In a previous column (if you can call “Stiff upper lip” that) I talked a little about how I’ve got rid of a lot of my plug-ins for a better and quicker workflow. That was two months ago. How has it turned out?

First off all, at the time, the reason for choosing Digidesigns EQ3 and Smack! as my close to only EQ and compressor was that they both map nicely to smaller Digidesign control surfaces (I don’t have a bloody ICON at home!) and that at least EQ3 is fairly light on the CPU. I was a little tempted to use McDSP Channel G since it’s my favorite channelstrip, but I ended up going with the Digidesign plug-ins.

For these two months it has worked well, above expectations actually. At some times I wanted to use other EQs, not that the Digirack one is bad or anything, but mostly because I missed Flux Epure. It’s simply put a unique EQ that I’ve picked over any EQ in my shootouts – it’s that good. Unfortunately it doesn’t fall under any of the “easy on the CPU” or “map to a control surface” categories.

“The Test” is by no means over. Instead I’m taking it to the next and plan on removing even more plug-ins from the list. Today I’ll ditch a whole bunch of synths and samplers, not least because they take up valuable disc space. At the moment I’m wondering why I’d need anything but Hybrid, but I’ll keep Kontakt 3 as well, as sometimes my audio work demands a lot of sound choices. I’ve also already planned “the third step”, but I’ll tell you about that at a later point.

Speaking of plug-ins, stay tuned for a lot of nice reviews! I’m aware that there’s been fewer of them lately, and I blame it on other work, Musikmesse, and not least on that I haven’t been really interested in many of the things that have been released lately. Expect reviews of Brainworx Hybrid EQ, iZotope RX plug-in (and standalone), and lots of instructional DVDs!