Sonnox Elite Native review – Dynamics and EQ
By Paul Dakeyne
| Posted in Music Technology
In yesterday’s part one review of the Sonnox Elite Native plug-in bundle, I looked at the creative tools, Inflator and Transient Modulator. Today, it’s a focus on mixing bread and butter duties, duly addressed by the Dynamics and EQ plugs. Sonnox Dynamics is a real workhorse tool – well a workhorse with heaps of Nijinsky or Red Rum thrown in. It’s modeled on the exact DSP coding of the renowned Sony OXF-R3 mixing desk and the two are, evidently, indistinguishable side by side (should you find yourself fortunate enough to be standing by a desk of that stature).
Dynamics offers a sensibly stacked layer of six mostly essential processing sections. Encouraging instantiating from top to bottom in a logical order, these six consist of Gate, Expander, Compress, Limiter, Side-Chain EQ and a Warmth adjuster. The whole unit itself uses a valuable look-ahead technique which relies on something called ‘feed forward’ architecture. Put simply, this means the full, all in one rack reacts to a minuscule delay enabling a side-chain control signal to be created (easily compensated for even though, in test, I found it virtually undetectable). Ultimately, this coincides with and produces a pristine analysis of the source material.
As can be seen from the image above, Dynamics has one main parameter control area in the top half of the UI. Obviously, these dials can’t all control the quite different needs of each individual effect component, so cleverly, as the user selects ‘access’ to address each one in turn, the top half adapts to the specific control requirements for the selected tool. Each one of the six mini-racks can be switched in or out, easily allowing combination auditioning of the processed signal.
The Sonnox Elite Native Dynamics plug-in has some very useful presets which address not only individual instruments (bass, kick drum, sax, snare etc) but vocals too, plus a mix-bus and also a mastering option. These are great starting points, especially as two of these presets give instant SSL emulation, including a G-Series channel strip selection to try out. I found it relatively straightforward to create some subtle compression and mastering routings (transparent and musical where needed) and conversely, some pumped up, OTT, signal crushing results were easily forged. The singular Gate, Expand, Compress and Limiter components are great to have racked and available, as is the usefulness of the two-band side-chain EQ and the Warmth option, the latter adding a tube like harmonic enhancement not too dissimilar to how the previously reviewed Inflator applies the illusion of perceived loudness. This one plug-in alone, with such a superior and malleable sound processing palette, could pretty much negate the need for similar, individual tools already existing in your sonic armory.
Finishing off today’s part two review, the Sonnox EQ steps up next to the mark. This is a no nonsense five-band parametric equaliser accommodating a high and lo-pass filter, a clear visual display and A/B switching for comparison between two live contours of the four provided EQ ‘types’. These ‘types’ of EQ are resplendent with quite different personalities, all settings bedded on one or two of them at any one time. It is in this area that the Sonnox EQ gets the upper-hand over some other dedicated EQ plug-ins.
The way the four types differ falls within the actual curve characteristics of the bell settings, but similarity is maintained regarding shelving curves. The Type One profile has response curves similar to certain ’80′s sounding desks. It is a good starting point, being quite a finely honed, sharp edged EQ solution. Running vocal acapellas and then a full mix through Type Two sounded very similar to the former to me so I had to check the manual again to see what Sonnox itself states as the difference, which is that it’s more focused on removing unwanted resonances – I’m glad I checked.
Resembling the Neve and SSL G-Series desks, the Type Three sounds the more musical of the three so far. I was able to sculpt EQ curves to some reasonable extremes with this setting ‘holding in’ the actual musicality for an extended frequency surf. Maximising the more extreme ‘gain’ verses ‘Q’ dependencies, the Type Four is targeted towards mastering duties. To check this out, I plugged it into my stereo bus on last night’s ‘radio edit’ studio session. It made a significant and pleasant difference to an audio file that (in its full seven minute club version) I had already home -mastered using my usual chain of effects. I also experimented with that currently in-vogue EQ trick of adding a small dB boost (Q 11 to 10) in the ‘dangerous to go to’ 12kHz range. This added some “sweet as’ness” to the track making it sound very contemporary.
An additional user-friendly feature within the Sonnox EQ (and in fact in all of the bundled plug-ins utilising ‘dials’) is the ability to personalise the way its dials respond to mouse click/move operation. By clicking on the top left Sonnox logo button, the user can select one of two dial response modes. The first mode, ‘circular’, engages a naturally expected response as one would turn a knob – just click on the dial’s outer rim and rotate. What is a fabulous feature here too is that by clicking on the same area and moving your mouse pointer in a wider ‘arc’ movement (away from the dial’s centre), ultra-fine tuned, single incremental control is achievable. Conversely, by keeping the mouse>click>rotate action close to the centre of the dial, much coarser sweeps are the result (all this without the need for any sort of modifier key – excellent!). Alternatively, engage ‘linear’ mode which enables a click on the dial then horizontal, left/right (or vertical, down/up) movements to go from lower increment values to higher respectively.
Again, I’m impressed with the Sonnox Elite Native bundle’s constituent plug-ins finding nada, nich ‘n nowt really to complain about so far. In tomorrow’s part three review, I’ll see if that happy state of affairs continues.
Tags: Compressor, Dynamics, elite, EQ, Expander, Gate, limiter, native, Side Chain EQ, sonnox