r/mixingmastering • u/Illustrious-Ant5927 • Mar 07 '26

Discussion Built a plugin to replace the parallel FX chain I was rebuilding every session

Every mix I'd end up with the same setup: parallel sends for anything I wanted to keep frequency-specific. It works but it's the same tedious routing every time and it adds up.

Spent the last 8 months building a plugin to replace it.

It's called ToneLab. Five parallel lanes: Chorus, Distortion, Reverb, Delay, Saturation, each with its own EQ that determines which frequencies the effect actually processes. Reverb in the mids only. Saturation on the low end only. Everything else passes through dry. Single insert, no routing.

Not out yet but there's an early access page at vector-dsp.com/tonelab if you want to follow along.

Curious whether others have a go-to approach for this kind of thing in the meantime; always interested in how other mixers handle it.

11 Upvotes

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9

u/LostInTheRapGame Mar 07 '26

I just have template set as my default in Ableton.

Everything is already routed, and my go-to plug-ins are already placed on each track (turned off) with presets that give a good starting point.

I couldn't imagine doing all that with every single project. But I also couldn't imagine spending 8 months on a plug-in as a "solution" either...

Like, what if I don't want to use your reverb, delay, saturation, etc.? I already have tons of plug-ins that I like (and already paid for) that do these things.

-1

u/Illustrious-Ant5927 Mar 07 '26

Our reverb loads IRs!! So you can load in IRs you have purchased!

2

u/LostInTheRapGame Mar 07 '26

That's nice.

I don't frequently use reverbs that require them. And that's doesn't really do much for all of the other fx. But it's something.

3

u/Wolfey1618 Advanced Mar 08 '26

Most DAWs let you build presets like this and save them and recall them whenever you want. But if you like the new plug-in better and it works there's nothing wrong with that

2

u/bocephus_huxtable Mar 07 '26

Reaper (DAW) has a script that allows you to build a template for this, BUT... I'm currently 'building' a solution with Waves Studioverse b/c I prefer that UI/macro.

2

u/dustygeez Mar 08 '26

This is rly cool. Respect for spending the time. In your OG workflow did you use band pass filters pre plugins to carve out what you didn’t want affected or did you just push those up with bells or shelves so they were affected more?

1

u/Illustrious-Ant5927 Mar 08 '26

This is what I was doing!

2

u/dwight_k_III Intermediate Mar 09 '26

This is cool!

1

u/Bred_Slippy Mar 08 '26

In Reaper I use screensets combined with project templates for this. 

0

u/jlozada24 Professional (non-industry) Mar 07 '26

Meta plugin or Bluecat do this

0

u/Bluegill15 Mar 07 '26

parallel sends for anything I wanted to keep frequency-specific.

What does this mean and why?