Toms:

SSL EV2 (Waves)

– TLDR Notes:

Great sounding all-around channel strip with its filter, drive (Line/Mic), compressor and EQs. All elements high quality.
Quick results but CPU heavy.
Image shows preferred internal routing setting: Filters first, then EQ, then compressor.
(Due to “Split” and “CH OUT” engaged”).

– Review:

The first Waves SSL E-Channel is one of those plugin classics used on countless songs. It had an impressive, long run and is still in heavy use to this day.

This is the follow-up, the EV2, and it’s a step up in terms of sound, functionality and some would argue aesthetics.

So what’s the catch?

Well, with the old Waves SSL channel strip you probably never had to worry about CPU. It was simple and light.

This EV2 version is considerably heavier on the CPU. In other words you pay for the improved sound quality.

But there is no denying that this one sounds great.

The EQ is sweeter than its predecessor. Overall it sounds like the channel strip has internal oversampling to me, providing a more open and clear sound.

The compressor is still great and ‘very SSL’.

For toms it’s often useful to do a handful of things, all of which you can do within this plugin.

For instance, you might want to engage a lowcut filter, then cut out some of those boxy low mids, add some grit/saturation, boost the lows around 110 Hz to increase size, and boost some stick definition in the high mids and maybe a little bit of top end.
Light compression after that.

This one does it all perfectly. I like that we get some highly useful preamp drive with EV2, where you only had the analog hiss option in the original.

You can choose the routing, and with SSL I like to set the path as shown in the image, filter first, then EQ going into compression.

CLA Drums (Waves)

– TLDR Notes:

This works well on toms. Adds harmonics and quick and easy tone shaping. The tom presets are good starting points.

– Review:

CLA Drums is meant to be an easy and quick tool in the arsenal when you want to achieve good drum sounds.

You can select between the following applications: tom, snare, kick, room, overhead and cymbal/hats tracks.

After picking the desired element/kit piece you adjust the parameters from there. It also comes with plenty of presets neatly categorized.

CLA Drums offers a way of shaping sound that’s different from traditional tools, and you might find you end up mixing less with your eyes, letting your ears guide you by doing it this way.

It can be used on any of the aforementioned drum elements, but I like to use it on toms.

The tom category has 12 different presets, so you can go through them until you find one that’s either spot on or close, and go from there.

The processing of CLA Drums can give you some great huge sounds that you probably wouldn’t have arrived at or thought of via an alternative route.

Goliath V2 (Tone Empire)

– TLDR Notes:

A beast of a saturation and compressor plugin. Shift between Alloy, Tube, Tape, Vinyl to see what works best (Alloy or Tube usually for me.)
Plugin made with convolution/sampling combined with modeling to emulate analog.
Big sound, not light on the CPU.

– Review:

I like to add compression, high quality saturation and some tone shaping to toms. Goliath, a plugin that does all that really well, is a natural choice.

Goliath 2, the successor to Tone Empire’s best selling Goliath,
lets you quickly flick through the 4 saturation models to see which one works the best. For toms I usually go with the first two, either ‘alloy’ (nickel, steel transformers and iron, Neve 1081-ish) or ‘tube’ (second order harmonics along with an air circuit).

You get the drive option, the low cut, the broad EQ tone shaping and little nice looking gain reduction meter that fits with the overall style.

I appreciate that they included oversampling, which goes up to x8 in this plugin. I suggest going with x2 as a good sweet spot for CPU usage and sound.

It uses Tone Empire’s proprietary “Multi Convolution” and Component Modelling Technique. In other words, they used sampling as well as modeling to achieve what they did here.

I think that method is the main secret behind why it stands out from the crowd with it’s weight and analog flavor.

Maybe that’s also why this thing is not exactly light on the CPU, so you may have to freeze/render your tom tracks after tweaking the plugin, especially if using the internal oversampling (bottom right), which I recommend. Usually 2x seems to cut it.

So what we have here is a beast in multiple ways that does indeed sound special.