A focus on the user has earned Voxengo a good reputation, but can v3 of their tusked limiter survive in these wild times?The kind of digital 'maximising' limiters that " came to the fore in the 1990s were something of a revelation in mastering, enabling one to increase the apparent level of a mixdown without unduly comprising its sound quality. Voxengo's Elephant limiter has earned a reputation as one of the finest such tools available today, and proven its worth as a mixing processor too. Now version 3 is here, with the most obvious enhancement being Voxengo's new interface style, last seen with VariSaturator (9/10, cm127), although the improvements are more than merely skin deep. Elephant is now Mac-compatible too.
What's in the trunk?
Elephant features ten presets, called 'modes', the parameters of which can be tinkered with 'under the hood' or not. You then choose between four algorithms, including a 'clean' clipping type. One of the most notable new additions is the EL UNI algorithm's Knee control, accessible via the Mode Editor. The knee determines the scale of a flexible threshold that will compress quieter sections of the signal at a lower ratio before reaching full-on brickwall limiting at the top. The result is probably the subtlest form of limiting you'll find. Other mode editing controls determine how transients are dealt with. The only thing we feel it's missing here is a wet/dry mix control.
While many mastering limiters might include a DC offset switch, Elephant 3 boasts adjustable filters with no less than 11 slope types and a finely tuneable high-pass cutoff with a range of 1Hz to 100Hz. There's dithering too, which can operate at bit depths ranging from 6- to 24-bit, and has two noise types and two shaping options.
Voxengo have clearly built this baby to be ready for anything, and to that end Elephant has been expanded to support multichannel configurations. For the very highest audio fidelity a linear-phase 8x oversampling algorithm is included. This might not be a practical feature for mix usage due to the increased CPU hit, but for critical applications like mastering, the additional clarity it brings means its not to be overlooked.
As well as changes to the internal aspects of the limiting effect itself, there have been a number of invaluable interface improvements. The new undo/redo system means you're free to experiment wildly, knowing that you can easily return to the original settings, and there's a slicker preset manager. Meanwhile, the internal routing panel enables you to set up sidechaining between multiple instances.
You might be forgiven for assuming that Elephant's forte would lie in forcibly squashing audio into shape. Ironically, though, this is a truly refined beast - even gentle, if you want it to be -and it's easy to achieve more transparent gain reduction than with most other virtual limiters. As far as sound quality goes, previous versions placed Elephant in the elite class, and v3 certainly upholds that sonic status.
Contact: Contact via website
Web: www.voxengo.com
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An elephant never forgets
Ever keen to enhance the pragmatic value of their products, Voxengo have included a system to help keep track of plug-in instances. After all, if Elephant sounds good enough to be used on a number of tracks within the mix and not just the master bus, the ability to immediately know which instance correlates to which channel is conducive to a good workflow - we've all accidentally reached for the wrong fader or adjusted the wrong plug-in instance at one point or another.
Elephant overcomes this by first allowing the user to input a name for each instance. It allows up to 18 characters and only requires the mouse to program as it features a virtual keyboard. You can also pick from one of five different colour schemes, which change instantly upon selection. There's no need to restart the plug-in for your changes to take effect and, thankfully, all the colour schemes look really good.
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System requirements
(PC) 2GHz dual core, 1GB RAM, Windows XP/Vista, VST host
(MAC) 2GHZ dual core, 1GB RAM, OS X 10.4.11, AU host
Test system
(PC) lntel Core2 Duo 1.86GHz,2GB RAM, Windows XP, Cubase 4
Alternatively
Blue Cat Audio Protector cm131»9/1O»€59
Boasts a range of applications, sounds great and is keenly priced
PSP Audioware Xenon cm124» 10/10 » $249
Sports exceptional versatility and a very transparent sound
Verdict
FOR
- Supreme transparency
- Highly customisable
- Auto-release option
- High-quality dither
- DC offset filter
AGAINST
- No wet/dry mix
- Only operates in lookahead mode
A mammoth update to this already-superb limiter proves that there's certainly no junk in Voxengo's trunk
Mark: 10/10
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