Waves Audio calibration software

The Waves Dorrough Meter Collection is a plug-in with three different loudness monitors. Included in the bundle are the Model 280-D, Model 380-D, and Model 40-AES/EBU plug-ins, each of which just gives you a different look on the same loudness meter. Each has stereo 'LED' levelers and a series of buttons for controlling exactly what you're monitoring. You can buy this plug-in individually or within a bundle, and also comes in a Surround Edition. It's not hard to use these plug-ins at all, as once you find the settings you like or need, it'll pretty much do the work for you. There are a good amount of mode buttons to work with, so a manual should help with identifying exactly what everything will do for you. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The studio I work at has the Waves Dorrough Meter Collection running on all of our systems. The plug-ins do get used a good amount as they really are great meter monitoring tools. All our systems are Pro Tools HD based, but it should run well either way since you're mostly going to be running just a single instance of it on the master fader, or at least that's how I use it. Performance should definitely not be much of a problem with the Dorrough Meter Collection. OVERALL OPINION The Waves Dorrough Meter Collection is one of the best ways to monitor your loudness levels inside the box. They're designed for use beyond just mixing and mastering audio, but also for post production and just about any audio application you can think of. It's cool that they also have the Surround Edition, which would of course be best suited for mixing to film. I haven't used this version, but I'd imagine it's pretty comparable and just has more meters to check out. It's not one of Waves' more expensive plug-ins, which is good for anyone who wants it! It's available in both Native and TDM formats, so definitely look into this if you're after a well designed loudness meter!

The Waves Ltd. GTR Tuner is a plug-in that part of Waves' GTR series of guitar based plug-ins. I've got the full Waves Complete bundle, so this is included in that as well. I installed it along with the rest of the plug-ins in the bundle as you install everything at once. This is a really basic tuner for guitar or bass, but it will definitely get the job done. It gives you the ability to choose what note you want to tune to in the chromatic scale, but you can also set it for different tunings with the mode parameter and a different reference frequency if you want to tune to something other than A 440. It also has a wavering graph that shows you how far away you are from the pitch in terms of cents. That's everything that's in the interface, so a manual shouldn't be necessary to use this plug-in. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I've got the Waves Ltd. GTR Tuner plug-in running on my home system without any performance issues at all. I run it in Pro Tools LE 8 that I run with a Digi 002R audio interface. I've also got a Mac Book Pro that has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM to run it all on. I've only ever needed to use the GTR Tuner for brief instances in between takes, so I've never actually had it running while I was recording. OVERALL OPINION The Waves Ltd. GTR Tuner is definitely an adequate inside the box tuner for guitar and bass guitar. I'll really only use this if I don't have a hardware tuner handy, which is somewhat rare. While this plug-in does the job just fine, I do like the tracking on my hardware tuners better and in general find them easier to use. Having said this, I don't think you'd be able to find too many software tuners out there that are better than this one. You can only get this plug-in in a bundle, so unless you're planning on getting the GTR bundle or Waves Complete, you won't be able to get your hands on this tuner anyway...

The Waves Ltd. PAZ PsychoAcoustic Analyzer is a metering plug-in system designed for mixing and mastering purposes. You can monitor the frequency spectrum, stereo spread, and RMS and peak levels all within this one plug-in. I wasn't involved with installing the plug-in since I don't own it and have only used it in a professional studio where I was working. I didn't need to do much to understand the interface and everything going on with the meters and graphs, as it's pretty self explanatory and easy to understand. You can zoom in on the frequency spectrum graph to really see it up close and personal, which is really cool. The rest of the graphs and meters aren't complicated either in any way. A manual probably isn't necessary, but I haven't looked at it so I don't know anything about it's configuration. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I don't own the Waves Ltd. PAZ PsychoAcoustic Analyzer, but I have run it in a professional studio running Pro Tools HD on a Mac desk top with a whole ton of power. We never have problems running plug-ins really, so running it on this system isn't exactly a good judge of how well this plug-in will run on a given system. However, most users won't have a need to run more than one of these at a time any way, so I'd say that as long as you're able to run plug-ins currently without it taxing your system, you'll be okay with PAZ. OVERALL OPINION As far as collections of metering for mixing and mastering purposes, the Waves Ltd. PAZ PsychoAcoustic Analyzer is about as complete as you'll find one. I use IK Multimedia's T-Racks 3 Metering Suite in place of this at home since I don't own this plug-in, but both are definitely comparable. PAZ will cost you a bit more, but it definitely has a more in depth frequency spectrum chart with more options for viewing in general. If you're doing a lot of mixing and/or mastering, something like PAZ is a must have and you might as well go with something from Waves who are up there with the best when it comes to plug-ins...