NC-17

TL;DW: Dirty loud!

NC-17

This one needs little introduction, but it’s been a Mac-only secret so I will introduce it anyhow :)

NC-17 was designed as the loudenator-killer. It uses the same technology as ADClip’s energy redistribution stuff, but on a soft-clipper, and instead of just feeding the energy back in, it uses it to modulate a Chebyshev filter: sort of complicated, but it’s definitely one of those Airwindows things. First to use such a soft clipper as the primary loudness maximizer, and secondly to use such a weird technology after it. Why a Chebyshev? To produce second harmonic. Why do that? To feed deep bass back in despite the loudenating. Okay, so the whole idea is pretty strange.

What happens?

Firstly, the whole tone changes, whether you’re pushing loudness or not. Check that first. You might immediately dislike the result, or if you seek ‘glue’ maybe you’ll like it, or use it to replace some other ‘glue’ effect. If you’re still with NC-17 after checking that, proceed to turn it up (or mix hotter into it). You’ll find no specific ‘break point’: instead, it just gets dirtier and dirtier the harder you push. The whole texture of loudness dynamics is altered, so you get the loudness cues of distortion but with a bass foundation mere distortion won’t permit, and a continuous spectrum between ‘more or less clean’ and ‘impossibly too loud’.

This one will also handle cleaner synthesizer tones, EDM, the kinds of sounds that reveal the artifacts of other loudenators ruthlessly. With NC-17, instead you get a slight ‘grungening’ but then it refuses to break up in the normal sense, just stretches to fit. (this one might be the one you want on drum submixes, too)

There’s nothing quite like it, and now it’s Mac and PC VST, and free.

By free, I mean that it’s supported by Patreon. I’m happy to say that this month we got back up above $700 (it might not look like it but that’s what they sent me, so it counts) so there will be an extra plugin from the list (with total sales under $700). Next week we’ll have the ‘1.5 dB’ version of EveryTrim (aka HermeTrim, for a supporter who asks for stuff I can do :) ) and then I’ll find something nice off the list to include.

The next goal after that is open source (I sincerely hope I can get the LinuxVST working by then) and I expect the Patreon to get there somewhere around the New Year. Help that happen by spreading the word in an informal sort of way, about all this! Keep it appropriate, but remember: I don’t advertise, spam, or bug people, so word of mouth is the only way this works. It doesn’t work nearly as well as bugging people, but it does work in its way, and that way is my way :)

Thanks for being there for me, and I hope you enjoy NC-17!