KVR Audio

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Wed May 11, 2005 6:15 am

I need something along the spectral/stereo enhancement lines. I can't afford Ozone but obviously it is what I need/want. In my range there are a couple I know of. There is SpectraLIVE which seems ok. I was pretty interested in Soniformer as well but I am not sure if it will do the sort of thing I am after.

Any comments on these plugins would really help me out. I know there is already a thread going on SpectraLIVE so I am fine there. Soniformer? Any others?

Thanks

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:24 am

Anyone?

AJay · Post by **AJay** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:34 am

A good freeware VSTfx is Startdust. It's here on KVR. I use that quite a lot. It's a sort-of-frequency-conscious-compressor-enhancer thingy. Give that a try.

I can't think of others of the top of my head, I went on a VST download binge a few weeks ago and now I have them all mixed up in my head.

FEED ME VST

But Stardust stood out.

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:45 am

Cool, and thanks. I'll check that one out as well.

rpc9943 · Post by **rpc9943** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:02 am

ive tried that only good with drums so far, or individual tracks, not master bus material, right????

RonC

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:04 am

rpc9943 wrote:not master bus material, right????

Yes I am mostly after a mastering plugin. It may get used on individual tracks but the intended purpose is for after mixdown.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:07 am

I haven't thought of using Soniformer for stereo effects, but I suppose if you used it for a kind of comb filtering you might be able to get it to do that. To my knowledge it has no time based stereo enhancement functions. I think of it more as a very complex multi-band compressor. The presets are aimed at mastering compression, though, so you'd have to figure out for yourself how to get stereo effects out of it.

Have you tried Voxengo's Stereo Touch?

pheeleep · Post by **pheeleep** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:12 am

Check out Wideboy: http://www.kvraudio.com/get/865.html

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:12 am

Frippertronix wrote:I haven't thought of using Soniformer for stereo effects, but I suppose if you used it for a kind of comb filtering you might be able to get it to do that. To my knowledge it has no time based stereo enhancement functions. I think of it more as a very complex multi-band compressor. The presets are aimed at mastering compression, though, so you'd have to figure out for yourself how to get stereo effects out of it.

Have you tried Voxengo's Stereo Touch?

I think I have it. I'll also have another look at it. The thing is there are probly a combo of effects on my computer right now. For free. That I could use but time is the problem. I need a quick, lazy man's fix. I know it is not the way to go but I can't see me having the time to get a good master out of a bunch of plugins.

I had a look at Soniformer demo and I don't think it does what I am after. It seems to be more of a spectral smoothing plugin.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:14 am

morelia wrote:
rpc9943 wrote:not master bus material, right????
Yes I am mostly after a mastering plugin. It may get used on individual tracks but the intended purpose is for after mixdown.

If you want a sophisticated multi-band compressor, it would be hard to beat Soniformer2. The price is real reasonable so I'd say go for it, but beyond using the presets you will have to delve into learning to use it since it is certainly high "psycho-acoustic technology".

Myself, I'm becoming very interested in using Torben's GUP-1 as a kind of multi-band compressor before the mastering stage---that is to say, since it is tunable, you could put one on every track, then tune the compression to suit the track, rather than deal with tuning bands on a multi-band comp in the master bus. I'm excited about this prospect and will post my results later. I think I will probly grab it on the group buy.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:19 am

morelia wrote: I think I have it. I'll also have another look at it. The thing is there are probly a combo of effects on my computer right now. For free. That I could use but time is the problem. I need a quick, lazy man's fix. I know it is not the way to go but I can't see me having the time to get a good master out of a bunch of plugins.

I had a look at Soniformer demo and I don't think it does what I am after. It seems to be more of a spectral smoothing plugin.

Can you be more specific about what you want?

For just the "widening" idea, there is a lot of freeware out there, but beyond something like Ozone or maybe Waves, I don't know of really comprehensive mastering suites that have presets that would cover a lot of bases at once.

Try Room Machine also for a good "space creating" plug. It's free also.

Dave

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:29 am

To be honest I don't know. I have mostly what I want as far as effects go. But I tried SpectraLIVE on a mix and it sounded better. I have tried Ozone and it sounded great. I have Wider Boy Pro and it does some good things to a mix but there is more that can be achieved with Ozone etc. If I could afford Ozone I'd go for it but that is not an option. There may not be an option for me. Except to accept that it will take me months of chipping away to get a track I am happy with.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:36 am

morelia wrote:To be honest I don't know. I have mostly what I want as far as effects go. But I tried SpectraLIVE on a mix and it sounded better. I have tried Ozone and it sounded great. I have Wider Boy Pro and it does some good things to a mix but there is more that can be achieved with Ozone etc. If I could afford Ozone I'd go for it but that is not an option. There may not be an option for me. Except to accept that it will take me months of chipping away to get a track I am happy with.

Save those boxtops and you too could have Ozone.

I've found Stereo Touch to be pretty useful in making my synthscapes come to life a bit more---it might help you as well.

Don't give up on multi-band compression and also master limiting is very imprtant for making things sort of "jump up" and not sound so flat.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:38 am

You might try digitalfishphones Endorphin as a master limiter/compressor. It has a great "big sound" setting, just watch the input trim to avoid distortion.

Master reverb also can give things a bit more polish---another thing Ozone incorporates.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:55 am

Hey, you might want to try the incredible (and slightly secret) IQ4 plug-in - it's a pretty amazing multiband compressor.

I think I need 1 more plugin