Sonnox Oxford Dynamics Plugin, Wow!

In April this year I got the opportunity to use the facilities of a post-production house in Soho to complete a university assignment. The brief was simple: To create a multitrack soundscape/musical piece between 3-5 minutes in length. I decided to do a cover of the Kings of Leon song 'Holy Roller Novocaine' (http://soundcloud.com/sambaker/sam-baker-holy-roller).

The facility I had the chance to use was Scramble Soho (http://www.scramble.co.uk). The recording took place in Studio 5 and the sound booth. Mixing was completed on a separate day in the larger Studio 2.

Mixing in Studio 2 at Scramble Soho

The plugins available were those from the Sonnox Oxford range (http://www.sonnoxplugins.com/pub/plugins/home.htm) and a series of Waves plugins (http://www.waves.com/Default.aspx?l=4). Having not experienced the Sonnox Oxford plugins before, I decided to predominantly work with them to see what they were made of. I was immediately impressed, particularly with the Dynamics plugin. In the past I have sometimes struggled to get a compressor plugin working perfectly. I used to end up settling for a 'that'll do' setup, wondering what was going wrong. However as soon as I laid my hands on the Oxford compressor, everything made sense. It's not realy fair to make a comparison between using a bog standard compressor such as the Compressor/Limiter dyn3 supplied with Pro Tools and those such as Oxford's. If you go heavy on the threshold with a fast attack in dyn 3, the results are unusable. Transients start crackling up and it's really obvious. However with the Oxford Dynamics compressor you can put -30dB threshold with the fastest attack on and it'll still sound great, even when it's being squashed hard! Everything else is fantastic as well. The Gate and Expander are a breeze to use, and the Warmth control allows you to add some authentic tube emulation.

After using it I couldn't not have it in my DAW. As you can purchase the plugins for Native as well as HD, I am able to run it on Pro Tools 8 LE using an Mbox. The other great thing is that Sonnox offer an educational discount of 50%, so the Dynamics plugin only cost me £100.

I believe that you get what you pay for with the majority of plugins. For £100, I have got all the dynamic processing tools that I need for now, and I urge others to do the same!