TDR’s SlickEQ-M: A new mastering version of a popular plugin
The small handful of plugins available from TDR have become some of the highest-recommended plugins around. The free versions must be some of the best free plugins you can find, and the so called ‘Gentleman’s Editions’ are fairly priced for the modern professional. Not bad for a record label! This new SlickEQ-M mastering edition is sure to spark some excitement with many professionals.
I was first introduced to TDR’s plugins via one of my closest colleagues, who I have the highest level of respect for: Nigel Palmer of Lowland Masters. He’s not alone either, as although these plugins come with moderate price tags, many engineers rate TDR plugins among the best. Whilst speaking to Nigel about this latest release, he commented: “Hopefully this new version will now offer us the finer level of control in the lower frequencies that the original SlickEQ couldn’t.”
I can easily see this becoming the go-to EQ plugin for many professionals, offering a high level of control with a simple, clean and intuitive GUI. This new mastering version offers 6 parametric bands with additional ‘brightness’ or ‘hardness’ curves. There’s also a new auto gain mechanism ideal for mastering applications that “automatically compensates for changes of perceived loudness while operating the EQ”. I’m a fan of honest A-B comparisons to see if your settings really have made an improvement to the source audio, and this should provide a very efficient method of working.
SlickEQ-M (Mastering edition) is available for Mac and PC in AAX, VST and AU formats. As this is an extension of the free version of SlickEQ, this is moderately priced at 50 EUR. Now that’s a sensible real-world price for a modern plugin isn’t it? There’s also a ‘Superbundle’ available for 60 EUR that includes the gentleman’s edition, which adds internal resampling for the highest quality signal processing. Presumably this ‘GE’ version requires more CPU power, hence the separate version.
For more information, click here to visit TDR’s website.
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