredible plug-in!! This entire series is great but I will pick two of them.
Bassroom is a Match EQ specialized in low frequencies from 0 to 320 Hz. It’s separated in five parts: 0 to 20Hz, 22 to 40Hz, 40 to 80Hz, 80 to 180Hz, and 180 to 320 Hz. All you have to do is download a song (or several songs) as a target in the plug-in, then you play your song, mixdown, or mastering, and it shows you the difference between your song and the target song.
Then, you can adjust as needed to sound like the target song.
Each frequency is represented as a rectangle you can enlarge or make smaller to approach the target sound. It’s very visual, easy to use, and greatly helps me. It’s a necessary plug-in!
Learn More About This Plugin Here
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Mastering The Mix: Reference
This is the one I was waiting for! This plug-in lets you switch from your song to the target song in one click. You download one or several songs in the plug-in and put it on the master chain for the mixdown or the master.
You choose the part of the song you want to target, and it adjusts the volume of the target song to your mixdown or master and indicates the difference in DB. You can compare it to the target to see if you’re too loud or quiet.
Then, you can compare the sound of your mixdown or master with several target songs, all in one click.
Learn More About This Plugin Here
Universal Audio Tube Tech MK2
This is a Tube Optical compressor. I had the hardware back in the day, but the plug-in offers one valuable option, which is the mix knob for parallel compression.
This compressor is great for vocals, bass, and everything else since you have the attack and release adjustable. It warms and smooths the sound. As soon as you engage it, you hear more low-mid ends, which attenuates the high frequencies.
The constructor will say « it’s transparent,» but I don’t think that since it really changes your original sound.
Roland Cloud
I don’t know if I can only pick one plug-in of the entire Roland Cloud series.
There are all the vintage analog and digital synths and Rhythm Maschine, like Juno 106, Juno 60, SH-2, SH 101. TR 808, 909,707, 606, Tb 303.
I think they have the principal plug-ins and features that made House Music from the beginning of its existence. It’s essential!
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
