Voxengo Elephant 4.0 mastering limiter plugin released

[heffus]

Was the $49 upgrade price only temporary?

[jsp1979]

Was the $49 upgrade price only temporary?

I just checked my account. It's still there.

I had to log in to see it. Under my list of plugins there was a button that said "Upgrade" underneath the Elephant entry.

[heffus]

That's strange, I don't have that button. Gonna contact Voxengo.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

hmm can't find a way to upgrade at all. Strange. In my user account and no options.

[4damind]

The upgrade price is still there ($49.95) with the summer discount running this month it's an additional -$7,50 so it's about $42.

[djscorb]

Dragging is always preferable with faders than with knobs. Imagine how akward the Sonalksis Free G would feel with a knob substituted for the volume fader.
http://www.sonalksis.com/freeg.htm

Elephant could use a major GUI overhaul.

With all due respect, this is not a common request among registered users. I guess, there is practically a marginal difference between Voxengo knobs and faders since knobs technically behave as faders - you drag them up and down (circular adjustment is possible, but is not used frequently and is disabled by default).

Faders take precious screen space.

And you again not giving attention to the fact that In/Thresh level meter in Elephant4 is a fader.

Hi Alexey

I am a registered user, I love Elephant and use it daily in mastering and occasionally in mixing as well. I also use a few of your free plugins all the time and am contemplating picking up Varisaturator. So firstly, a massive thanks for your great work

I also think that the Elephant GUI could use some choice refinements. I agree with others about faders and for a very simple reason, they are quicker to read at a glance. A knob is a circle at a glance, a fader is a setting on a scale at a glance. As you point out, vertical drag is the usual way to manipulate GUI controls and this action matches perfectly with faders, but not so with knobs! It really is that simple.

Also, the argument that they take up too much room isn't valid here for two reasons:

a) They could be super imposed on the existing meters. You already have a threshold "bar" on the Thresh/input meter that is draggable. Why not add one on the output as well? Could you then also add a button and keyboard modifier to inverse link input and output gain together? That would be great as it is the perfect workflow for limiting in mixing. Similar in practice to the L2's lowerable ceiling I guess.

Actually, thinking about it, you could even have a draggable bar on the central GR meter as well that acts as a lowerable ceiling. That way you don't need to add a link button or add a keyboard modifier for this functionality. Dragging the GR "handle" down by -3dB would be the same as setting input gain to +3dB and Output gain to -3dB. Simple and effective!

b) You are already using an unnecessary amount of space for the left lower panel for showing stats. I think they should be moved under the respective meters. You could have the average RMS and crest factor displayed larger above the existing meters if you move the "Mode", "Edit" and "Release" buttons into the panel above (between "Routing" and "Settings").

Then you can place max peak stats under the input and output meters where they intuitively belong,

and the Max GR stat under the GR meter.

If the stats were relocated, I think I would actually prefer if if the advanced parameters and settings populated the entire left hand side of the GUI when needed and the dither settings etc in the top left of the main GUI could be in a pop up pane that is accessible from a button akin to the existing "Edit" button. I very rarely need to adjust or use the Dither / DC filter myself, but I do tweak the advanced settings a lot, particularly when mastering. I find detatched pop up panels annoying as you invariably end up moving them to the side so you can see the main GUI unhindered. When it comes to workflow these extra mouse moves and clicks get pretty annoying.

Anyway, these layout changes would make a lot more sense for new and existing users, free up space on the GUI and without changing the existing layout of the existing main knobs and meters.

Lastly, I think having different ranges for the in gain knob and out gain knob is very restrictive and unhelpful. This is particularly evident in a mixing context as it means that when you want to shave off peaks but keep the same apparent level on a given sound you often can't achieve it.

For example, many signals when mixing require a threshold deeper than -15 dB, yet you can't compensate the output of the plug by more than this! If the Input Gain maxxes out at 24 dB, then the Output trim should allow you to attenuate by 24dB as well! Why is it restricted to a max of 15dB? Seems very arbitrary to have a 9dB difference between ranges!

The input gain's minimum value is -3dB and the output gain's max is +3dB, so it seems like you agree with this logic for one end of the scale but not the other end, (and it is the other end which is arguably the more useful because one usually reaches for a limiter to reduce something!)

I also think a 3dB maximum output gain is too small and can't understand how you arrived at that figure logically, because again, it seems like you are imposing an unhelpful restriction that doesn't necessarily cater for all scenarios.

I shouldn't have to instantiate two utility/gain plugins either side of Elephant for such basic gain staging and I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this!

Once again, thanks for your wonderful tools. I hope you see this post and take my feedback in the constructive way it is intended.

Cheers

Scorb

[djscorb]

Deleted: Double Post

[ObsoleteAcc99]

The upgrade price is still there ($49.95) with the summer discount running this month it's an additional -$7,50 so it's about $42.

definitely not for me. I guess because i "won" it in the luftrum auction, i am being punished for that and not allowed to upgrade.
Even though I have a few other voxengo things.. must check auction terms next time as I thought they were nfr but didn't realise there would be silly restrictions like this.