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The Digidesign Maxim plug-in is a peak limiter to be used in a DAW. Its main purpose is to control the dynamic response of an input signal. Basically it does some advanced processing to make the maximum amplitude level of a signal stay the same level, but allows you to increase the overall perceived amplitude level of the signal. This is appro...
What I like most about this compressor , is the effect it has on the layer itself , it has a powerful attack , you can side-chained to another or the same track , you can build nice parallel injection. Another great thing about this product is the detector , which is basically an build in eq , that is quite useful to sculpture the...
The Waves Maserati Signature Series Acoustic plug-in is part of the Maserati bundle. As the name suggests, it is fine-tuned for processing the recordings of an acoustic guitar. This plug-in is very unique in the sense that none of the other signature series plug-ins have a specific 'acoustic' guitar plug-in. Although, there are no other 'acou...
Compressors are the most essential tool in music production/mixing (Eq might also be equally as important). The most popular compressors from the past 50 years have been the 1176, LA-3A, and LA-2A. They all sound a little different and are useful for different reasons. Unless you can afford a rack of these compressors in the hardware form, th...
The LA-2A compressor is famous for 'smoothing' out audio tracks. If you can spend the money to buy a hardware version, more power to you. For the rest of us, we can be glad that many software companies are digitally modeling the signal processing. I own several modeled versions of the LA-2A (Waves CLA-2A, BF-2A, NI/Softube VC 2A, Line 6 Tube C...
Native Instruments have finally set these compressors free by releasing them as stand-alone plug-ins rather than as effects inside Guitar Rig 5. I loved having these effects inside GR5 when I was using amp simulation. However, I almost always inserted a different compressor when I wasn't using amp simulation because I didn't want to open GR5. ...
The Oxford Limiter has been popular for a long time. It contains several controls such as 'attack', 'release', and 'knee' that are typically seen on compressors and not 'stand-alone' limiters. This offers some unique flexibility compared to the competitor plug-ins. The 'Enhance' feature is also unique. Supposedly, it can be used to preserve...
This plug-in is simple - it makes your tracks sound better. Use it on individual instruments or on a mix bus and it will make a difference. This may be the only plug-in I have ever used that always sounds good. For most plug-ins, I might insert them on a track and decide whether or not it sounds better. The Oxford Inflator never fails. I rar...
The Waves C1 plug-in was designed to be a complete dynamics processor. It can be used for compression/limiting, gating/expanding, and even de-essing. Waves includes a few different versions of the software in the package - a compressor only, compressor with gate, compressor with side-chain, and a version with all the settings. These individua...
Digital limiting with a plug-in has a unique feature - 'look ahead' limiting. This means that the processor knows what it is going to 'limit' prior to having to process it. The 'L1' limiter was one of the first plug-ins to utilize this kind of processing. I don't recommend using the 'L1' for heavy compression. I notice that this plug-in does...