Review: AXIS Ableton Effects Racks by Audiotent

Audiotent, a manufacturer of music production tools, gathered support from some of the most prominent artists in the world through their own presets, libraries, and samples. Pioneers such as Adam Beyer, UMEK, and Camelphat talk highly of their developments. Today we want to talk about AXIS, Audiotent’s Ableton Effects Rack bundle. This bundle is specially designed to improve workflow. Down below you’ll find an extensive walkthrough of the bundle.

 

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AXIS holds on to 7 Ableton Live Techno Racks. These racks should improve both your workflow and sound design. Audiotent did a great job in designing processing chains for every main category in music production. Included within are racks for kicks, drums, basses, leads, percussions, FX, and mastering. The mixing & mastering stages are also covered with these racks.

 

AXIS – Kick

This rack divides the kick into 3 parts: main, rumble, and click. The main part includes an equalizer, saturator, compressor, and noise generator. Get full control over the body and the click of the kick through the equalizer, add bite with the saturator, achieve a kick that’s more compact with the compressor, and add a top layer of noise by enabling the noise generator. In Techno it’s common to add a touch of reverb to your kicks in order to achieve the pumping effect. Through the rumble dial, you will mix reverb, saturation, equalizer, and a beat pattern effect into the original kick. Last but not least, an equalizer and a compressor will make sure you can add even more click to the original sound.

 

AXIS – Bass 

First up, an equalizer will be applied where you can boost and attenuate the right frequency range. A harmonic distortion unit will add width and grid to your bass, whereas the amp tool will add harmonic distortion to the bass, mid, and treble sections. Enable a low-pass filter to get rid of unwanted high-end/mid-end information. Add space to your bass by using a reverb, and decide how much you want to limit your bass by using the limiter.

 

AXIS – Drums

You can alter the low- and high-end of the drums through the equalizer, compress the kick, add saturation, use a multi-band compressor to squash the drums, add a vocoder/delay & chorus in order to add chaos to the sound and be able to run your drums through a subtle room reverb. Eventually, you want to glue your drums together and get the most out of it. This processing chain holds on to the most important steps in order to create a solid drum group.

 

AXIS – Leads

A bunch of creative tools is included in order to add tension and character to your lead sounds. Add a bit of randomness to your lead by dialing in some ring modulation. As always, you can add saturation to the sound source and cut unwanted frequencies away by using an equalizer. A noise generator is included in order to let it cut through the mix. In the end, you’ll find 2 different effects: washout and a normal reverb & delay. This washout macro will automate a high-pass filter, decay time & mix of the reverb, and the feedback & dry/wet of the delay.

 

AXIS – Percussion

A transient shaper will be at the front making sure your percussions are tight enough. Through compression and a bit of overdrive, your percussions can be glued together. After that, a glue compressor will “catch the peaks” and, if you wish, flatten out the sound. Add more width to your percussions by dialing in a chorus effect. Add a bit of noise to let them cut through the mix, followed by a reverb & delay, and top it off with a limiter.

 

AXIS – Mastering

In the most standard case, a mastering chain includes an equalizer, compressor, and limiter. This mastering rack includes the main tools for mastering, but it also includes some interesting additions. At first, you’ll find an equalizer. A high-pass filter, around 20 Hz, is included, as well as a bell boost in the low-end and the high-end. A bit of total width can be added, up to 140%. A total of 2 compressors will glue your pre-master together. An extra equalizer will make sure your low-end is in mono, and at last, you’ll find a simple limiter to achieve the right loudness.

 

Overall, these racks are great for getting a tight mix right away. Audiotent included the right tools to tackle some issues in a sample, groups, and even the whole mix. It’s easy to work with and your workflow will improve immediately. You’ve got full control over every minute detail, through the pre-selected macros. If you’re seeking a more digital-sounding mix then I’d definitely recommend using these racks, but if you’re looking for a more organic sound then I’d recommend replacing some tools with vintage plugins. All of these racks can easily be recreated within other DAWs so don’t be disappointed if you’re not familiar with Ableton. This bundle comes at a price of £17, available for macOS and Windows.

 

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