New Infected Mushroom plugin: Pusher by Waves
Is this another mastering gimmick, or a serious and professional tool?
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Infected Mushroom and Waves have just announced Pusher, the second plugin involving the famed Israeli psytrance duo. The first one, called ‘I Wish’, was developed and released by Polyverse Music. It proved to be a huge success. (We reported on it here: I Wish.) It focused on the musical and effect elements of the band’s records. However, Infected Mushroom are also widely respected in the world of music production for the quality of their mixing and mastering. So much so, in fact, that many hail their results as a benchmark when referencing the heavier side of EDM. Developed with Waves, Pusher aims to deliver their typical style of audio processing in one simple plugin. Is that possible?
As some of you may know by now, I am not always a fan of signature plugins, specifically ones that offer a ‘known’ sound and offer you one knob to control it with. (See my ‘Plugins for Knobs‘ article here.) Thankfully, though, this isn’t one of those. There appears to be several well thought-out user-controlled parameters. I’m sure there’s a ton of algorithms processing away behind the scenes, but at least there’s a sensible level of control for what promises good-quality processing.
I could, though, moan about their description: “Pusher will make almost anything sound better in a matter of seconds”. I hate bold claims like this which suggest a monkey could match the talents of a band such as Infected Mushroom, But I see what they mean. Judging by the examples, Pusher appears to epitomise the sonic characteristics of current mixing and mastering traits. I think this is both rare and unexpected for a single plugin to achieve.
The plugin has a selection of controls including the more obvious settings for ‘high frequencies, input level, stereo image, and body’. Yet there are some interesting ones, too. The final limiter stage, for example, has a ‘Push’ control for how hard you drive the limiter, with selectable a clipping or standard limiting mode. There’s also ‘magic’ control, which I believe changes the tone of the mid band or vocal/top line region. The ‘low’ control apparently enhances the low end content of your source in a more musical fashion than a regular EQ, using a root-key method. Along with some other parameters, Pusher not only looks carefully designed, but uses terminology that feels very current and up to date.
More Information
For more information, check out the Pusher webpage on Wave’s site. Here you can also download the usual trial of the plugin, or purchase it for a special introductory price of 29 USD. After this limited time offer, which normally last for a month, the plugin will retail at 49 USD. The Waves webpage also includes some listening examples, which don’t really tell you the whole picture but they do sound good.
Video
Here are 3 videos from the Waves Audio YouTube channel, giving a really good insight to the Pusher plugin. The first is Duvdev and Erez from Infected Mushroom introducing the concept and key features of Pusher:
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Secondly, here’s a training style video about how to use Pusher:
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… and finally, there’s another teaser video:
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