Another freebie from SSL...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
As you no doubt know, the excellent (and free, natch) Listen Compressor plugin from SSL changed the way we squeeze the life out of our drum buss. We now do it with no bottom whatsoever, where before, we kind of liked a little thump in our foot. Times, they are a-changin’. But on the bright side, “In The Air Tonight” toms are only a knob-twist away.
SSL has now gone one step further, providing you with a plugin that is just as inscrutable as compression (why this is a complicated subject is beyond me) but has the added benefit of not actually doing anything to your track, beyond showing you how shitty your final mix really is. It’s easy. Just put it on the 2-buss after L3, and marvel at all the +0 dbfs peaks in your square wave… err… signal that you didn’t see on the L3 meter.
So, go get it here, and pull that fader back. VST only, and free as in free.
8 comments
I hated spending the $250 for a metering plug, but Inspector XL has proven to be quite a nice little metering package. I've been recording live shows lately and it has helped immensely for finding odd buzzes, off center mic setup, too narrow, or too wide spacing, etc. Maybe I'm just too visually oriented. I'm starting to lose time just watching that crazy circular stereo spread graph, and the scrolling frequency intensity plot. However, Logic 8's new multimeter was driving me crazy and was crashing half the time, so something had to be done.
Personally, I use the excellent (and free, but I'd gladly pay for it) meter from Sonolksis. I find it incredibly handy. Especially when I'm using a dither other than one provided by a mastering plug or DAW. The meters and faders in Cubase just aren't sensitive enough to properly control a dither.
-CR
Cool. I just set up a whole new "mastering" template in Sonar - moving away from SoundForge - just for the flexibility of working with Sonar: wave form preview, bussing, pow-r dither, yadda yadda. But the ozone limiter in SF9 had an intersample option. So this fits in nicely. Then again, I rarely squeeze my track that much.
I have added my share of 'square waves' to the aural community at large. This was especially true in years past as I made the transfer from tape to digi. Now I use a combo of tape and digital and am much happier. Now if I could just be personally as well adjusted.
"X-ISM is a state of the art VST/AU plug-in" Looks like it's AU also, or will be, didn't try to DL yet.
I installed the X-ISM and it deleted my Duende plugs and all the presets I had made. Awesome!
You don't need to turn your tracks into square waves to cause intersample overs.. anything above -3db on a digital ppm risks producing overs.
RME's Digicheck has a mode that does a good job at predicting intersample overs as well, and I can say from using it for many years that Gibbon points out a more effective working mode outside of the mastering chain...
Comments are closed on this post.