Is Gullfoss any good?

[kritikon]

Can't try it out at the moment - set of 12hr nights and got a rare quiet moment so I had a surf around and looked at their site - heard it mentioned before. Looks like an Eq based mix enhancer kind of thing? Does it sprinkle magic dust and/or do anything useful? Might be tempted with the offer on at the moment (sounds a bit overpriced at the normal price IMO). I used to quite like enhancers - got a soft spot for the BBE ones (still got a h/w one somewhere stashed away) though didn't like harmonic enhancers much. I might be tempted by some new fangled enhancer gizmo///

[DJ Warmonger]

It's amazing, and unique.

I made a video test of it one year ago:

[Passing Bye]

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[v1o]

Gullfoss is its on thing really. It's not a sonic/harmonic enhancer in the traditional sense. It kinda does lots of different things; frequency unmasking, instrument separation, resonance removal, transient enhancement, low frequency/high frequency enhancement and EQ. And it's not a blunt tool to fix obvious issues with a mix - there are better tools for that such as Oeksound Soothe. It more something you add later on after you've got a good mix to add the extra 3% of polish. It will often add extra EQ moves that you wouldn't have thought of yourself but enhance the mix in a pleasing way.

[Ploki]

It’s a FFT based eq tool.

Similar tools are iZotope spectral shaper, melda mspectraldynamics, baby audio smoothe operator, mastering the mix reso and of course Soothe2.

Soothe2 is like the “tame” control of gullfoss on steroids.

Then there’s an outlier Voxengo TEOTE, which does a similar thing as gullfos but with fixed filter bank and multiband dynamics.

When i got teote, i sold gullfoss, because i find teote much more faithful to source and esp because its very gentle with transients and has predictable (and barely present) phase distortion.
It doesn’t do “tame” as well as gullfoss because its more coarse, but i have soothe for that when i need it.

I wholeheartedly recommend gullfoss if you want an all in one resonance supressor/rebalancer, but there are separate tools that imo do a few things bit better, but its more expensive and less convenient.
Be wary of your transients tho, when you hear it you cant unhear it

[andymcbain]

It seemed very effective at what it claimed to do when I tried it out on my master bus, but I couldn't unhear the kind of glossy "sheen" that it gave everything. Definitely needs to be tested on your own material as it's sound is not for everyone.

[kritikon]

Thanks. I read those 2 other threads linked...not sure it's a kind of thing I'd use much with the music I make. Initially assumed it was more a pixie dust thing. I'm trying hard to not buy silly amounts of plugins this time around, and I strongly suspect anything like Gulfoss is just me wanting toys. Obviously sounds useful for certain specific tasks such as resonances etc - TBH that's not the kind of detail I pay much attention too. I'll likely give it a try when I get some time to play. Sounds like definitely not an impulse must-have buy just because it's on offer. I shall curb my enthusiasm...

[DJErmac]

Well, it’s true that this plugin is able to do amazing things, it’s an excellent plugin. But indeed, do you NEED it ? I own a licence for it... and never use it.
I thought this might help me in some situations, but the thing is that I rarely find any situation when I can’t do without it. I always find a way to tame the frequencies I don’t want with an EQ and never think about Gulfoss.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I use Gulfoss regularly and think it's terrific. When mixing, I'll throw it on synths when needed, I've used it on guitars, the 2-bus. I think it's one of those invaluable, unique tools. Doesn't go on every track in a mix by every means (except when used on the 2-bus of course) but I might use 2-3 instances of it where I think it helps. Example: I've got a mix wish a bell-like melody played by Hive (WT oscs) and Gullfoss just does something that makes it sound better in the mix after only a few seconds. It's smoother and fits the mix better. I'm not sure I would've gotten that same effect using something else.

Note: I tried to like Soothe, which was discussed earlier...it just never did anything for me when demoing, and I don't see it as a Gulfoss replacement anyway. I never used Teote, already having and being happy with Gulfoss, just never saw the point - but that one did seem much more in line with Gulfoss.

Anyway, I vote yet to Gulfoss! One of those plugins I wasn't sure about and still use regularly two years after first getting it. Can't say that a lot about a whole lot of plugins.

[4damind]

A quite interesting tool even if I find Voxengo Teote better.
I understand Gullfoss as a dynamic EQ with a lot of bands. The difference between the tools is probably what the developers take as a reference curve. Ok, surely there are some other specifics of the implentation as well
If the mix is already balanced, these tools are of little use. Otherwise they can help to get a mix in the right direction.
You can also use these tools more as a guide to see/hear where you could improve something.

[plexuss]

I prefer to use Gullfoss to Teote when it comes to mastering. Gullfoss sounds better to my ears. I use Teote for more overt transient processing vs general spectral clean-up. For serious resonances I use Soothe2 usually. Gullfoss is on my mastering template and I use it on every project. I'm not a fan of the company in terms of some of the ways they've interacted with me but that doesn't take away from the quality of their product and those issues were related pre-sales issues I had. But just to note that I didn't find the Gullfoss people very enjoyable to work with and so I avoid needing to interact with them. Gullfoss has been solid on my macpro 5,1 macPOS 10.14 Reaper 6.

[Ploki]

A quite interesting tool even if I find Voxengo Teote better.
I understand Gullfoss as a dynamic EQ with a lot of bands. The difference between the tools is probably what the developers take as a reference curve. Ok, surely there are some other specifics of the implentation as well
If the mix is already balanced, these tools are of little use. Otherwise they can help to get a mix in the right direction.
You can also use these tools more as a guide to see/hear where you could improve something.

Gullfoss is a FFT based EQ, it's technically "a lot of bands" (probably 256-2048, more you get time-domain smearing) but not really because it's a different process than having split bands.
It's either linear phase, or the phase changes with the amount of processing, like with dynamic EQs.

TEOTE is a "fixed filter bank" - it's made of actual crossovers (3-64), not linear phase, so it has a bit of phase distortion - but its CONSTANT and its the same no matter the amount of processing. if you like how it sounds when it does NOTHING, it won't f**k phase when it does something.

Gullfoss on the other hand will change phase response as its processing, wreaking havoc to phase and transients.
Unless you use linear phase, which has pre-ringing.

I personally find Teote less intrusive, but before i had it i used Gullfoss on masters from time to time. Kept the license for about 4months, but i either used Soothe or Teote for the tasks i had gullfoss for initially, so i sold it.

Initially assumed it was more a pixie dust thing.

Try Voxengo PeakBuster for a pixie-dust type plugin

[4damind]

Have the Gullfoss developers ever described somewhere how they generate their reference curve?
If I remember correctly Teote uses white noise as a reference, Alexey had once described this in a thread. The description for Gullfoss is a bit unclear, as if this is a very special audio model (of course it could be just marketing and they use something rather simple internally).
However, Gullfoss requires little CPU compared to Teote at the maximum number of bands. That's why I wouldn't have expected that Gullfoss uses many more bands.

[Ploki]

Have the Gullfoss developers ever described somewhere how they generate their reference curve?
If I remember correctly Teote uses white noise as a reference, Alexey had once described this in a thread. The description for Gullfoss is a bit unclear, as if this is a very special audio model (of course it could be just marketing and they use something rather simple internally).
However, Gullfoss requires little CPU compared to Teote at the maximum number of bands. That's why I wouldn't have expected that Gullfoss uses many more bands.

If i recall correctly not white noise, alexey said that he analysed top productions or something like that and create a curve out of that. If you feed white noise to Teote it will try to balance it, it wont remain flat, neither will pink noise. (Same is true for gullfoss)

The things is that bands in TEOTE are fixed crossovers (literaly HP/LP pairs) which means 100% pristine time domain resolution, while "bands" in Gullfoss are technically frequency bins, not bands. They're split in a completely different manner than Teote, with FFT you always either sacrifice spectral (number of bins) or time-domain resolution. There's no way around it as far as i know

[plexuss]

No matter what, with these kinds of processors there will always be comprimises and side effects of DSP approaches. Whether its ringing, phase issues etc we still use these tools. I think it comes down to if these artifacts are controlled in such a way as to not negatively impact the audio. Whether its Teote or Gullfoss or liner phase or minimal phase or ringing or phase or whatever, it doen't matter. What matters is how a given tool sounds. Gullfoss and Teote both sound great. Whatever comprimises were made, both devs did a good job managing them. When I buy from a dev, I am not as concerned about functional redundancy with other tools I have as much as I am the approach the dev took to mitigate nasty artifacts and provide nice sound.