Voxengo Elephant 5.2 mastering limiter plugin released

[Aleksey Vaneev]

December 19, 2022: Voxengo Elephant version 5.2 is now available for download. Voxengo Elephant is a mastering limiter plugin for professional audio and sound production applications, available in AAX, AudioUnit, VST, and VST3 plug-in formats, for macOS and Windows computers.

New in version 5.2:

* Added the "Spectrum, meter border" palette modifier and "Threshold line" color, visual features. The "Flat Panels" global settings is now a part of color scheme's visual features. Updated palettes.
* Made a small speed-up of GUI loading and drawing.
* Reduced visual tearing on Windows.
* Fixed an issue with popup-menus not functioning in Logic Pro on Apple M1 native.
* Added the "Auto Oversampling on Render" plug-in setting which forces "Auto" oversampling in all instances of this plug-in on render/bounce.
* Implemented "Portable Setups" support (portable settings and authorization storage), read more in the Primary User Guide.



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 “fuzz” and “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, EBU R128 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 (true-peak limiting).

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 waveform 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
* 13 predefined limiter modes
* Limiter mode editor
* Optional release stage
* Noise-shaped bit-depth converter
* RMS, true peak clipping statistics
* EBU R128 LUFS/LU metering
* 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
* 24 ms compensated processing latency
* Retina and HighDPI support

Demo version of Voxengo Elephant can be downloaded at the Voxengo website: https://www.voxengo.com/product/elephant/?eref=fo

[jtsterays]

Hey Aleksey, this seems to add a -0.2 ceiling even when it's set to 0. Any way to turn that off? Also, if I change the ceiling to a different value, does it get added to the -0.2 or does it override it?

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Take a look at the Knee setting in the mode editor - if it's enabled and greater than 0, the peak level may be lower.

[jtsterays]

Take a look at the Knee setting in the mode editor - if it's enabled and greater than 0, the peak level may be lower.

It's El5, no knee. And I don't use knee too.
Edit: user error.

[jtsterays]

Actually, it wasn't user error. I did some setting and the cause was the lookahead. Above 0.41 it's normal, but below it starts to show -0.1, and after 0.20 and below it's -0.2. Both EL-4 & 5 do this, I haven't tried the other modes. Oversampling on or off doesn't change anything.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Actually, it wasn't user error. I did some setting and the cause was the lookahead. Above 0.41 it's normal, but below it starts to show -0.1, and after 0.20 and below it's -0.2. Both EL-4 & 5 do this, I haven't tried the other modes. Oversampling on or off doesn't change anything.

In the case of very low lookahead values, it's an intentional behavior, not a bug. On average, this registers lower peak values, but on some program material the peaks may be higher by 0.2dB, reaching the expected peak level. You may try running heavy limiting on various material to see this. It would of course be great to have a 100% predictable behavior at low lookahead values, but the transfer function is so short, it can't completely counteract high-frequency oscillations of the program material, not enough resolution. Especially when oversampling is in use.

p.s. I'll add a note in the User Guide about such behavior - missed that originally.

[jtsterays]

Actually, it wasn't user error. I did some setting and the cause was the lookahead. Above 0.41 it's normal, but below it starts to show -0.1, and after 0.20 and below it's -0.2. Both EL-4 & 5 do this, I haven't tried the other modes. Oversampling on or off doesn't change anything.

In the case of very low lookahead values, it's an intentional behavior, not a bug. On average, this registers lower peak values, but on some program material the peaks may be higher by 0.2dB, reaching the expected peak level. You may try running heavy limiting on various material to see this. It would of course be great to have a 100% predictable behavior at low lookahead values, but the transfer function is so short, it can't completely counteract high-frequency oscillations of the program material, not enough resolution. Especially when oversampling is in use.

p.s. I'll add a note in the User Guide about such behavior - missed that originally.

I see, thanks for the explanation.