Sugar

Sugar is an "Audio Sweetener" plug-in. Conceived by a team of producers and mixers lead by Fab Dupont, Sugar is tagged as a 'secret weapon to hit the sweet spot on every mix'.

A Complete Color Palette
Sugar is an audio color palette based on classic tricks used by top engineers to achieve great tones. Professional mixing engineers spend years refining techniques and processes to create the magical sounds the public hears on finished records. Beyond straight EQ and compression, these top engineers use processes that can be complicated to set up and tweak, and often require expensive gear to achieve. Sugar is a shortcut to those punchy kick drums, thick basses, sharp snares, edgy guitars, airy and creamy vocals, warm mixes and wide masters and much more.

Sugar saves time by centralizing these processes in one analog-inspired plug-in without sacrificing the ability to fine tune for a professional experience. Sugar's four effects are routed in parallel processing and work in mono, stereo and M/S (Mid-Side) mode.

Sugar's signal flow is straightforward: the chosen effects are blended with the dry signal and routed through a High-Pass/Low-Pass linear phase filter combination to reign in the extreme amount of energy Sugar can add to the raw signal (There can be such thing as too much Sugar). This blended signal is then run through the Saturation section of the plug-in, where three carefully chosen saturation algorithms can tame unruly transients, add more grit to your sound, or simply destroy it in devastatingly creative ways.

Sugar's interface is designed to streamline necessary but otherwise repetitive tasks and to allow engineers to dial in the perfect setting very fast and intuitively so they can focus on the music, not the tools.

A Linear Phase Delight
Sugar's four crossover bands and LP & HP filters are built on high grade linear-phase technology to avoid any of the common phase issues associated with parallel processing. This makes Sugar safe for 2-mix or mastering duties by guaranteeing the integrity of the source signal.

Sugar Learning Center
To cut the user's learning curve of this new tool, Process.Audio created an expansive Learning Center featuring many video tutorials on how to best use Sugar on distinct audio sources, as well as a thorough run-through of all the features.

Sugar owners can also enjoy a full 20-minute mixing video tutorial by prominent engineer Fab Dupont, demonstrating how he exclusively used Sugar to mix the soundtrack of the plug-in's release video. Users can freely download the source session of the mix and look at the settings in their own DAW. The session is available in Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Studio One, and Ableton formats.

{See video at top of page}

Key Features:

• 4 bands of processing (Low, Mid, High, Air), with 2 different colors per band.
• 8 Colors: Thick, Punch, Warm, Broad, Shine, Excite, Yin, Yang.
• Jog wheel blending knob.
• High-pass and Low-pass filters for fine tuning.
• 3 Saturation circuits: Drive, Distort, and Destroy.
• Linear Phase Mode for the 4 band crossovers and the 2 filters.
• Level Management to prevent bursts of energy.
• FX-only switch in order to hear what Sugar adds to your sound.
• Input/Output gain.
• Works in mono, stereo and M/S mode.

Minimum System Requirements:

• OS: Windows (64-bit) version 7, 8, 10 or higher or a Mac with OS X 10.9 or higher.
• Format: VST 2.4, VST 3, AU, AAX (native).
• Protection: iLok Cloud or iLok 2+ compatible.

Sugar can be tested with a free 14-day trial using a free iLok Cloud account or with a user's iLok 2+ dongle.