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Hatsubai « Watch your clipping levels carefully »
Published on 07/09/11 at 20:21Volume is easily the most overused and abused thing in the music industry today. Low mixes make things sound lacking in production, and overly hyped volume causes extreme ear fatigue. Waves tries to help cater towards the people who want to really crank up their volume, and this plugin works well for what it sets out to do. The plugin has a gain and threshold slider in the low level section, gate and leveler slider, button to allow you to soften everything and threshold and gain slider for the high level section. Overall, it's a very simple plugin to use. Just enable it on your master buss and start adjusting.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
First of all, this plugin is super rock solid. I've never experienced a single hiccup or crash while using this. Considering that Waves is one of the best companies in this aspect, it's really no surprise. The plugin itself is cross platform compatible, so both Windows and OS X users alike can use this without any issues. The plugin itself also doesn't take up too much RAM, and in a world where processing power/RAM mean everything, that's a huge plus. There is one issue that I have with this, however. The plugin itself is a 32 bit plugin, but my DAW is a 64 bit DAW. That means that my DAW has to launch a special bridge application to allow me to use these plugins without having to lower my RAM limit. It's a minor inconvenience, but I'd still like to see Waves update these plugins in the future. I've been using the Mercury bundle for the past half a year or so, and it's bee a great experience.
OVERALL OPINION
Be sure not to overuse this, please. it's very easy to compress a mix so hard that there are no more dynamics in the overall mix. It does the job it's supposed to do, but I usually just reach for an EQ, compressor and my trusty adaptive limiter for the master buss. It just seems to work out better for me.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
First of all, this plugin is super rock solid. I've never experienced a single hiccup or crash while using this. Considering that Waves is one of the best companies in this aspect, it's really no surprise. The plugin itself is cross platform compatible, so both Windows and OS X users alike can use this without any issues. The plugin itself also doesn't take up too much RAM, and in a world where processing power/RAM mean everything, that's a huge plus. There is one issue that I have with this, however. The plugin itself is a 32 bit plugin, but my DAW is a 64 bit DAW. That means that my DAW has to launch a special bridge application to allow me to use these plugins without having to lower my RAM limit. It's a minor inconvenience, but I'd still like to see Waves update these plugins in the future. I've been using the Mercury bundle for the past half a year or so, and it's bee a great experience.
OVERALL OPINION
Be sure not to overuse this, please. it's very easy to compress a mix so hard that there are no more dynamics in the overall mix. It does the job it's supposed to do, but I usually just reach for an EQ, compressor and my trusty adaptive limiter for the master buss. It just seems to work out better for me.