New Music Gear Monday: Audified DW Drum Enhancer Plugin

There are lots of channel strips on the market that work well for drums, but up until now there hasn’t been one that’s been specifically tuned by a drum manufacturer for drums. Audio software developer Audified has teamed with DW Drums to change that, and the result is the DW Drum Enhancer. The plugin incorporates EQ, compression, gating and saturation that can be fine tuned by DW engineers and artists for the type of drum that it’s being used on.

The DW Drum Enhancer starts with  input and output level controls and a meter that can be switched to monitor input, output, saturation or gain reduction levels, as well as a phase reversal switch. Where it differs from most channel strips right off is the Drum Type control, which has general categories of Kick, Snare, Toms and Other. Kick, Snare and Toms can be further tuned for Modern, Heavy or Vintage sounds, while Other can be tuned for Room, OH, and Bus. These selections affect the EQ control Hi, Mid and Low frequency selection points as well as the algorithms for both the gate and compressor. There are also High Pass and Low Pass filters which can be switched ether pre or post EQ.

The plugin also features a gate, which has just a simple Threshold control and Hard/Soft selections, and a compressor that features Threshold, Mix and Make-Up gain controls. The real secret sauce comes from the Saturation control though. This features 5 selections that provide different frequency spectrums:

• Presence – emphasized upper midrange frequencies
• Vintage – increased even harmonics saturation
• Brown – slight high frequency attenuation additional harmonics
• White – odd and even harmonics with extra brightness
• LoFi – rolled off low and high end

While the presets are tuned specifically for DW drums, they’ll also work on other manufacturer’s kits as well, since there’s enough control that you can easily tweak as needed.

The Audified DW Drum Enhancer plugin costs $199 and is compatible with most DAWs on either Mac or PC platforms. You can find more information here.