Quick brief Mixwave Jay Weinberg review

[Rev2010]

I'm a big fan of Slipknot and I love Jay Weinberg's drumming so I was curious when I saw this came out. The price is cheap enough that I decided I'll give it a shot. I typically use Superior Drummer 3 with the Area 33 kit and I'm going to continue to use it of course but I was curious. Turns out I really dislike it. I had no idea that there were no individual EQs for each channel for the drums, so to EQ anything you have to deal with Kontakt's included nightmarish output routing to do something so simple as add a little extra bass to the kick. The library is only 18 GB in size and I did a test from 1 to 127 MIDI drum roll on the kick and snare and it was not smooth in stepping. It's not a bad kit at all and it's a great start for someone that doesn't know how to mix and just wants to lay down some guitars over drums. I'm just more surprised that something so basic as EQ on each channel isn't present, you only have the master EQ. It seems that the pre-mixed version you can enable was actually recorded with the effects on it because there's no way to edit or change anything. The snares are really cool I like the snares the kicks are good but again need tweaking.

So overall the short of it is be aware that you're going to have to route all the pieces out to separate channels using Kontakt's routing which is far from intuitive. You will still need to have your own suite of FX plugins (or use your DAW built in fx) for EQ compression and stuff like that. It's a very basic sort of ready to go software although of course you can use the raw sounds but that will require a ton of heavy editing to get to sound good. I'd say it's more for noobs and big fans of Slipknot / Jay. It obviously in no way compares to something like Superior Drummer.

 

[tedtan]

Not gonna lie, I looked just looked at this thread to find out what a brief Mixwave Jay Weinberg is.

Not that I mind that Kontakt workflow, but it sounds like I’m not missing out on anything.

 

[Rev2010]

Not gonna lie, I looked just looked at this thread to find out what a brief Mixwave Jay Weinberg is.

Not that I mind that Kontakt workflow, but it sounds like I’m not missing out on anything.

Dude, somehow yesterday I managed to route the kick to it's own channel and today NOTHING I am doing is getting any kit piece to route to its own channel. It's maddening, Kontakt sucks fucking balls. Seriously, it's *this* hard to simply route a channel?? In the Mixwave mixer it only ever shows the main stereo out, the other channels never show even though when viewing the outputs by hitting the outputs button it shows the channels, they just will not route. So lame.

 

[tedtan]

Are you using the plugin or standalone version of Kontakt? If the plugin, what DAW are you using?

 

[Rev2010]

Are you using the plugin or standalone version of Kontakt? If the plugin, what DAW are you using?

Plugin, and am using Cubase 11. I finally got it sorted but what a nightmare. You have to create outputs within the plugin first but they are arbitrarily named, it's very confusing. Did a mix with one of my tracks where I fully EQ'd the raw kick and toms and also one where I just used the premixed Jay Weinberg kit and still my Area 33 kit mix is far superior.

 

[GunpointMetal]

I don't even mess with instruments that require Kontact anymore.

 

[tedtan]

Plugin, and am using Cubase 11. I finally got it sorted but what a nightmare. You have to create outputs within the plugin first but they are arbitrarily named, it's very confusing. Did a mix with one of my tracks where I fully EQ'd the raw kick and toms and also one where I just used the premixed Jay Weinberg kit and still my Area 33 kit mix is far superior.

Glad you got it sorted.

In Reaper, I don’t have that issue. Also, once I configure the plug how I want it, I can save it as a template so I only need to pull that template up the next time I want to use it rather than having to reconfigure everything. Perhaps Cubase has a similar feature that could save you time and effort.

 

[Rev2010]

Perhaps Cubase has a similar feature that could save you time and effort.

Oh it does for sure, just figuring it out the first time is maddening. Luckily the other shit I use in Kontakt I only use as stereo. With Superior I simply activate the outputs in the VST rack for the plugin and bang, all channels are there in the Cubase mixer. Doing that for Kontakt the outputs show in the mixer but the outputs don't show in the Kontakt instrument to be able to route to until you add them within Kontakt and even then they are named some weird arbitrary names like Aux 2 etc. Either way, I likely won't be using this plugin much, may even see if I can sell my license. It's decent but as I mentioned, my Area 33 kit still blows it away in my humble opinion.