Direct Approach announced that all of their audio plugins are now freeware.
Direct Approach has unleashed its plugin suite of six individual plugins for free. The plugin suite is very much geared toward mixing and mastering. Out of the ten plugins, there is a little something for every sort of material.
There’s a lot to take in, so a brief overview is very much warranted.
SpecTrend is a spectral analyzer and utilizes pink noise weighting to help guide your EQing decisions. Metering is clear and clean on SpecTrend, and the interface is plenty easy to read.
Balancing mixes can be a daunting task sometimes, but this makes it easy to guess via the color coding of the frequency bands. Green equals an ideal level against the pink noise weighting, which helps to speed up workflow.
CompPlus is a compressor but goes a bit beyond your typical dynamic processors. Automatic automation writing brings it more in line with a vocal or bass rider. The action of the compressor itself is flexible. This comes despite a limited set of controls for the compressor’s envelope. It works especially well on vocals.
BoostX is a companion of sorts to CompPlus. It acts only on the quieter frequencies and can read and write automation as necessary for maintaining a constant level. It does work well on inconsistent vocals and guitar tracks, helping to even out uneven performances.
Snap and DASR have more individual purposes, affecting transients and de-essing respectively. Both can read and write automation like the others in the suite and do so transparently. Snap works quite well on lacking kicks and snare, adding so much-needed pop. DASR helps to remove some of the wash of the cymbals in a drum track.
LimitX rounds out the collection, featuring the same automatic read and write automation capabilities but applied towards a mastering context. You can certainly run it as a limiter for track groups, and it works quite well for catching overages.
Direct Approach is available for Windows and Mac computers and supports a good variety of plugin formats. Windows users have the option of VST2, VST3, and AAX for 64-bit clients only. Mac producers can use VST2, VST3, AAX, and AU. There is no stated intent for Silicon support, unfortunately.
Download: Direct Approach
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