Apogee Digital’s Clearmountain’s Domain™ is a multi-effects plug-in that emulates legendary mixer Bob Clearmountain’s personal FX signal chains that he has developed over decades. This is an entire mix of studio emulated hardware gear including live echo chambers, delays, harmonizers, de-essers, EQs, saturation circuits, and an analog console.
Domain opens up with the mesmerizing FX Visualizer View—a color-coded vector scope that displays the stereo sound field input signal shown in white with each of the effects colored-coded. The delays are in blue, pitched delays are green, and reverbs come in lavender.
I installed Domain in Pro Tools Ultimate HDX 2019.10 as a send/return effect, but you can use it as an insert effect as well. I was looking for a magical treatment for a synthesizer motif, a Mini-Moog track that played at the intro, bridge, the solo section and the song’s fade out. I wanted a memorable effect to enhance this heroic theme in just the right way.
I chose a preset called “Avalon BV”—it was a version of the treatment Clearmountain used when he mixed Roxy Music’s Avalon album. There was Spin and Spin Cross feed was enabled along with Link Spin. Also in play were Delay Pitch Shift at 12 and 11-cents left and right respectively and Random was selected that gave a wide and dreamy stereophonic image to my mono synth track. There was also Pitch Delay at 9-ms and finally, Roscoe Chamber 2 with 115-ms pre-delay.
I like using the Mixer page to rein in the hugeness of this effect, but most importantly, I’m happy to have such a glorious sounding plug-in for my mixing work. It really is a remarkable tool and I am just getting started using it effectively!
Clearmountain’s Domain is downloadable and runs Native in AAX, AU, VST, VST 3 hosts and sells for $349 MSRP.
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