Is the Audio Tech Industry a Scam?

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What demo expired? Yeah, I'll buy it.

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This is me back at my old ways of buying almost any plugin

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that pops up in my instagram feed. I wasn't always like this. Well,

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actually, no. Yes, I've always been like this. Except for the one year I

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committed to not buying a single plugin. And despite what I learned from that

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experience, here I am, right back at it.

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Welcome back to the show. My name is Travis Farence. I'm a recording engineer and

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mixer with a Grammy nom, a few number ones, and a huge plugin problem.

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I have so many plugins I even forget some of the ones that I couldn't

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live without. Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's important to have quality tools

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to get the job done. But I think a lot of us are

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taking it a bit over the top, and I'm not sure that the audio companies

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are helping us out here. Are they scamming us out of money and giving us

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a product that doesn't work? No. But are there some

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snake oil sales tactics going on? Definitely. So now

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that I've eliminated every company in the industry from being a potential sponsor of the

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show, please consider hitting the subscribe button to support the channel. And

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while you do that, I'm going to get into why I didn't buy a plugin

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for a year back in 2022. I had just finished building this studio and

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was still carrying some of the debt from that project. So the logical

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decision at that time was to obviously cut unnecessary

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business expenses and to pay that debt down as fast as possible. Among

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those expenses were plugins, obviously. But there

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was also a part of me that felt that I had invested so heavily in

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giving myself a tool, this room, to hear

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properly that I had to use it to its fullest potential.

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No more searching for new plugins to give me a specific sound. I

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had enough plugins. I should be able to make any sound I want at this

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point, especially now that I could hear such small moves with such

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great detail. And so I went a full year without buying a single

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plugin. Now, I'll be honest, I did get a couple of

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endorphin hits off of the plugin alliance subscription, right? They always add a few throughout

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the year that are already included. But other than that, I was off the

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new plugin train. No demos, no nfrs, nothing. So what was

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the result? Obviously, I saved money, but I also got so much more than

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just that out of it. First off, I learned the tools I had better than

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ever. I was digging into stuff the way I should have when I first got

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it. It's almost embarrassing how basic and surface level

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I was with some of the tools that I already had. Take something like Saturn

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two from fabfilter. I was using maybe 25% of the power of that

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plugin. Now it's become one of my go to saturators. I also ended

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up doing a lot more plugin comparisons without the option of searching the Internet for,

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I don't know, the vibeiest tube plugin I could find. I now had to take

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the ones I already owned and compare them, hear the difference between them, and

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decide what I liked about each and where I could use them. You

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know, listening. What a novel concept. Right now you might be

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thinking, wow, this guy sounds super lazy. I can't believe he's never done

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that. But as you do this job longer and longer, you find that you end

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up collecting plugins that come in on sessions or are part of a bundle

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or a subscription and use them, like one time. And I definitely fell

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victim to that, because having more tools than you need in your arsenal has just

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become the way of the studio. You find yourself buying

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plugins just to have them. Like, what if somebody comes to the studio and wants

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to use contact? I better pick that up. But it's more cost effective

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if I buy complete. So I'll just do that. Yeah, do that.

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Spend $800 just in case. Great idea. So where

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does this mindset come from? It comes from the fact that it's been here since

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the beginning. Recording studio culture has always been very

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much about the gear, especially if you spent a lot of time in

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some of the big studios like I have. I came up through Capitol, and I

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spent countless hours in a lot of the LA Staples places, like

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Henson, east, west, Westlake, or wherever. I've been to pretty much all of

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them at least once. And in those rooms, the tools of the trade

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are like characters of the story. Look at the sound city documentary. It's

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basically a love story about a Neve console at capital. We had the

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Frank Sinatra U 48. Was it Frank's personal mic?

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No. Did he sing into it? Yes, but he also sang into half the

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mics in the mic locker. But that one. That one was called

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Frank. So, coming up in that gear centric culture, you just had this

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attitude that whatever you needed to make the record, you just had to

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get it. Engineers would come into capital and need to rent things.

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How outlandish does that sound? You're in one of the best studios

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in the world. The M omni wouldn't work for your string

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rooms. You had to rent the M 50s or you needed to have a

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Telefunken 251. None of the other mics in the mic locker would work for your

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vocal. Now, obviously, if you've used these mics and you've got a trained deer, then

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you understand why somebody would be making those requests.

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But still, the fact that that is part of the culture, I think,

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feeds into the way the audio industry targets engineers and producers like you and

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I. They know how idolized the tools are, and they

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want to play into that to convince us that we need them.

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All of them. Oh, the artist wants a vintagey Motown vibe for this

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one. Well, let me just grab that Ua hitsville stuff that'll be perfect for this

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record. Once again, if you want that sound and your ears are trained, I

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get it. But really, you can't make that record without buying a

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plugin. Nothing else in your plugin list will do that job.

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Which brings me to what are we really searching for

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here? And to be honest, we're searching for

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shortcuts. And I'm not going to leave myself out of this one. I have

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bought more plugins looking for a sound than I care

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to admit to. And that sound, it was

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already in my daw. And now that I've spent a year not buying

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plugins, I know that. And I'm not just talking about shortcuts to find a

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sound. It's shortcuts to inspire creativity as well. This applies to sample

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packs, soft synths, guitar pedals, analog synthesizers,

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outboard gear, everything. We are all guilty of buying something at

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least once because we were bored. The interesting part is that the

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old school engineers that many of us aspire to be like, they weren't buying or

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renting gear to find shortcuts. The reason that gear is such a

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character in the recording studio story is because they knew it so

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well. Those engineers knew the tones of pretty much every

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tool they had access to. That's why they were so specific in having

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everything they wanted and working at particular studios for certain projects.

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Now, I'm not trying to imply that the newer generation of engineers doesn't know their

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tools, but I do think we collect them for different reasons.

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We have so many options at our fingertips. How could we

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possibly know them the way the previous generation did? Have you ever

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sat down, be honest with your four SSL channel strip

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plugins, or your 511 76 plugins, and picked your favorite? Have you?

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Have you really done that? Also, it's possible you've never even worked on an

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SSL. So how do you know which one is the best other than

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from what the marketing tells you? So don't buy

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shortcuts. Put a couple different versions up and test them

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out. Pick the one that you like, regardless of whether it sounds like the

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real thing or not. This is how you develop your unique taste,

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your sonic identity. That's what people did in studios for decades when they

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were learning, and I feel like the emphasis on that has faded. There

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are so many options now that I think it becomes overwhelming, and we're inclined to

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just watch a YouTube video on which one is the best and then take that

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person's word for it. But their opinion is based on their taste.

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You want your opinion to be based on your taste. So this brings me back

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full circle to my no plugin experiment. That's what I really took

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away from this full year of not buying plugins. I

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finally started to pick my favorites and develop my taste

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even further, and I learned that you can make any sound you want

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with any tool you want if you put the work in to train your

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ears. So if you're watching this and you can't afford all the tools

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that some of the other engineers around you have at their disposal, don't

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be defeated by that. I think you'll actually discover your own

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sound faster because of those limitations. So I hope this

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makes you question why you're collecting the tools you're collecting and

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encourages you to really master the gear and software you have

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before buying anymore. And I want to be clear, I'm definitely

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not anti options. I love having options, but I think it's important

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that we all add to our options for the right reasons. Doing

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this video has actually made me question the plugin I bought in the intro. But

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hey, got you to watch this far. So if you are still here and you

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think I'm wrong and you want to buy all the gear in the world, but

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you don't know how to afford it, check out this video on how to set

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your rates as a freelancer.