CGII

Chris Gehringer, Senior Mastering Engineer & Partner of Sterling Sound, was so taken with Metric Halo's Sontec MES-432D9D that when Rick Carson approached him about doing a signature plug-in, he was was ready to go.

I wanted to release something that would help engineers master in todays modern environment. So with that being said, we've created my plug-in (CGII) which helps you gain level to loud tracks and simultaneously add character.

Our intention going forward is to create tools that I have always wanted to make amazing sounding masters - tools that are necessary for today's music.

Chris Gehringer, Sterling Sound

The result of the collaboration is CGII - a mastering dynamics finishing toolkit.

CGII is comprised of two uniquely complementary dynamics enhancement sections, a new True Peak Limiting stage, DC blocking and dither with LUFS/true peak metering via spiffy tube filament displays, all operating at up to 16x over-sampling (or none at all - depending on your tastes).

The design prioritizes musical integrity and ease of use, with the ability to add effective loudness, weight and definition without diminishing spatial depth and visceral impact the way traditional dynamics processors often do.

Use CGII to make your masters loud without losing the clarity, density and heft of the original mix. Even if you are working with a mix that is already loud, you can give it a little extra, without adding unpleasant distortion and without flattening out the material and sucking the life out of the low end. At the same time you can control the true-peak level of the program to ensure that there are no inter-sample overs.

We've also included dither, a DC-block filter and complete LUFS/True Peak metering so that you can place CGII at the end of your master chain as a one-stop shop for final processing.

While CGII's original spec was to make things good & loud simultaneously, you will find that it is wonderful in a variety places in your mixing and processing chain.

Use the Loudness processor to excite harmonics. Use the Density processor to bring up the bloom and raise low-level clarity without affecting transients. Or simply put the incredibly transparent true-peak lookahead limit any place you need it.

Key Features:

• World-class Signal Processing and Workflow.
• User-Selectable Over-sampling (up to 16x).
• Density process effectively increases perceived program level by pushing up previously masked detail without affecting higher level peak dynamics.
• Loudness process gives you transparent increase in RMS level while maintaining peak levels below full-scale.
• True Peak Limiter transparently controls output levels, ensuring that the true-peak level never exceeds the specified ceiling.
• DC-block filter removes any residual DC offset.
• Dither allows you to dither the output to 16 through 24-bits.
• Nixie Tubes provide dB readout of any of the user-selectable meter values (LUFS Integrated, LUFS Short Term (or Hold), LUFS Momentary (or Hold), True Peak or TP Hold).
• Many presets included.
• Adjustable UI size.
• MH Preset Manager - Provides cross-platform presets.

{See video at top of page}