Review: MH Production Bundle by Metric Halo

Today I will review the Production Bundle from Metric Halo that includes 8 plugins with awesome features you won’t find in a lot of DAWs on the market. This bundle is a well-thought big pack for musicians, sound designers, and producers working on any genre of music.

So, now with such a great bundle installed under my FL Studio, as the main DAW I use, this bundle comes with 8 powerful plugins as follows: MH Channel Strip, MH Character, MH Halo Verb, MH Dirty Delay, MH Precision DeEsser, MH Multiband Dynamics, MH Multiband Expander and MH TransientControl.

This bundle adds an incredible range of audio effects and processing in my present FL Studio suite of plugins. I’m very excited, so let’s introduce what can you do with each of these plugins.

MH ChannelStrip

The most impressive plugin, by the size too, is the ChannelStrip, and I think the makers are not doing a joke saying it’s “a Million Dollar Console”! This ChannelStrip plugin gives me a sensation of being in front of a very expensive console.

The incredible thing with plugins, it can be available simply where it’s inserted on the DAW mixer. So I really like the big preset list, the great variety of subparts in these presets too. It can help a track of getting closer to a good sound you’ll need to get a perfect mix. The first function is helping to set gain and a lot more :

• Expander, Compressor, EQ, & Limiter in one processor
• Fully parametric interpolated EQ
• Integrated side-chain EQ for dynamics
• Individually switchable side-chains for dynamics blocks
• Individual side-chain listen for dynamics blocks
• EQ/Compressor routing control
• SpectraFoo™ spectrum analysis built-in
• Scalable gain reduction meters

Maybe these are technical terms saying nothing to some musicians, but no one has to be afraid of complexity, this is simply an incredible add-on to the Master on the DAW mixer, or even if you use it on a special track, let’s say on drums or guitars, or anywhere on electronic tracks, a big sample of something you recorded but that you want to make better in the mix. ChannelStrip is a really great first plugin to discover in this 8 parts bundle by Metric Halo.

MH Character

Character comes with a cool selection of environments to set instantly on a track. It can simulate a quite good list of amps and methods to deliver the sound. Maybe the GUI is a little bit confusing at first, but when you check all parts of the plugin, you can know more about how to use it.

It’s nice to use on electronic tracks, I plan to use this MH Character on synths and ambient loops in a near future. With these features coloring the sound, it can be great to have the plugin on track for fx slots. On the main mixer tracks (Master), I wouldn’t put this special plugin, but more the ChannelStrip with a Multiband Dynamics plugin, IMO…

MH HaloVerb

HaloVerb is one of my favorite and most used plugins in the MH bundle. I was really impressed by the quality of the presets. This plugin is quite good in what it’s doing, with special environments to discover and to tweak on the Master track or as send-return track if you need. Having 1 or some send-return effects can help you to reduce the number of opened plugins.

MH Dirty Delay

Really nice feedback delay with advanced features. MH’s Dirty Delay plugin has good features, it’s for me a quite complex plugin worth looking at it. It can be great on many tracks, guitars, synths, or single shots drums.

MH Precision De-Esser

The Precision DeEser plugin can be a very useful tooltip for songs, maybe not in electronic tracks with only synths and drums. I know this can help on tracks but rarely use this kind of plugin. This was quite impressive on some loops I tried with it.

MH Multiband Dynamics

EQ and Dynamics in multiband. There we have a very important part of the MH bundle with 2 plugins working with multi-band frequencies on Dynamics. Multiband Dynamics can be a second hand for the ChannelStrip which I would use mostly on the Master tracks, and with this MH Multiband Dynamics working on separate tracks of the project when each is needing EQ and Dynamics corrections before the Master tracks.

MH Multiband Expander

A second multiband expander plugin. This plugin can work as an expander on multi bands, having impressive results in the way the track will be outputted. A bassline or guitar line is really interesting to test this plugin.

MH TransientControl

This is an impressive Transient modifier and waveshaper. I really like using this plugin to modify instantly the way the track will sound. It can change the sound to a more slappy or compressed or bouncing, with a lot of flexibility on controls.

The perfect example to take is a bassline that I can make in an infinite variety of moods, that is the way it’s played on attacks, transients, and other parts this plugin is managing… It’s very nice to chain it with MH Character which can process the sounds in great ways too.

Most of the 8 plugins can be resized in 3 different sizes, by clicking on the top left icon for this. A second icon can set the GUI with various parts on and off! Another good thing I found in these plugins is the Bypass and the Compare buttons at the top right angle on the GUIs. All GUIs are very pro and nice to look at, in the mood of metallic rack hardware, in gray and green main colors.

It’s really easy to access the presets list from the middle menu on all plugins. Some have a shortlist, with less than 10 presets, and some have a big list of presets. The ChannelStrip presets are interesting to set the sound quickly in a new environment.

Here the presets stored in each plugin were helping me to choose what is globally possible to do, and then it’s great to discover the high number of parameters available with the help of the PDF files. Each plugin has a PDF and the bundle has a pretty impressive 122 pages documentation. ChannelStrip has a 61 pages PDF documentation which is quite big too.

Conclusion

Currently, on sale and available for Mac or PC, it’s simply a dream to use in a DAW, and a must-have for musicians, sound designers, and producers. So for musicians or anyone using a PC or Mac, if you want pro plugins in the class of Consoles and Mixers, it’s a platinum choice for one of the best bundles available there on the market! The PDF documentation for each plugin is really impressive.

The bundle is available for Mac and PC, as usual, you should use 64 bits plugins and not 32 bits plugins on a 64-bit DAW, so the audio processing is the fastest possible.

More Details / Download: MH Production Bundle

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