Four-time GRAMMY® Award-winning Mixer, Producer and Engineer Tre Nagella first got his hands on the NUGEN Producer bundle from NUGEN Audio back in 2019 as part of a giveaway during the GRAMMYs Producers & Engineers Wing 12th Annual Celebration, and he has never looked back. Since then, the brand’s award-winning mix and mastering suite has become one of Nagella’s favorite plug-in bundles. Featuring an unequalled collection of highly flexible, award-winning, cross-platform plug-ins, NUGEN Producer includes the brand’s Paragon ST, Monofilter, Stereoizer, SEQ-ST, Visualizer, Stereoplacer, MasterCheck, ISLst and SigMod solutions.
For Nagella, NUGEN Producer increases the quality, control and efficiency of his audio production projects — from traditional music albums to podcasts, audiobooks, television commercials and more. “NUGEN Audio is my hidden gem,” he says. “I’m always looking for something different and the plug-ins included with NUGEN Producer stand out from others when it comes to quality of sound and ease-of-use. It also offers additional features that are hard to find in other solutions.”
Nagella says his two most used plug-ins from the bundle are Stereoizer and MasterCheck. “With MasterCheck, I really like how you can listen to what your audio is going to sound like on platforms like Spotify, YouTube or Pandora,” he explains. “On the other hand, Stereoizer is probably my favorite plug-in that NUGEN makes. Sonically, no other similar plug-ins sound as good, and the user interface is much nicer and easier to navigate.”
One major record in which Nagella utilized Stereoizer was Aaron Lazar’s “The Impossible Dream,” a Broadway-style album that was recently nominated for a GRAMMY® in the “Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album” category. “The album consisted of a very large live orchestra, including string sections, horn sections and more,” he says. “With that comes the challenge of getting all those instruments to sit so that they don’t compete with each other, and you can hear everything clearly. I used Stereoizer to create separation between the orchestral elements.”
Nagella also often deploys NUGEN’s Monofilter. “Similar tools I’ve used in the past often mess with phase alignment, and I tend to be able to hear that; I find that my phase alignment is much less affected with NUGEN, which is why it is one of my go-to’s,” he says. “It’s a great tool for managing my low end, and obviously that’s extremely important in any audio, but especially in the record world. It’s one of the few tools that I’ve worked with that really helps me control the stereo imaging and width of the bottom end.”
The producer recently put the full benefits of Monofilter to the test when he was tasked with remixing the FIFA World Cup theme song with a Dallas, Texas twist. “FIFA had the interesting idea to identify a music producer in each of its host cities to remix the theme song, with the goal of putting a spin on the original theme that represents your respective city, and I was selected for Dallas,” says Nagella. “I incorporated country elements, of course, but there’s a big gospel, hip-hop and urban scene here, too, so I wanted to also incorporate that. I added 808s and a lot of bottom-end to the track. Monofilter really helped separate the elements that occupy that frequency space and created room for everything.”
When discussing future projects, Nagella concludes: “NUGEN Audio plug-ins are treasured solutions in my arsenal and I’m positive that will be the case for years to come.”
An all-around music production and studio pro, Nagella has logged time with a wide variety of multi-platinum artists, including Lady Gaga, Kirk Franklin, Blake Shelton, Ed Sheeran and Travis Scott, among many others. He has also written, produced and played hundreds of pieces of commercial music for clients such as Apple, Ford Motor Company, Samsung and Dairy Queen. A past Governor/board member and Producers & Engineers Chairman for the Texas Chapter of The Recording Academy, Nagella often donates his time and energy to help progress the state of the music industry in his home state, and across the country.
