Regular contributor Velislav returns with his take on Schulz Audio’s latest audio plugin, Oomph.
What is Oomph?
Oomph is a smart mixing and mastering tool, suitable for both beginners and advanced producers. It’s a very intuitive multiband enhancer which achieves great results in mere minutes. No need to learn it for years, just for it to be useful some day.
There are 4 main bands which enhance specific, user-defined sonic areas, and a “post” mastering grade final polishing and enhancement section is located directly under the 4 main bands.
The crossover, the white vertical line, separates the instruments in specific frequency bands, applying compression, saturation, excitement and m/s individually on each band.
Where to use oomph in the mix?
Put it on a mix buss and start to increase gain until you hear the difference in the elevated areas. It will pump, reshape, energize and balance everything inside your mix, adding character and extra harmonics to your tracks, enriching the entire mix.
I haven’t found a case where it decreases the sound quality of a track yet, so the entire sonic spectrum could be enriched with this exciter.
Sweet harmonic content, which you may not suspect your track has, will be audible again with a few turns of the multiband excitement knobs, and your mix starts to sound like a pro record. Modern music production is made in a virtual environment 99% of the time. Which means it is digital and sterile, and if everything is ‘cooked’ inside your DAW you need quality plugins like Oomph to make your sterile, digital tracks more alive, adding saturation/excitement until they start to sound satisfying.
Why Oomph?
The main advantage of Oomph is that it gives great results an a very easy way, saving time and in many cases hesitation about what fx to use and in which order. Oomph is built with the idea to lift the quality of tracks and their presence inside the mix with ease.
It works very well in combination it with other plugins – the character, the tone shape, everything is amplified when you put Oomph in the end of an fx chain. For example if you use the classic 40-100Hz area for a kick, fix the crossover frequencies of the sub band at 100hz and turn the m/s knob the to left to make everything mono. Then pump your bass using the 100-200Hz spectrum and you will immediately hear and feel the presence of the pumped bass in your mix. The same with upper frequencies occupied by piano, vocals, and so on.
The multiband structure makes it super easy to balance your mix, separating wanted from unwanted frequencies for each instrument. The same technique applies to the master bus – if the mix needs more treble or bass, bump the desired area a bit and voila, the mix becomes more balanced.
What does each knob do?
On top of each band you have controls to turn the band on or off, mute or solo it, and there’s a multi control button for making changes to multiple bands at the same time.
“Inflate” applies saturation to add extra harmonics, while “Curve” works as an EQ pumping higher or lower frequencies. The C button in between these knobs switches on a clipper.
The “Pump” compressor makes your sound more pronounced. Press the L button to switch to limiter mode, which activates the release control so you can set a short release to create a snappy sound, or a longer one to give space to the track.
The m/s function focuses or disperses the stereo image. Turn the knob to the left to create mono, or turn it all the way to the right to raise it to 200% stereo.
Mid/side can balance and increase left, right, and center, or add dynamics with multiband adjustment – for example the kick and bass sound better as mono, while upper frequencies benefit from side widening, but it depends on what the producer wants to achieve – there are no fundamental rules in modern music. Old school producers will consider it heresy to put reverb on kicks, but modern music evolves, so if you want to experiment and your composition could use a more open and pronounced bass section, try a non-conventional mid/side approach.
“Level” increases gain, and the button between m/s and level toggles between stereo and m/s modes.
The vertical white lines in the top show you the frequency crossovers, which separate and define the range of the section you are going to manipulate. For example, the bass sounds best in the 100-200Hz area, lower or higher will be clashing with other instruments placed across the sonic spectrum. That’s what makes oomph so useful and easy, without sidechaning and compressing/suppressing anything you can separate the kick from the bass or a vocal from a synth.
Oversampling is highly recommended (minimum 4x at 48khz) for a better resolution of your sound.
The “Post” section is very important when using Oomph on the mastering bus. Just lite touch, to shape the final sound – I highly recommend to use the lookahead function with settings of 30-40ms for really smooth results.
The LUFS meter gives you options to adjust the loudness of your track for different streaming platforms; for example Spotify is -14 LUFS, while Apple Music uses -16 LUFS.
Final thoughts – is it worth it?
Absolutely yes. Great results in a short amount of time, during the mixing or mastering stage. Super friendly workflow. Saturator, compressor, exciter, m/s option… A Swiss knife for any mix and mastering need.
Available for Windows and Mac in VST/VST3, AU and AAX plugin formats, Oomph is priced €149 EUR. It is currently on sale at 50% off, so go check out the Schulz Audio website, where you can also download a free trial version of Oomph.
Velislav has created a few presets for the plugin, which you can download right here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Velislav Velikov is a passionate song writer / sound designer and creator of real time reshaping technology, dedicated to pushing the boundaries of known sound.
