Our friends at Eventide, the makers of Tverb & Fission, recently partnered with a new plug-in developer called Newfangled Audio. Both developers have clearly been working very hard on some new and very unique EQ & dynamics plug-ins. The first plug-in released by this partnership was EQuivocate, a 26 paragraphic band Mel scale based EQ plug-in. EQuivocate was released as a free time-limited download (ends 31st October 2017) followed quickly by the release of Elevate, a new multiband mastering plug-in which appears to take limiting applications to new levels.
What Is Elevate?
Elevate continues the same Mel Scale theme found in EQuivocate featuring a 26 band filter bank that separates audio into frequency bands sympathetic to the frequency curve of the human ear. Elevate uses smart algorithms to produce optimal limiting, transient shaping, and spectral clipping for each band that can be fine tuned to taste.
Eli Krantzberg from Logic Pro Expert was given early access to Elevate. Watch his video review to understand how this dynamics processor differs from traditional limiter plug-ins.
Main Features
- Analyzes and alters the gain, speed and transients of each filter band in real time
- Automatically adapts the attack, release and look-ahead parameters for each filter band to greatly reduce "pumping" and breathing artefacts and perceived distortion
- Preserves or emphasizes fast transients to avoid squashing your mix
- Manipulates transients across the critical bands to preserve the attacks from kick drums, snares and cymbals, without affecting the entire mix
- Uses linear phase auditory filters — based on the Mel Scale — to manipulate the audio in a way that is natural to your inner ear
- Solo the output of one band (or a number of bands) to hone in on problem frequencies, tweak transients or alter gain
- Auto Output Level feature compares the limited signal to non-limited signals with the same amount of gain allowing you to easily hear what impact the processing is having on your sound
- Spectral Clipper can be used to overdrive the final output without affecting the tonal balance or allowing the signal to get “tubby.” Perfect for a more aggressive sound
- Six different types of metering allow you to keep an eye on every aspect of your output audio
Pro Tools Expert Thoughts On Elevate
Dan Cooper at Pro Tools Expert was also given early access to Elevate. Here's what Dan has to say about Elevate:
Elevate provides a totally new approach to multiband limiting. The concept is so unique it did feel a bit daunting to use at first, however, when I got my head around the Mel Scale layout and all the different dynamic components Elevate quickly became a very trustworthy tool that I found sounded very musical, even when squashing audio way beyond levels that would normally make a "traditional" limiter distort. In tests I found Elevate fairly heavy on CPU but do bear in mind that I'm currently running a 2011 Mac Pro with 32 Gig of RAM. Hearing is believing, I strongly recommend you download the demo and try Elevate for yourself as it really does take the limiter plug-in genre to the next level.
Visit the Eventide website to download the demo of Elevate.
Introductory Pricing: Elevate costs $99 through October 31, 2017.