![]() Working with the stereo separation, the Envelope Follower modulates filter cutoff frequencies based on the dynamics of the incoming signal. However, the plug-ins that we found most interesting were of the creative variety – the Mid-Side range. ![]() Get used to using these and you may be tempted to upgrade to the full version of Ozone 5. The Tube Amplifier is split into three sections: bass compression, tube limiter and tube saturation. With a smooth classic valve sound, the four-band Valve Equalizer is ideal for polishing a mix, and the Room Simulator has a speaker-widening control as well as the usual room size, damping and wet/dry controls. Comprising a parametric valve equalizer, room simulation and a tube amplifier for adding colour to a final mix, these are high-quality tools indeed. IZotope is probably the best known developer of mastering tools and the company’s Mastering Essentials suite is included here. What really differentiates the Pro from the standard version are the many effects plug-ins, like the highly accurate 31-band EQ (sliders 6dB–24dB), which has plenty of starter presets. For pure powerhouse sounds, though, Memorymoon – a re-creation of the legendary Memorymoog – is still present and correct. Like the original, it supports polyphonic aftertouch and is capable of producing some of the sweetest, juiciest sounds imaginable. Of the new instruments, the star of the show is perhaps the ME80 Vintage Analog Synthesizer, a very realistic Yamaha CS80 emulation. Steinway pianos suit many styles of music and this one has controls for hammer sounds, velocity curve, sympathetic resonance, chorus and a simple three-band EQ. Notation, although improved by triplet support, remains rudimentary.Īnother highlight is Pianissimo, a grand piano featuring 250MB of Steinway Model D samples and up-to-the-minute piano modelling. Drum map implementation is good, with maps for the various drum sets and you can also build your own. Tools here, though, are limited to Pencil and Eraser. There’s a rather cramped but perfectly usable controller lane with a selection of the more common MIDI continuous controllers. These facilities now make working with Mixcraft’s bundled virtual instruments so much easier than before.Īlthough still basic, the piano roll view, too, has been improved with easier velocity editing. Each topic appears in a separate window along with plenty of parameter-adjustment possibilities. Previously never a strong point in Mixcraft, the MIDI processing department has been updated with tools such as quantize, humanize, transposition, velocity scaling and so on. Others include looped recording with multiple takes that can be comp’ed together (although there are no comping tools as such), unlimited lanes in a single track, and submix tracks for grouping tracks together for anything from simple volume level changes to effects processing and automation. New features in that category include hosting of ReWire-compatible software, MIDI control surface support with MIDI Learn, the routing of MIDI track data to audio effects (such as a vocoder or pitch correction) and punch in/out recording. This is no bad thing because it gives Acoustica the opportunity to implement the most important features of a modern DAW without bloating the program with unnecessary complexity. Rather than innovate, Mixcraft 6 tends to play catch-up with the major DAWs in many respects. The video interface has also been improved, with still image importing, automated effects and scrollable text titles. New effects include EZQ, (dubbed the world’s easiest EQ) and a basic multiband compressor, Broadcast Multiband. Significant new additions to the instrument sets include Acoustica Studio Drums, a collection of acoustic and electric drum sounds, and two excellent transistor organs from the 60s. Searching and importing of loops has also been improved. The latter has grown to more than 6,000 items, including dozens of song kits plus new drum and percussion sets. The updated project GUI is simplicity itself, with a timeline, tracks and transport controls plus four tabs labelled Project, Sound (audio/MIDI editing), Mixer (including three-band track EQ) and Library (loops, effects, instruments and sound effects), which open in a separate pane beneath. Version 5 was already packed with goodies and version 6 has expanded the feature set even further – so much so that it’s impossible to squeeze everything in here so we’ll stick to the highlights.
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