Sonalksis aim to master the fields of limiting, stereo imaging and dithering, but will they help your mix cut though the competition? Sonalksis plug-ins have been firm favourites among the cm team for many years, so when we heard that the company were releasing a range of mastering plug-ins, we were excited, to say the least. And now they're here, available separately or as part of two packages. The full bundle, reviewed here, is called the Mastering Suite and consists of Ultimate-D, StereoTools, MaxLimit and MultiLimit. Each one comes in VST, RTAS and AU plug-in formats for Mac and PC (although only Mac for the AU ones, of course). The big draw of the Mastering Suite is bound to be its pair of limiters, so we'll start with the MaxLimit program maximiser. Menace Ii Society Download. This offers variable release time, down to 1ms, and an automatic mode, where the timing is dependent on the audio material.

Professional grade stereo imaging tools. StereoTools is a relatively simple but highly. Features common to all Sonalksis plug-ins in the Universal Plug-in User Guide.

The Smooth knob isn't a typical limiter parameter - low settings are said to be better for all-out volume maximisation, whereas turning it up aids transparency. Finally, there's a clipping stage (with digital and analogue 'flavours') for increasing the level at the expense of added distortion. A limiter lives or dies by its quality of sound, and our first problem with MaxLimit is that when pushed, the sound gets louder, as expected, but becomes too smooth and rounded, and you can hear the limiter working. It doesn't distort, but it never achieves the kind of weight, bounce or punch that the likes of PSP Xenon, Voxengo Elephant or Waves L3 Ultramaximizer can manage. However, the very thing that reduces MaxLimit's efficacy for mastering makes it superb at accentuating things like reverb and delay tails when used on mix elements. Funnily enough, we got more mileage out of MaxLimit as a mixing tool. We have to say that we're not keen on the metering in MaxLimit.