Introduction

Loudness and Punch

Do you need that bit extra? Extra loudness, presence, punch? Look no further. The Sonnox Enhance Collection contains three simple-to-use, but incredibly powerful plug-ins, to enhance your mix and give it the energy it deserves to be heard above the rest.  

Bundle contains: Oxford Inflator, Oxford Transient Modulator and Oxford Limiter

Oxford Inflator

No matter how limited and crushed program material already is, the Inflator will provide even more loudness. It will even add apparent volume to a full scale white noise signal, or add musicality to previously clipped signals. 

The Inflator was developed in response to requests from mixing and mastering engineers who are required to compete on the basis of the overall apparent loudness of their final results. Its capable of producing much louder mixes without without overloads or compression pumping. Since it is truly a real-time process, there are no time constants involved, as would be the case with limiters and compressors. For the same reason, there is absolutely no chance of losing presence or the flattening of percussive attack.

Used more subtly, it can add natural warmth and character to acoustic or jazz mixes. Use it on single instruments to add presence, softness and depth, or use it on percussion and drum tracks to produce amazing dynamic presence, tightness and volume. The full dynamics of the program is largely preserved but with an increase in the average modulation density.

A further aspect of enhancement provided by the Inflator involves the creation of warmth reminiscent of good 'tube' or 'electronic valve' systems. Significant 'musical overdrive' can be achieved working especially well on individual tracks.

Oxford Transient Modulator

The Transient Modulator allows dramatic manipulation of signal transients. It can completely exaggerate or dampen the attacks, with continuous variation between all settings. A 'soggy' drum kit can be brought to life, or a bass made to sound more punchy. Conversely, it can bring up the ambience surrounding a specific sound by softening the attack. The TransMod can give life to dull sounding recordings, without the unwanted changes in overall timbre associated with compression.

The application was developed to address the common situation where there is a need to selectively tighten up percussive instruments or soften the unwanted percussive effects of acoustic musical instruments. Such effects are easily achieved with the Transient Modulator because its purpose-designed adaptive processing acts on differential information in the program so that the overall long-term program level is minimally affected and sensitivity to control parameters is drastically reduced.

The functions of the Transient Modulator are adaptive and totally dependent upon dynamic level changes within the signal. In other words, it will have no effect on a steady state signal, such as a continuous tone which does not change in level. Any control signals it develops are purely dependent upon the extent and rate of change of signal levels.

Oxford Limiter

The Oxford Limiter has been developed from decades of professional audio experience to provide a very high degree of quality and facility in program loudness control and limiting functions. By employing highly accurate logarithmic side chain processing, along with innovative adaptive timing functionality using look ahead signal acquisition, the limiter provides exemplary performance, whether one is seeking general transparent level control, program loudness maximization or heavily applied artistic sound effects. 

Unique processing in the form of the Enhance function provides the sample value limiting needed to reliably avoid overloads in digital workstation environments and allows unprecedented volume and punch to be applied to program beyond that available from conventional limiting functions. 

Comprehensive metering is provided which displays not only conventional peak sample value, but additionally allows the user to monitor the true validity of the program in order to avoid the generation of damaging reconstruction overloads in the target equipment which are often invisible during production (sometimes termed 'inter sample peaks'). 

A further function allows the user to dynamically correct for reconstruction overloads in real time, thereby achieving maximum possible modulation levels without the risks of producing illegal signals often associated with compression and limiting.

Comprehensive dithering functionality with selectable and variable depth noise shaping ensures first class mastering output quality in either 24 bit or 16 bit modes.