(Speaking of) Waves audio production plug-ins; Getting a punchier final mix

Question

I was looking to get a punchier sound from my final mixes and I was referred to Waves by both the Sam Ash Guy and the Guitar Center Guy for my making-it-sound-punchier needs. Does anyone have any experience with some other (3rd-party) sonic maximizers or compression plug-ins?
The reason why I bring this up is because I was casually listening to my iTunes collection and whenever one of my own tracks played via the shuffle mode, the sound was less punchier, had less presence than even simple acoustic-guitar music! I believe I'm doing a decent mixing job and manage to get my peak levels pretty high with some tasteful limiting, but, man, my tracks don't quite have that punch. What gives?

Answer 1

Not exactly sure what you mean by punchier, but here's a great way to get "punchier" drums in GB....and you don't have to spend any more money then you already have.
First, you'll need a few of things, all FREE!!:
Download the W1 Limiter. It's based on the Waves ultra-something-or-other-limiter. It's fantastic.
http://yohng.com/w1limit.html
Download CamelCrusher. It's a nice distortion/compression plug in that gives it a nice analog "warmth" when used correctly.
http://www.camelaudio.com/camelcrusher.php
And finally, download Channel. It acts as an analog channel strip would, introducing just a tiny hint of analog style distortion. May sound like a bad thing, but give it a try, it can work wonders!
http://www.airwindows.com/f/Channel.dmg
Now that you have those 3 plugs, here's what I suggest:
First, get the drum track the way you want it to be rhythmically.
Then solo that track and put the CamelCrusher in one plug in slot and select either one of these presets, Tube Warmth, or Subtle Master. Of course feel free to tweak to taste and experiment with other presets.
Then I'd put on the Channel plug in and set the slider to taste.
Then on the Master track, I'd put the W1 Limiter and crush the drums a shade.
Then share your "drums only song" with iTunes and drag it back into GB. This will give you a huge sounding "squashed" drum kit sound.
Now that you imported the audio file of the "squashed drums", you can remove all the plug ins from the drum channel and the master channel. What you'll want to do at this point is blend the normal drums with the "squashed drums" until it sounds huge. This is called the New York Compression trick.
The nice thing about this trick is that you don't have to use these plug ins I pointed you to. You can use the Apple AU plug ins, you can go buy other 3rd party plug ins, or you can go hunt for me free plug ins. Each one will have a different and unique sound. So you'll definitely want to experiment with those as well. I even like to put two compressors on the track and one compressor on the master sometimes. Really kills the dynamics, but when blended with the unaffected drums, it makes it VERY punchy.
Hope that helps.
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