There are plenty of equalizer plugins on the market, but not every one is called a ‘mastering equalizer’. There’s no real difference between a regular equalizer and a mastering equalizer; however, certain features are usually associated with mastering EQs. These include parametric controls, mid/side or left/right processing, and proportional Q. LemurAudio, a new Czech developer, has now jumped into the audio plugin market. Their first plugin is SIMON, a mastering equalizer.
Broadly speaking, the SIMON EQ is similar to the Focusrite BLUE hardware EQ. SIMON features three parametric EQ bands, plus high and low shelf controls. Each band includes a range of stepped frequencies, variable Q, and variable gain controls. The gain per band is plus or minus 9 dB. The low shelf control is selectable between 50 and 100 Hz. There are controls for stereo, mid/side, linked processing, automatic gain compensation, and overall output level.
One key feature that separates SIMON from other EQs is saturation. The plugin includes OP-AMP emulation with multiple settings. These include Digital, OP-AMP, and OP-AMP LP (linear phase) is three modes: Equal (both channels with the same harmonics), Modern (subtle left/right variations), and Vintage (distinctly different left/right variations). Saturation drive is controlled by an input trim dial. SIMON also includes a list of presets.
I have two other plugins that are billed as mastering EQs. One is the Kiive Audio M5133, which is also based on the Focusrite. The M5133 and SIMON offer a similar feature set. The other is the IK Multimedia’s Lurssen mastering EQ (based on the hardware at Lurssen Mastering). It’s a similar set of controls, but no Q control; however, the range of frequency gain is as high as plus or minus 34 dB. While this sound high, the proportional curve gets very tight at the high end.
In the end, any of these three do a great job. I did find the SIMON interface to be more fluid and reactive as I made adjustments. For example, resize the UI simply by pulling on the corner of the panel. Sure, it’s marketed as a mastering EQ, but you can definitely use it anywhere else that you’d apply an equalizer effect. In fact, there are presets for other instrument types and not just mastering.
LemurAudio’s introductory price of $29 for a perpetual license with five activations is really a no-brainer. No iLok or license management application required. Plus a demo is available if you simply want to check it out.
Addendum – I originally wrote this review based on the 1.0 version of SIMON. Recently LemurAudio released SIMON2 with some additional features. These include high-pass and low-pass filtering, an additional hardware emulation style, and a change in how the UI skin colors are selected. SIMON2 is free for owners of the original version. When you install it, both versions are retained to insure compatibility with existing projects on which you might have used SIMON.
I wrapped up my previous post talking about grading in just one node. I’m going to elaborate on that now. When your timeline working space is set to DaVinci Wide Gamut/Intermediate, you are working in a colorspace-aware environment. There actually is no reason to use CSTs, LUTs, DRTs, and other tools. Those other tools are simply shortcuts. You can actually grade manually and the Resolve software takes care of the colorspace conversion issues.
The DaVinci Resolve Color Wheels palette includes three modes to balance and adjust exposure and contrast for your shots. (I will skip HDR Wheels in this discussion.) From left to right, you have Lift/Gamma/Gain wheels, Color Bars, and Log Wheels (Shadow/Midtone/Highlights). All three feature an RGB Offset control and common adjustment values for contrast, shadow, highlights, saturation, detail, etc. The Lift/Gamma/Gain Wheels and the Color Bars adjust the same parameters, but using different controls.
The difference between the Lift/Gamma/Gain wheels and the Log Wheels is how the three regions overlap in one set of controls versus the other. The Shadow/Midtone/Highlights (Log) wheels control tighter sections of the image with less overlap. You can use any of the controls (as well as HDR Wheels) on any type of image – SDR, HDR, log, Rec 709, etc. It’s whatever does the job you need.
While the steps I’m going to outline are specific to DaVinci Resolve, you can use a similar set of processes with the internal color correction tools in Premiere and Final Cut Pro. This workflow is ideal when correcting log footage, but can also be used on regular Rec 709 video. If you are working with log footage, be sure to turn off any color management features that might automatically convert it into Rec 709 before starting.
Step 1 – Exposure/Contrast – Select the Log Wheel panel. Adjust the ‘rotary dials’ at the bottom of the Shadow and Highlights wheels. (These are the same as the rings around the trackballs on the hardware panels.) Drop the Shadows to about the 10% range on the waveform scope. Raise the Highlights to about the 90% range on the waveform scope. Adjust the Contrast control to spread out the image a bit more. Adjust the Pivot control to shift the midpoint of the contrast range brighter or darker.
Step 2 – Saturation – Increase Saturation. The default value is 50. Depending on the appearance, increasing that to somewhere between 65 and 75 should be about right.
Step 3 – Curves – Start with the Custom Curve and add points at about 1/3 and 2/3 along the line. Shift the sections above and below slightly to create a subtle s-curve. This will result in a more filmic appearance to the image contrast. However, making these changes will often add a saturation build-up in the dark and bright areas of the image. One of the keys to the ARRI ALEXA color science is that saturation is decreased at the extremes. Select the Luma Vs Sat Curve and add points at about the 20% and 55% points. Now drag down the two ends of the curve line. This will decrease saturation in the shadow and highlight ranges. This transition should be gradual. Depending on the image content, you may or may not want to drag the line all the way down to 0.
Step 4 – RGB Offset/Printer Lights – The last step is to adjust color balance as needed. You can do this with the Temperature and Tint controls, but it’s often preferable to use the Offset wheel. The ‘rotary dial’ under the wheel controls global exposure. Adjust the wheel to change global color balance by using the mouse or the offset trackball on one of Blackmagic’s control panels. The numbers under the wheel represent the specific RGB values and default to 25/25/25. However, this balance can also be adjusted using Printer Lights, which is what these numbers indicate.
Printer Lights were how a film color timer (colorist) corrected a film image. DaVinci Resolve uses a digital equivalent that correlates to the Offset wheel. You can also adjust the RGB ratio using the keyboard’s number pad as hotkeys. These can be adjusted in plus or minus full, half, or quarter Printer Light increments. Enter values for red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow. For example, the 7, 8, and 9 number keys give you one full Printer Light increase for red, green, and blue, respectively. Type 7 and the Offset value for red changes from 25 to 26 and the image becomes slightly more red.
Step 5 – Additional Corrections – By now you should have a pretty good looking image as a starting point. From here it’s easy to push more stylized color grading into the the three regions of the image using the Shadow/Midtone/Highlights wheels in the Log panel. Or hop to the Lift/Gamma/Gain wheels for a broader treatment.
Everything that I’ve covered has all been done in a single node. Adding more nodes is purely optional. For example, you might want to add a film grain texture. No sweat. Add a second serial node and apply the Film Grain effect. Adjust the grain settings to taste. The possibilities with DaVinci Resolve are nearly limitless. Just be sure to start with a solid foundation, which can be a simple as just one node.
Paradox – Stereo Distortion is primarily a distortion filter to add saturation and drive to instruments. It works particularly well with electric guitars. You have the usual drive and warmth controls, but then the Advanced menu lets you tweak this further. For example, you can control the frequency of the drive signal impacting the saturation. There’s also an Age control that adjusts the degradation timing of the harmonics.
Paradox – Mod Filter is like an auto-wah guitar effect. There are filter sweep range settings for high and low points along with resonance settings. In the Advanced menu you get control of filter types, tempo, and more. In my test mix, when I applied this to a guitar track, I ended up with a musical sound that was almost synth-like. A very cool effect indeed.
Paradox – PlasmaVerb is a plate-style reverb effect with additional modulation controls. You have controls for contours, spacing, delay, and decay. In the Advanced menu you can control modulation parameters. While you can use this effect on any instrument or vocal, it works ideally well for guitars.
As with most other Kiive Audio effects, there’s a standard top bar to access presets, input and output level controls, and meter calibration. You can also access presets from the front panel of the plugin UI.
Bonus Round – Lunchbox Amp Sim
This one isn’t new, but something I also used on my guitar tracks. I’m a Logic Pro user. It comes with a number of nice guitar and base amplifier simulations. I also have a few third-party software amps. Kiive’s Lunchbox Amp holds up nicely to these. It seems to be based on a Vox amp and includes four cabinet options. In addition to its EQ settings, you have three integrated stomp boxes (guitar effects pedals) – overdrive, echo, and reverb. Each can be enabled/disabled and adjusted separately.
You might already be familiar with Kiive’s channel strip emulations, collaboration with AudioScape, or other mix effects. These new endeavors expand Kiive Audio as a broad option for musical effects. Kiive plugins are available individually or in bundles and offer a 14-day, full-featured trial. There’s simple authorization for purchased effects, which match all of the standard audio plugin formats.
This approach works well, but DCTL effects have two downsides. The first is that usually two CST (color space transform) nodes are required at both ends of your node tree. That’s to move you from a log camera space to the intermediate DaVinci space and then finally out to Rec 709. The second is that these DCTL effects are usually adjusted by sliders. Therefore, they require you to use the mouse and can’t be controlled from one of the DaVinci color panels. That can be quite fatiguing on your hands and wrists, especially if you are older and working a timeline with hundreds of clips to grade.
In this post, I’m offering four different ways to keep things simple without overthinking your workflow.
Referent
I recently ran across Cullen Kelly’s free Referent LUTs. Kelly is a colorist and YouTuber, whose website offers a number of tools and services. Referent is a bundle of camera-specific .cube LUTs (color look-up tables). Each is designed for Resolve as a DRT (display rendered transform) – not to be confused with a DaVinci timeline file.
Each LUT transforms a camera’s log space (like ARRI Log-C or Sony S-Log) to Rec 709. The bundle includes 11 folders organized by camera manufacturer with one or two LUTs in each. These get installed into Resolve’s LUT folder (Project Settings > Color Management > Open LUT Folder). You can also use these on-set in order to view a camera’s output as corrected video in a monitor.
The philosophy behind the Referent LUTs is twofold. First, it eliminates the need to use other LUTs or CSTs in order to convert log camera footage. Second, the approach is to grade in nodes applied before the node with one of these LUTs. By doing so, you are working in the native color space of that camera. These LUTs are not purely technical LUTs, which is why they are considered DRTs. There’s a bit of ‘creative adjustment’ made in these LUTs.
Camera-based grading
Set up the project as you normally would. Typically that’s using DaVinci Wide Gamut/Intermediate for the timeline and Rec 709-A (or Rec 709-Scene) as the output (on a Mac). Generally a node tree of about five to seven nodes is plenty. For example, Nodes 1, 2, and 3 would be for the primary and two steps of secondary grading. Node 4 gets the Referent LUT for that camera type (ARRI, Sony, Blackmagic, etc). Nodes 5, 6, and 7 would be for additional tweaks and ‘looks’, such as film grain, a film stock, etc. Most of your color correction happens in the first few nodes before the conversion to Rec 709 in the fourth node. This means that exposure, contrast, saturation, temperature, tint, etc are all being altered while still inside of the camera’s native color space.
If you have various clips in the timeline from a mixture of cameras, then each camera type would get the specific LUT intended for that camera model’s color science. There are ways to group clips of the same camera together, as well as to work with a single grade for the ‘look’ portion across the entire timeline. For instance, I often add film grain and a film emulation ‘look’ as timeline nodes.
You can use Freelab to convert camera log to Rec 709 as an OFX (Open FX) in Resolve. However, Colourlab AI also offers a set of free stylized looks. You can import these into the Freelab plugin to create a nice starting point to your grade. If you only use Freelab, the workflow is like Referent. Therefore, apply some nodes before and after the node the Freelab node as needed. Unlike Referent (but like CineDream described below). it can also be applied as an effect in the Resolve Studio edit page. This gives you some grading options without shifting to the Color page.
CineDream
I’ve written about CineDream in the context of Final Cut Pro, but the same installation also adds plugins to Premiere and DaVinci Resolve Studio. For Resolve, it adds three OFX (Open FX) plugins that can be applied to clips in the edit timeline or to nodes in the Color page. The Full Editor effect is a conduit linked to the standalone CineDream application, which is part of the installation. Apply the effect, open it and now you’re working in the CineDream application. When you are finished, apply the graded look to the clip in Resolve.
In addition to the CineDream Full Editor effect, the other two effects are the Basic Correction and Final Grading plugins. These work inside of Resolve and don’t send you out to the standalone CineDream application. You can literally do all of your grading in two nodes in the Color page or with both effects stacked onto a clip in the Edit page. Apply the Basic Correction effect to the first node for log conversion and primary color correction. Add the Final Grading effect to the second node for film emulation, including film stocks, halation, bloom, and grain.
I’ll skip the explanation of how to use the controls, because it’s essentially the same as I’ve discussed in my previous articles about CineDream and Final Cut Pro. Refer back to those for more details.
Or, just go commando
I’ve described two nice ways to work; but, conversion LUTs, CSTs, and DRTs are simply shortcuts. There’s no rule that says you have to work that way. Resolve is color space-aware, so with the timeline set to DWG/Intermediate, there’s no reason you couldn’t just manually grade camera log clips in a single node – no conversion nodes required.
The Resolve interface specifically includes Log Wheels for that reason and even the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel offers a Log mode. Grading log footage from scratch might not be as mathematically accurate as using a technical conversion. However, when you are color-correcting footage, you are adding style and visual enhancement, not simply converting the footage to Rec 709. That’s how I used to grade in the early days of RED and ARRI footage and it was perfectly fine then and still is today.
This method of grading can all be done in a single node. Add more nodes if you need to use windows to isolate areas within the shot – or to apply effects like film grain or film stock emulations.
Whichever solution you prefer, the end result is best with some practice on a range of clips and camera types. If you do a lot of regular color correction work in DaVinci Resolve, then I think an investment in at least the micro panel makes sense. In the long run, you’ll work faster, get better results, and save on wrist fatigue.
There are tons of audio plugins on the market that emulate vintage hardware. A few companies buck that trend by taking a modern approach – vintage in sound when called for, but with modern processing approaches and interface design. Austria’s sonible is a front runner in this space, offering innovative design coupled with what they call Sonic Intelligence. In short that’s their approach to artificial intelligence in audio plugins.
The latest in sonible’s ‘smart:’ product line is smart:chain, which is a combination of effects integrated into a single plugin. However, it goes far beyond traditional console channel strip plugins, such as the classic SSL 4K emulations. When you apply multiple instances of smart:chain to individual tracks, each of those tracks appear inside all of the smart:chain interfaces. Open a single instance of smart:chain and you can access and control the settings for any other smart:chain insert. Using smart:chain broadly across your entire mix almost makes it like a DAW within your DAW by providing central session control.
Start by analyzing the track. This enables smart:chain to automatically create its best match for the settings to apply to that track. You can give it a head start by selecting the closest option for track type, such as Drums-Kick or Guitar-Electric. Otherwise, leave in on Universal and let the plugin’s analysis make the best fit. Play the track and hit the big green button. Let it run until the analysis is complete. Do this for each and every track to which you’ve applied smart:chain. This provides a starting point for the mix. Once the yellow exclamation mark icon next to the track name disappears, learning has been completed.
Seven processing modules in a single chain
As a combo plugin, smart:chain features seven basic processes that flow in this order: Gate, Equalizer, De-Esser/De-Harsher, Input Rider, Compressor, Saturator, and Clipper. If you look at the center of the interface, the flow of these modules is left-to-right across the top and then left-to-right again across the bottom set. When you run the analysis pass, each function is automatically optimized for that track. You can enable/disable any individual process, as well as manually tweak the settings. However, you cannot change the processing order like some other channel strip plugins. Depending on the module, there are additional speed and style settings, like aggressive, smooth, fast, slow, etc. The De-Harsher control is selected for any instrument type, but then automatically switches to the De-Esser mode for vocal tracks.
Most of these effects are pretty straightforward and operate like other individual sonible plugins. So, the equalizer section works like smart:EQ 4 and the compressor like smart:comp 3 – each with a similar set of controls. The equalizer might require some more explanation, as it’s different from other digital EQs. In fact, if you’ve used the Logic Pro Mastering Assistant, the type of EQ curve derived there will look similar to the one in smart:chain.
After analysis, the result is an EQ curve with a number of small boosts and dips throughout. The intent is to improve the clarity of the track, rather than broadly boost or attenuate bass, midrange, or treble. You can globally increase or the decrease the intensity of those volume changes by pulling the blue line up or down. There’s also a warm-to-bright slider on the left, which creates a tilt-shift change in the angle of the EQ curve. Finally, double-click into the EQ graph to add manual points, in order to modify the affected section of the curve.
Group control
If that were all, then smart:chain would simply be another plugin with a collection of integrated effects. That would make it similar to a plugin like iZotope’s Ozone. But smart:chain is much more than that, because it includes a group function – what sonible dubs ‘connected mixing’.
As I stated above, any tracks with a smart:chain insert appear in the interface along the left side. You can click the ‘manage groups’ button to switch to the groups page. Here you create groups and drag the individual tracks into them, such as all vocals or all guitars. However, the number of tracks per group is limited. Modern rock recordings often feature more drum tracks than will fit into a single group, so you might have to create and organize Drums 1, Drums 2, etc. Same for any other set of instruments with a large number of tracks.
Back in the main interface, the new groups appear as named tabs above the equalizer section. Scroll left or right to see and access any of these tabs. You’ll also find a new sidebar on the left with Front, Middle, and Back sections. This is what sonible calls ‘intelligent depth staging’. Moving a track within the group from one section to the other changes the intensity of the EQ curve, with Front being the most accentuated. According to sonible, spreading your tracks across these three sections impacts the dimensionality of the sound by establishing separation, clarity, and a sense of depth across the mix. For instance, lead vocals would be in the Front section, but background singers would move to the Middle or even Back section.
Auto Leveling to balance the total mix
Finally, there is an Auto Leveling control. Turn it on and pick the genre – Pop, Blues, Rock, Rap, and more. According to the user guide, “Auto Leveling analyzes relationships between learned smart:chain instances and creates a genre-aware rough balance across the project. It is designed to eliminate repetitive gain staging at the start of a mix, not to replace the final balance decisions of the engineer.”
When Auto Leveling is engaged, volume control sliders appear below the Auto Leveling control and on each of the group tabs. Groups are not track stacks, instrument stems, or sub groups in the same way as your DAW would create. However, by adjusting mix sliders for each group along with the overall, these do function much the same as VCA groups in some DAWs. However, you cannot apply any further processing within smart:chain to any of the groups. In other words, you can’t add EQ or compression to the group as a whole unit within smart:chain. If your tracks have been routed into stems of similar instruments and onward into a mix bus, then there’s no reason you can’t add other plugin effects in addition to smart:chain. At a minimum, you would probably still insert reverb effects and mix bus compression/limiting.
Is it for you?
After working with smart:chain for a bit on several different mixes, it strikes me that using it extensively requires modifying your workflow. For one thing, you are applying a common set of effects across the entire mix. It’s not the same as inserting vintage API emulations across drums, SSL emulations onto your guitars, and Neve emulations across everything else. So if you decide to only work with smart:chain, then get the hang of it before diving in.
Remember that the analysis data has to go somewhere. Logic Pro stored it inside of the project file. The song mix using standard plugins was 54.5 MB in size. The exact same project using only smart:chain effects for all tracks ballooned to 1.18 GB. That’s not unreasonable, but worth considering.
Just to be clear, you don’t necessarily need to use it everywhere. For example, maybe it makes the most sense for your mix to only use it on the drum kit tracks. There is no absolute rule as to how you should use it. I generally found it to work well, however, it did lock up Logic Pro on me at least once in a 41-track mix. But then that’s on an Intel iMac and these days I should probably be running an Apple Silicon Mac.
Nevertheless, like all of sonible’s plugins, smart:chain is a solid product that performs well. It’s hard to say whether or not it will make you a faster or better mixer. It’s a different way of working and that takes some time to get used to.
sonible smart:chain installation is easy and the standard plugin formats are supported. Licensing is via activation code or iLok. A fully-functional 30-day trial is available to test before your buy. sonible is currently offering an introductory discount.
