The new Blackbox, vs Gulfoss, Ozone, Intensity, etc for automatic mastering

[SparkySpark]

I just discovered Blackbox 2 by Nammick. It's essentially automatic mastering for 75 euros.

It's standalone so there are no issues with hosts or the like. You simply open a file in it, select a preset, tweak it, and hit Process. Then you can do A/B testing.

https://www.kvraudio.com/news/nammick-r ... tool-42097

I tried it on my own material and it really improved it, but then again I am not good at mastering.

The only problem I see with it is that since it's not realtime, I need to tweak, process, tweak, process etc until I'd be happy with the results.(However, I think this must be this way, as it probably looks at longer periods of time in the audio material.)

I am also not sure about the audio quality. Not that I think it sounds bad, it's just that I have never heard of Nammick before, so it makes little sense someone would code compressors, exciters etc and no one has ever heard of the dev (or discussed Blackbox 1 on KVR!).

Its controls are explained nicely here: https://nammick.com/blackbox/wiki

All in all, this could be the best thing since... I don't know - shoe laces? - but I just don't know yet, so I hope for more takers. The download is super easy to install - its just an exe file. All features work in demo mode, it just can't export the resulting files.

If it gets updated, I would also like more presets, like one for ballads and one for country for example. Now it's geared a lot towards EDM and the like genres.

[martinjuenke]

Can you target a specific loudness (eg 14 LUFS) like it‘s possible with Ozone?

[SparkySpark]

Hmmm not really I think, but there is a slider. It looks like this:

BlackBoxII_Screenshot_N.png

[martinjuenke]

The automatic target loudness adjustment is a (at least for me) a must because it savees soooo much time during the final prepartion of a track.

[SparkySpark]

The automatic target loudness adjustment is a (at least for me) a must because it savees soooo much time during the final prepartion of a track.

Well Apart from that, I would really like to hear your impressions. Since you are into instrumental ambient music, you must be interested in things like clarity and tonal balance. Perhaps the value of such a plugin is more apparent for vocals-based music, since mixing vocals is really hard, but as I said, clarity and balance must be of importance to you (there is even a knob called Clarity, which I hope goes to 11 ).

[martinjuenke]

The automatic target loudness adjustment is a (at least for me) a must because it savees soooo much time during the final prepartion of a track.

Well Apart from that, I would really like to hear your impressions. Since you are into instrumental ambient music, you must be interested in things like clarity and tonal balance. Perhaps the value of such a plugin is more apparent for vocals-based music, since mixing vocals is really hard, but as I said, clarity and balance must be of importance to you (there is even a knob called Clarity, which I hope goes to 11 ).

Give me some days to demo it

[SparkySpark]

Give me some days to demo it

[SparkySpark]

Here is a two-minute video I made for it, trying to improve my less-than-professional sounding track.

The video uses two presets.

[SparkySpark]

Actually I have now found a Youtube video by Nammick himself.

Kind of secretive company, really!

I for one think this is really a wow factor. For an update, I'd also like to see explanations of what every knob does (perhaps in a collapsible panel) and why not also a volume leveler, so that A/B-ing yields the same volume (temporarily of course, since the overall volume and loudness are supposed to go up).

I am not sure though how this thing works on more typical pop music or country/folk/rock, rather than EDM. As I said in an earlier post, I'd really like to see more presets, especially since I have no idea what is happening behind the scenes, more than that a maximiser is involved.

[martinjuenke]

No proper demo and A/B-ing possible because I can not save a processed file in demo mode.
I stay with OZONE...

[Nammick]

Hi I am Ian (Nammick).
First of all thank everyone for taking the time to look at my product and critic it. I would like to take this opportunity to give some background context, an insight into it's Blackbox roadmap, clarify a few things e.t.c.

So quick background on my self. In high school I was quite lucky and landed a production deal with NuLife BMG which lead to a string of productions and remixes including work on 5 top 20's in the UK. Whilst doing this I studied computer sciences and have worked as programmer in all capacities from a junior and self employed right the way up-to Chief Engineer and MD of a spatial sciences company. A few years back I had a little girl and I packed it all in due to stress and wanting to be a good father. I went back to making music.

Whilst I was retraining my ears and getting up-to date with latest techniques I was finding I was doing certain actions consistently on the mastering chain to make my productions sound the way I had envisioned them too. I started to look programs like AAMS which I found to be great at flattening audio but very sterile sounding and online platforms like LandR which I found didn't quite give me what I was after. I did however like eMastereds approach - It seemed like a proper mastering chain applied sensibly for constant results (not necessarily the best when compared to a mastering engineer but a significant improvement and passible as a finished product in most circumstances). I thought to myself if I were going to do something it would be like that. Being a programmer and having played with audio / programming and signal processing I thought I would give it a shot. So I created the first version of Blackbox with no real expectation. Over the course of about 10 months without really trying I said sold enough to completely validate it as a product. So in Feb this year I resigned to work full time on a new version. I rewrote most of the codebase to be more upto date with modern c++ practices and made some big improvements on performance with things like SIMD optimisation e.t.c. I had a bout of pneumonia which put me back about 6 weeks but finally got the product to a state were I was happy with it and I had addressed all the common problems my trusty beta testers had raised and that's the version to date. I was considering going down the web portal service route but I didn't like that pricing model personally and also I wanted to add a little more control to the output.

My mission was to create a product that a producer can use to get a solid master using expressive controls and not have to understand the intricacies of mastering. I new when I put this out as a product there would be mixed feelings as automated mastering is a very touchy subject so I would like to dispel a few myths.

The benefit of not having realtime playback meant I could analyse audio both pre and post filters being applied. This meant that I could take any (almost any) audio source and augment to a way my mastering chain would improve it. I have a way of doing this efficiently ahead of time now so I can tell you what the roadmap looks like for the product

2.1 the next version which I currently have a working build will be realtime. Realtime is a little processor intensive so I will also be keeping the current workflow - you can switch between the modes using a toggle.

2.2 I will be focusing on advanced metering with measures loudness as both RMS and LUFS also side by side FFT display and stereo analysis.

2.3 EQ pancaking profiles + album mix context + batch automation + I'm open to suggestions
Or
2.3 AU / VST plugin

And a little bit about the tech undertake hood. My approach was subtlety and quality were key. All the filters use pure linear phase signal processors so they are perfect in the mastering context. All compressors have been modelled on either my Neve MBP or Maselec MLA and use convo matrix to get an true representation of analog gear hence why you get a fuller sound with Blackbox. What I am particularly proud of is the use of hyper parameters that setup all the attack release times along side zoning fundamental frequencies and harmonics to give the application consistency and musicality. You'll notice you can drive the loudness without smashing the transients and that's because changing the loudness setting doesn't just drive a limiter but instead it changes I think 28 hyper parameters that make subtle adjustments to the compressors and EQ's in the chain to compensate for the louder profile.

I apologise that I may have appeared secretive. I didn't intend to and I have only just started putting out material on this. I am happy to answer any relevant questions and again appreciate your time and ears on this.

[Nammick]

And would you guys be happier if I had intermittent silences and allow to save output file in demo mode?

[badass_billy]

Hi I am Ian (Nammick).
First of all thank everyone for taking the time to look at my product and critic it.

Level-match in your video, please.

Thank you.

[nordickvr]

@Nammick - Many thanks for the info.
Like said in the post above though, level matching is paramount.

[martinjuenke]

@Nammick - Many thanks for the info.
Like said in the post above though, level matching is paramount.

+1