MAGC is the brand new addition to the MFreeEffectsBundle collection by MeldaProduction. It is a freeware loudness matching tool in VST/AU/AAX plugin formats for PC and Mac based host applications.
MeldaProduction’s latest freebie is essentially a tool that matches the loudness of the processed audio signal to the loudness of the signal on the sidechain input. While the plugin itself is pretty straightforward, it can actually be used for a variety of different purposes. The most obvious technique would be using MAGC to prevent your FX chain from affecting the overall loudness of the processed audio signal (you can achieve this simply by feeding the dry signal through the sidechain input). But you can use anything else as the sidechain signal really, so for example, feeding a drum track through the sidechain could turn MAGC into a simple rhythmic gate.
The user interface is identical to what we’re used to seeing in MeldaProduction releases. It certainly isn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but it can be customized with dozens of built-in skins and, most importantly, comes with some pretty neat additional controls (some of these features are only available after upgrading to the commercial version of the MeldaProduction product bundle, though). The basic controls allow the user to adjust the input and output gain manually, as well as to define the range and speed of the loudness matching algorithm. You can also turn psychoacoustic prefiltering on or off, which is a feature that tries to emulate the loudness as perceived by the human ear (it reduces the algorithm’s sensitivity to the frequencies which we can’t hear and boosts the impact of the audible frequencies).
In addition to these basic features, you also get full parameter randomization, M/S and up to 8 channels of surround processing, up to 16x oversampling, a neat gain metering for the input, sidechain and output channels, and lots of other useful stuff that’s explained in detail in the Readme file that is available on the product page linked below. It’s worth noting that the size of the download is somewhat larger than what you might expect (177 MB in total), since the installer contains all MeldaProduction plugins. During the installation, make sure to select only the plugin formats and the plugins that you want to install on your hard drive (you can easily select the entire MFreeEffectsBundle with a single click).
MAGC is available for free download via MeldaProduction (177 MB download size, EXE installer, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/VST3/AU/AAX plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
5 Comments
David Matthew
onWould you recommend this as a mastering tool? Could I feed it a reference track to boost the volume of my own track?
Roman
onHa, interesting idea. You can, but you would need to chop the reference song into pieces so it would fit to your song tempo and verse/chorus pattern.
Roman
onBut even after that the result will be rather srange. You better crank up that speed slider way above 300 ms.
andrey
ondont think its a good idea. why don’t you use limiter instead – the easiest way to do it?
Aron
onHey, is this a good tool for vocal riding?