Cana San Martin has released a collection of freeware mixing and mastering tools in 32-bit VST plugin format for Windows based digital audio workstations.
The bundle contains a set of six mixing and mastering effects which were developed using FlowStone/SynthMaker, meaning that they’re only compatible with 32-bit host applications on Windows. On the other hand, standalone versions of each plugin are also provided, which might work for some Windows users (although it will definitely require a bit of virtual cable patching wizardry).
Bundle contents are listed below:
- Bus Compressor – A bus compressor effect with tone and timing controls. It’s more suitable for adding punch than “gelling” a stereo bus. It sadly lacks a dry/wet knob, which is a feature that’s almost necessary in a bus compressor, in my opinion.
- M/S Matrix Encoder – Encodes stereo signal to M/S (isolates the mid signal on the left stereo track and the side signal on the right stereo track). Useful if you want to process mid and side signals separately using third party tools.
- M/S Matrix Decoder – Decodes the M/S signal back to stereo.
- Mystique Tape Machine – An interesting tape emulation. It offers two different tape flavors (labeled 1968 and 2009), a transformer switch, input/output gain and tone controls.
- SCL EQ V2 – A mid-side equalizer with per-channel low-pass and high-pass filters, four EQ bands and phase invert.
- x10 Multiband Compressor – A powerful 10-band compressor with adjustable bands, a lookahead limiter, oversampling and M/S processing.
My first impressions with these plugins, in terms of functionality, are rather positive. Mystique Tape Machine and Bus Compressor were the least impressive of the bunch, whereas the x10 Multiband Compressor and SCL EQ V2 seem to have quite a lot of potential. Surprisingly enough, the CPU usage isn’t that bad either, except in the case of x10 Multiband Compressor which lavishly consumes 10% of my i7 CPU’s available resources on average.
On the other hand, the GUIs, although fairly nice looking at first, could definitely benefit from larger, easier to read fonts and better looking color schemes. I kept squinting at the screen while testing the compressor and the M/S equalizer, and that’s definitely not something you want to do during a long mixing session. As mentioned above, the plugins are also 32-bit only on Windows, which becomes more and more of a serious limitation nowadays. Finally, the plugins don’t come with any sort of documentation in English, so it might be hard to figure out how some of the controls work at first.
The plugins are available for free download via Cana San Martin (46.6 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 6 effects in 32-bit VST plugin format for Windows).
UPDATE: We’ve removed the download link, because it seemed to redirect to a spam website. Hopefully the developer with solve this issue soon.
