Dynasone

So this is now a defunct product, as Prosoniq has quietly moved more into the background in pro audio development. I used to use this all the time, so I thought I'd drop a review for it.

Dynasone was Prosoniq's attempt at a fix-your-mix mastering solution. It's basically an all-in-one mastering toolbox for dummies, promising a more professional sheen on your tracks. In reality, it proves to usually sound aggressive and overly bright, requiring as much fine-tuning as it would take to use separate compressors, limiters, multiband compressors and exciters. That being said, it does offer all these things at once, and these are generally of high quality, especially for The Year 2000.

Where I found Dynasone eventually the most useful was as an insert on tracks. The bass synthesizer is a useful effect and the compressors control bass quite nicely. The exciter is good and smooth at moderate levels.

However, the big features of Dynasone, the AUTOMIX™ feature, doesn't really provide the transparent, polishing effects as advertised. AUTOMIX™ essentially rides the faders of the multiband compressor, with audible results. I found Dynasone sounded best when this was turned off, which basically turns it into a fairly standard mastering chain. And when you consider Dynasone's controls were small and finicky for the days when 640x480 were standard resolutions, it's getting downright hard to read these days.

It's too bad; I bought this with high hopes, and maybe some further development jazzing up the algorithms could've saved this plugin, but instead it'll fade out as a rarely-used afterthought, like most of Prosoniq's VST line. If you still have it, it may be worth a re-visit for balancing individual tracks.