112dB

I really like Phasers, also have a lot of different phaser plugins, but up to now never was totally convinced of what I heard from them.

The Mikron Phaser seems to come much closer to my idea of a good phaser sound. As the developers say, it's based on a Small Stone Phaser, which is a good reference.

What I like is the wonderfully recreated vintage character, the musical quality of the tone as well as the additional adjustment possibilities. I don't have so much experience with the real Small Stone, but when testing the Mikron Phaser I also found some settings, which came close to my two favorite phasers, the Maestro Oberheim and the Mutron Bi-Phase, especially this typically 60's / 70's very special, deep pulsating, breathing low frequency phasing a lot of phaser plugins don't seem to simulate too convincing, if ever. Often the phasing sounds too thin or too sharp, just not "analog" enough and with too little body. The Mikron Phaser doesn't seem to have these problems, it just sounds right to me.

Up to now for me one of the best and most musically sounding phaser plugins I've heard.

Probably the best quality reverb plugin that one can buy for under $150. You can find it on sale for somewhere around 100-125 occasionally. It's lush, warm, musical and works on basically everything. Incredibly light on the CPU, almost shockingly so for such a high quality reverb. I'm not sure exactly whats going on underneath the hood, but it adds something extra that you don't often find with many reverb plugins. There are so many decent sounding, but in my opinion, very sterile sounding reverbs out there. Not this one, it just sounds great. It can do small spaces when just a little reverb is needed to glue a drum kit together, to absolutely colossal spacey ambiences. The controls offer everything you need to sculpt the right space and nothing extraneous that might hamper your workflow. Lots of reverbs have come out in recent years, and honestly, I haven't been the slightest bit interested in them, Redline just covers all the bases. Also, the installation is refreshingly straightforward and easy, no obnoxious download managers or ilok, and most importantly, 112dB support is great. I believe they still offer a lengthy demo period with full functionality, so it's worth just downloading and seeing how you can incorporate it into your workflow.

This is probably my most used compressor. Basically, when I'm thinking of general compression, I first reach to Big Blue Compressor. I use it for drums, synths, piano, mix buss, almost everything. It is very feature packed (check the details page). It has excellent drive control, which allows you to add that "mojo" to your sound, the saturation sounds pleasing on almost everything. Another nice feature is choke. It doesn't work well with everything, but on certain sounds it can "choke" (distort) transients in a cool way. Depending on your needs this compressor allows you to dial clean or dirty compression. It has both high- and low-pass filters for sidechain, which, when used on a full mix, allow you to focus compressor response on kick, giving you some nice kick-pumping. You can greatly widen stereo image by using it in parallel to compress side signal with stereo control set to wide.

Because I tend to mix loud (my kicks usually peak at around -3db) for me Big Blue Compressor provides nice glue compression with it's default settings.

Big Blue compressor comes bundled with couple of skins, but I stick to default one (suits me well). Also I like that it has XL skins, which works pretty well on my hi-res Samsung tablet.

I wonder why this beast doesn't have any reviews?!?!

Ok, let's fix it! :)

User interface 10/10

Cool. Initial skin is not that pretty, but it has second one which is killer. Behaviour of “length” button could be wierd at first, seems to me it has a bit longer tail than other reverbs with same value on. Also Gain button could use more of positive values, but now I’m just neatpicking....
Love that little hints and direct value input.
Layout is well touhght. Not much to “not understand” or something.

Features 9/10

It’s typical algorythmical reverb, so you got early reflection and diffusion stage. Both nicely controlable. Nothing wierd here, which is cool.
It has a little downside. Lack of input filters. 112db promisted them, but they had really sad personal issues, so …. But you can use output shelves or just add your DAW’s filter before reverb. Same thing with wideness control. Really minor glitches.

Sound 10/10

Here we go. MASSIVE sound. I’ve been demoing it A/B against AAR and space this adds is amazin! :) When “copying” presets from AAR you can even get to that lushness. But huge bright spaces are where this reverb really shines!
Only thing to watch out is early reflection engine. It’s cool, but you need to watch out difusion. When set too low or too high, it generates a little delay.
But other than that, sound is amazing. I use it all the time. It really adds to sound of instrument a lot. Lot’s of people were comparing it even with mighty Lexicons. :)

Value for money 10/10

It really opens you a whole space in a mix. If that's not what reverb should do, then I don't know what. :)