KAUSTHUB RAVI & SIVANESH NATARAJAN
What do we have here? Four Plugins, that attempt to set foot outside boundaries,
four Plug-ins that tell you the future not only looks good but also sounds good.
OEKSOUND - SPIFF
plug-in
THE FUTURE NOT ONLY LOOKS GOOD BUT SOUNDS
GOOD!
BOZ DIGITAL LABS - PAN KNOB
plug-in
GOODBYE TO TRADITIONAL PAN KNOBS!
One of the more underrated, lesser-known companies,
Boz Digital Labs is all about straight talk. Makers of some
excellent plugins including the imperial delay, The Wall
Limiter etc, the code they live by - simple plugins with no-
nonsense functionality.
The Pan Knob does exactly what it says. It pans. The
company justifies the new replace-ment to the trusty
old pan pots on DAWs but saying that the traditional
pan knobs don’t do justice to headphone listeners. For
example, when you pan a guitar to the left the entire
signal is panned and sometimes this tends to feel
unnatural and doesn’t ensure the best translation. This is
because sometimes the low end dominates and leaves the
mix feeling lopsided.
The simple but powerful plugin has very few controls- the
pan knob, a crossover selection, and a mode selection.
It also allows you to choose between different pan law
options. The crossover is the real trick that ensures
everything sounds good. It keeps the selected portion
of the signal more centered than the rest that is being
panned. This really helps keep the sound natural and well
placed in the stereo field. It works like a charm on guitars
and synth parts in a mix.
The Pan Knob is a simple yet extremely effective plugin
that does exactly what it says. They are especially useful
for simplistic/sparse mixes which focus on specific
instruments and offer better translation on headphones.
Extremely cheap and affordable too.
36
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
Thinking outside the box has always been Oeksound’s
thing. Plugins that are more adap-tive than static which
dynamically alter the signal with minimal interference
from the engineer. Their first plugin (Soothe) was a
dynamic EQ that worked much like a multi-band but
much more intelligently. It worked only when needed,
suppressing resonances that would otherwise take a lot of
processing to take out.
Spiff brings the same dynamic style to transient
processing. Boosting and cutting transients dynamically
in true oeksound style. This plugin offers powerful
capabilities with its 2 modes, Boost, and cut. The cut
focusses on removing stuff like hard consonants, clicks,
pops, guitar pick attack noises etc. Anyone who has
dealt with these things realizes how difficult it can be
to without completely killing the source. But Spiff does
it with an elegance that is quite impressive. The Boost
mode turns the plugin into a transient enhancer. It really
can tighten up anything from drum elements to the entire
mix. The plugin does have a slight learning curve but for
most applications, the presets work so well that we’ve not
had to mess with anything more than the depth knob in
most cases.
Representing the next generation of plugins - Spiff
is smart, dynamic and specific. Complimented by a
beautiful UI, which does a great job of representing how
the plugin is working in real-time. It is a bit pricey but
undoubtedly worth it for professionals who are looking
for some real time savers.