Pro Tools 808 Chain: The Stock Plugins, in Order, With Settings (Tune, Saturate, Key Input, Clip)

The short answer: a Pro Tools 808 chain is four stock plugins on the 808's track, in this order: EQ III (7-band) to clear the rumble below the note and any boxiness above it, AIR Distortion in Soft mode blended in with its Mix control for the harmonics that make an 808 audible on phones, Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter keyed from the kick so the kick punches through, and a soft clip stage last: a second AIR Distortion with its Threshold set just under the loudest hits, or Pro Limiter with a little Character where your tier includes it. Before any of it, tune the 808 to the song's key: InTune reads the note, and Pitch II or Elastic Audio's Pitch Shift fixes it. Keep the 808 on a mono track, or put Down Mixer first on a stereo one. EQ III, Dyn3, InTune, Pitch II and Down Mixer are in every tier; AIR Distortion is in Artist, Studio and Ultimate, and the Pro series only in Studio and Ultimate. The chain controls the 808; it can't fix an 808 in the wrong key or programmed on top of every kick.

I've mixed low end for my own releases (Sony, Universal, Ultra, Dim Mak, 50M+ streams). How to mix 808 and kick covers the decisions in any DAW; this is the stock Pro Tools chain that carries them out. FL Studio, Ableton and Logic users get the same stages in the FL Studio 808 chain, the Ableton 808 chain and the Logic Pro 808 chain. There's no Pro Tools build of my mastering chain, but two of them run inside Pro Tools, disclosed at the end.

Before the chain: find the note

An out-of-tune 808 sounds wrong no matter what you put after it, so tuning comes first. In Pro Tools, the 808 is often an audio clip (a printed stem from the producer, or a one-shot you've placed by hand) rather than a sampler instrument, so the fix depends on which you have.

1. Read the note with InTune. It's Avid's stock tuner, in every tier. Avid's guide loads it on a mono track: insert it on the 808's track if it's mono, or send the 808 to a mono Aux Input with InTune on it. In Auto mode it detects the note and shows how many cents sharp or flat it is, on a needle or a strobe display. Read the sustained part of the tail, not the attack. InTune numbers octaves with middle C as C4, so go by the note name, and use the table below for the frequency.
2. Fix it. On audio clips, Pitch II is the real-time route: insert it, set Range to Low (Avid's own advice for a bass part), then use Coarse for semitones and Fine (-50 to +50 cents) until InTune reads the right note at 0 cents. Elastic Audio is the clip-based route: Pitch Shift in the clip's Elastic Properties moves a clip in semitones and cents, but only with the Polyphonic, Rhythmic or X-Form algorithms (Avid says Monophonic doesn't support pitch transposition). If the 808 plays from a sampler instrument, set the instrument's own root key and fine tune instead.
3. Check it against the song's key, then remove InTune. It's a meter, not part of the sound.

If you prefer an analyzer, the free Voxengo SPAN ships an AAX version and shows the nearest note and cents when you hover over the fundamental.

These are the fundamentals in the octave most 808s live in (A at 440 Hz tuning, which is also InTune's default reference). Octave numbering differs between apps, so go by the frequency.

The chain, in order (settings chart)

Why this order: the EQ cleans up before the distortion, so the distortion doesn't amplify rumble. Distortion goes before the key input stage, because distortion after the duck would flatten it back out. The clip stage goes last so it sees the final peaks. If your 808 notes jump in level from one note to the next, a Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter at around 4:1 with 2 to 3 dB of reduction before the distortion evens them out; on most 808s, the distortion and the clip stage do that job already.

AIR Distortion's Threshold is what makes it a clipper: Avid's guide describes it as setting the clipping level, from -20 to 0 dBFS, without changing the signal level, so you can move the clip point instead of driving the signal into it. For the duck, Avid's guide gives Dyn3 a Ratio from 1:1 to 100:1, an Attack from 10 microseconds to 300 ms, a Release from 5 ms to 4 seconds and a Knee from 0 to 30 dB, so every value in the chart is in range.

On Pro Tools Intro: Avid's Intro page doesn't list the AIR effects, so build the saturation stage from SansAmp PSA-1 (Drive low, Level matched) or D-Fi Lo-Fi with Sample Rate on Off, Sample Size at 24 bits and Noise at 0%, using only its Distortion and Saturation sliders. Avid says Lo-Fi's Distortion slider lets clipping happen "in a smooth, rounded manner," so a second Lo-Fi instance set the same way can serve as the clip stage. Neither has a mix control, so go easy on the amount.

On Studio and Ultimate: Pro Compressor can replace Dyn3 for the duck, with its own side-chain filter and the plugin's Key Input selector, and Pro Limiter takes the clip slot as in the chart. Tier contents have shifted across releases, so check your plugin menu, and treat the plugin window and Avid's Audio and MIDI Plugins Guide as the authority on control names; Avid's AIR documentation is older than the current plugins, so labels may differ slightly.

How to set it up

1. Give the 808 and the kick their own tracks. The 808 on a mono audio or instrument track (or a stereo one with Down Mixer first), the kick on its own track, so the kick can drive the key input and the 808 can carry its own chain.
2. Tune it with the steps above, then load EQ III (7-band) and switch in its HPF band.
3. Add AIR Distortion and check it on a phone. Bounce eight bars or play through your phone or laptop speakers. If the 808 disappears, add Drive or Mix; if it fizzes, lower High Cut or back off.
4. Route the kick as a key input. On the kick's track, add a send to an unused bus and set it to pre-fader, so the trigger doesn't follow the kick's fader; turn the send up to unity. On the 808, insert Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter, open the Key Input selector in the plugin header, choose that bus, and click External Key. Avid notes that key inputs are mono. Side-Chain Listen lets you hear exactly what's triggering it.
5. Set the duck. Lower Threshold until each kick takes 3 to 6 dB off the 808, then set Release so the 808 is back before the next hit. Short releases tied to the tempo work well; the tempo calculator gives you note lengths in ms, and sidechain compression explained covers the theory.
6. Add the clip stage last and match its output to the bypassed level, so you judge the shape and not the volume.
7. Check mono. If the track is already mono, it is mono. If the 808 sits on a stereo track, Down Mixer first takes care of it; to check the whole mix, fold your mix bus to mono the way the Pro Tools mix bus chain describes and listen to the low end.
8. Save the chain. Save the track as a track preset (right-click the track name and choose Save Track Preset in recent versions), so every beat starts from the same 808 chain.
9. Balance it against the kick and a reference. Mute test, phone test, then a commercial track in your genre at matched loudness; how to use reference tracks covers the matching.

What not to put on the 808

• Stereo wideners. AIR Stereo Width or a chorus on the 808 loses power in mono and fights everything else in the low end. What stereo imaging is explains why the sub stays in the center.
• Pro Subharmonic on a full 808. Avid built it to synthesize low frequencies from the harmonics of the source, which is useful on a thin kick or bass, but an 808 already has the sub. Adding more eats headroom you'll need at mastering.
• Big sub boosts. Boosting 40 Hz to make the 808 "bigger" eats headroom, and phones still can't play it. Harmonics are how an 808 gets bigger on small speakers.
• Distortion at 100% Mix with no blend. The grit replaces the sub instead of riding on it, and the 808 gets louder on phones and weaker on a system.
• Reverb. Long tails on an 808 turn the low end to mud. If you want space, put it on the top layer, not the sub.
• Maxim or Pro Limiter on the Master Fader to make the 808 hit. It hides the balance problem instead of fixing it, and Master Fader inserts are post-fader, which the Pro Tools mix bus chain explains.

How AIR Distortion's soft mode compares with dedicated clippers is in the best clipper plugins, and the free alternatives with AAX versions are in the best free saturation plugins. Pro Tools only loads AAX, so check for an AAX build before you download anything.

Then the master

The 808 chain stays on the 808 track when you bounce the mix; it's part of the sound. What comes off is anything on the Master Fader: if you're sending the song to a mastering engineer, bounce with the master bus processing bypassed (my own stereo mastering intake asks for exactly that). If you're mastering it yourself, the Pro Tools mastering chain covers every stage with stock plugins, from EQ III to Pro Limiter.

There's no Pro Tools stock build of my own mastering chain. The Ultimate Master Chain for Waves runs in Pro Tools through Waves StudioRack, and two of its 8 macros are the ones 808-heavy records lean on: LOWS (harder hits or a cleaner sit for the bass) and MONO-MKR (which frequencies stay mono). It needs StudioRack and the seven Waves plugins listed on its page. The Ultimate Master Chain for Ozone also loads in Pro Tools wherever Ozone runs as a plugin. I'm biased; get the 808 tuned, saturated and ducked first, and any mastering chain has an easier job.

Quick answers

What is a good 808 chain in Pro Tools? On a mono 808 track: EQ III (7-band) with a 20 to 30 Hz high-pass, AIR Distortion in Soft mode at 20 to 50% Mix for harmonics, Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter keyed from the kick for 3 to 6 dB of ducking, and a soft clip stage last. Tune the 808 first with InTune and Pitch II.

How do I sidechain an 808 to a kick in Pro Tools? Send the kick to a bus with a pre-fader send, insert Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter on the 808, choose that bus in the plugin's Key Input selector, and click External Key. Then set a ratio of 4:1 or higher, a fast attack, a 30 to 100 ms release, and lower Threshold for 3 to 6 dB of ducking on each kick.

How do I tune an 808 in Pro Tools? Read the note with InTune, Avid's stock tuner, on a mono track. Then fix it with Pitch II (Range on Low, Coarse in semitones, Fine in cents), or with Elastic Audio's Pitch Shift on the clip using the Polyphonic, Rhythmic or X-Form algorithm.

Does Pro Tools have a soft clipper? Not a dedicated one. AIR Distortion in Soft mode, with its Threshold setting the clipping level, does the job in Artist, Studio and Ultimate; D-Fi Lo-Fi's Distortion slider clips in a smooth, rounded way in every tier; and Pro Limiter's Character control adds soft saturation in Studio and Ultimate.