Voxengo Elephant 4.0 mastering limiter plugin released

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February 20, 2014: Voxengo is pleased to announce the release of Elephant version 4, a mastering limiter plugin for professional audio and sound production applications, available in AudioUnit, VST and VST3 plug-in formats (including native 64-bit support), for Mac OS X (v10.5 and later), and Windows computers.

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Voxengo Elephant is a mastering limiter plug-in for professional music production applications. The most remarkable feature of this signal limiter is its sonic transparency. Elephant brings sound limiting and loudness maximization without audible “pumping” sonic artifacts.

Elephant is a highly competitive plug-in for mastering applications: it features a variety of limiter modes that can be deeply customized, and a comprehensive set of level metering tools, including headroom estimation and K-system metering. Elephant's built-in linear-phase oversampling is an important element in achieving high-quality peak limiting and loudness maximization without inter-sample overshoots.

Elephant limiter can be used for mixing and mastering of both stereo and multi-channel music and sound material, at any standard sample rate. Limiting process can be visualized both as gain reduction meter and real-time graph.

Elephant, also featuring a DC offset filter, and a high-quality bit-depth converter with an optional noise-shaping, allows you to finish your music and audio productions with a spark!

Elephant features:
  • Transparent signal limiting action
  • 9 predefined limiter modes
  • Limiter mode editor
  • Optional release stage
  • Noise-shaped bit-depth converter
  • DC offset removal filter
  • Waveform graph view
  • Stereo and multi-channel processing
  • Internal channel routing
  • Channel grouping
  • Up to 8x linear-phase oversampling
  • 64-bit floating point processing
  • Preset manager
  • Undo/redo history
  • A/B comparisons
  • Contextual hint messages
  • All sample rates support
  • 22 ms compensated processing latency
Elephant 4.0, which is backwards-compatible, includes the following changes since version 3:
  • Added a new "EL-4" limiter mode, with less harmonic coloration.
  • Added a new "Dynamic Release Control" limiter stage.
  • Added a new "Timing" limiter mode parameter.
  • Added a new "Release to Attack Ratio" limiter mode parameter.
  • Added a new "Release Shape" limiter mode parameter.
  • Added input level meter together with the threshold mark.
  • Implemented the "Eval" limiter's evaluation mode.
  • Added the "Trans View" transient visualization.
  • Made the "In Gain" and "Out Gain" knob ranges more practical.
  • Magnified the "Out Gain" knob's scale around 0 dB.
  • Made changes to the "Trans Time" parameter stutter-free.
  • The output statistics are now automatically reset if any parameter that influences the output statistics was changed.
  • Added "EL-4", "COMPACT" and "EXPANDED" factory limiter modes.
Introductory price of USD 99.95 will be effective for two weeks from now, which is 15% off the regular price of USD 119.95. Upgrading from the previous version costs USD 49.95 if previous version was purchased earlier than 180 days from now: otherwise the upgrade is free during this grace period. Demo version of Elephant can be downloaded freely at the Voxengo web site: http://www.voxengo.com/product/elephant/
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That one is something to try, for sure. The new features sound exciting !

Limiters keep getting better, and that's a good thing.

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Is this the "mother of all limiters", bmanic has been talking about?

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Anybody try this yet that had version 3? I've been happy with Elephant to date. It's always been rock solid, tried and true for me. Once in a blue moon I'll use Slate FG-X if the source works better with it but 99% of the time Elephant does the job. Would like to know what the new additional content brings to the table.

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Is this a different plugin that can sit next to the 3.11? Or does it replace it?

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bill45 wrote:Is this the "mother of all limiters", bmanic has been talking about?
You read my not so subtle hints at Gearslutz about half a year ago? :lol:

Yeah, this is "the one" in my opinion. You guys just have to try the new EL-4 mode. It. Is. SUPREME!

The most impressive thing, in my opinion, is how flexible Elephant 4 is. I mean, Elephant has always been flexible but it's been a bit behind some of the competition in how clean and natural some of them can be at heavy limiting. Well.. that's not a problem any more. The new EL-4 mode + the new intelligent release mode thingy make it go straight to the top of the list. To me it just sounds "better", more coherent than any of my other options (boy am I gonna get a harsh time from my dear friends at FabFilter!).

So yeah, I can officially say that in my opinion this is now the limiter to beat.

Keep in mind though that all limiters still sound and behave very different to one another so you might find some projects where another candidate might be the best option.. but to be frank, I've yet to find such a project and believe me, I've tried! In some cases I felt Invisible Limiter from A.O.M has a bit more attack and punch to the transients, and it does, but only by a very tiny little margin. On the other hand, it distorts much more and doesn't feel as open and "3D" (sorry for the nonsensical buzz word.. can't find anything else to describe it) as Elephant v4 does. Same thing with Pro-L. It too sometimes feels "more correct" or a bit more relaxed in some situations but the overall fidelity is just not there when compared with Elephant v4. There are always tradeoffs with all limiters but at this moment I feel that with Elephant v4 I need to compromise less than with the other limiters. It's also extremely, EXTREMELY tweakable (more so than any of the others except perhaps Pro-L which has 4 completely different algorithms) which means it's an awesome limiter to suggest as a person's only copy. Instead of juggling between tons of limiters, why not save money and time by going with Elephant v4 instead?

Also note that it might be perfectly possible that Elephant 4 just suits my personal aesthetic when it comes to how things should sound so perhaps it's why I prefer it over all others? I don't know.. and I don't really care. At the moment my quest for the "perfect" limiter is over. It just instills a lot of confidence, knowing that it just works, all the time, on everything.

Here are my current "go-to" settings on the advanced page. Fairly aggressive but they seem to work very well on a lot of stuff. If you get too much "fizz" simply relax the transient time setting a bit (you'll lose a bit of punch though).

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Anyhow, that should be enough hyperbole for today. Now go check it out!!! :D

Cheers!
bManic
Last edited by bmanic on Fri Feb 21, 2014 1:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Elffin wrote:Is this a different plugin that can sit next to the 3.11? Or does it replace it?
It's fully backwards compatible so you don't have to worry about it at all. But if you want to be on the safe side, just backup the old .dll file or rename it.

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Nice Aleksey!
Thanks for the go-to preset bManic - should get me by till I can sit down and crack open the manual...

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Congratulations, Aleksey!

bManic's review has sold me. :)

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Oh please! Check the demo guys. I don't want anybody to be taking only my word for it.. but yeah, it's an awesome limiter! :hihi:
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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Cheap upgrade price $49, cool.

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I own Xenon and Barricade, should I try this one?

(Obvious answer is "why not?", but I'm now focused on improving my skills rather than expanding my list of plugins, which is already pretty huge).
You may think you can fly ... but you better not try

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Upgraded, I've used it every day for the last four years, so it's a no brainer basically!

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bmanic wrote:Oh please! Check the demo guys. I don't want anybody to be taking only my word for it..
Way too late :hihi:

All that is remembered is the following :
bmanic wrote:but yeah, it's an awesome limiter!
How do you see it vs Barricade ?
Professional technicians are assessed by the abilities they possess.
Amateur technicians are assessed by the tools they possess - and the amount of those tools, with an obvious preference to the latest hyped ones.
(Gabe Dumbbell)

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recursive one wrote:I own Xenon and Barricade, should I try this one?

(Obvious answer is "why not?", but I'm now focused on improving my skills rather than expanding my list of plugins, which is already pretty huge).
Why not?










:clown:

Seriously, it is very good, and I would recommend to give it a try.
Peace and tolerance

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