Effects come from a Waves Mercury package, and include TruVerb on vocals, Renaissance Reverb on drums, and a Waves doubler, which provides a harmonizer on vocals and acoustic guitar. Echo Farm adds a final complement with a pair of delay options.
“I’m totally in-the-box on this show,” Divens explains. “There is no outboard gear whatsoever. Beyond my Mercury package, I also came loaded with an SSL bundle, Soundtoys, Crane Song, and SPL Transient Designer.”
Within Divens’ sonic blueprint, the SPL Transient Designer plug-in adds attack to toms and snare, while the SSL channels are spread across drums, guitar, and Iglesias’ vocals. Crane Song, in Divens’ estimation, is “good on anything, really.”
Heard within this application on overheads and hi-hat, he says that, “On one level, you can think of Crane Song as an analog modeling plug-in. You get different types of tape saturation, you have odd and even harmonics, and I can even develop a different type of compression curve using one of the settings. I don’t do this kind of thing here on this show with the K1s, but on other PAs I use Crane Song right on the master bus. It provides sparkle and shimmer on the high-end I might otherwise lose in the digital world.”
Within Soundtoys there’s a plug-in called Decapitator that he uses on Iglesias’ vocals on the verse of one song. Incorporating five compressors modeled to their overdriven limit, the plug-in tears up the signal, adding distortion – hence the name.
“The thing I like best about my Profile is that I can create a little hybrid desk,” Divens explains. “I tailor my inputs exactly to my needs. I’ve been doing this for years now – making use of all the groups, processing channels independently. I always take advantage of things I can do easily in the digital world. Why not? Especially if you’re getting the results you’re looking for. Turn the knob till you like the way it sounds.”
Tight & Controlled
Across the aisle in monitorworld, Caipo also takes charge of things with the aid of a VENUE Profile. Earning his “El Brujo” moniker early on in his career based on an uncanny ability to make even the crappiest house PAs sound good or at least decent enough, Caipo uses a combination of McDSP, Waves, and Avid plug-ins.
“I have McDSP ML4000 on my IEM mixes,” he relates. “It gives me a tighter and more controlled sound, as well as the flexibility to control certain frequencies and keep my mixes clean. For Enrique and drums I’m using Waves SSL Channel and SSL Buss Compressor. In terms of reverbs, I like Avid’s Reverb One for instruments, and ReVibe for both Enrique’s vocal and backing vocals.”
Just like Divens, Caipo basks in the mucho-fun factor that the show offers to those mixing. He uses snapshots for every song, noting that, “It works great because I get to scope it to change what I need for everyone in the band and Enrique. There are tons of cues on this show, but for Enrique they’re done mostly live: I recall a snapshot, then simply proceed to make the rest of the cues live as needed.”