Sly, you don't have to take anyone's word on this! Let your ears be your guide! Download the Izotope bundle, install it on your machine and play with it for 10 days! You can even produce complete recordings with this full-featured trial. Try out the presets and see if you think they will help you get where you want to be quicker. If so, you cannot beat their holiday price!

Bob is right that learning how to do all of this is very important. And there is probably as much art involved as science. But in my opinion he is wrong about whether there are tools (like presets) that can be used even by a noob to greatly increase the quality of your mixes. I am probably a total noob by Bob's standards yet I have improved a lot in less than a year and I have benefited greatly from better tools.

My bottom line is, if a tool helps you then use it! I don't care whether I completely understand why it helped! If it helped I am happy! My goal is not to become a top-drawer audio engineer but to make nice recordings of my music using whatever tools I can afford and enjoy! smile

Last edited by JohnJohnJohn; 12/16/13 02:34 PM.