NoirSonance has released Headroomer, a free/pay-what-you-want channel cleanup plugin for macOS and Windows.
We recently featured the developer’s Decompressor upward dynamics plugin, which followed NoirSonance’s decision to make its entire 12-plugin collection free with optional donations.
Headroomer is another streamlined yet useful tool from NoirSonance, and it might be their simplest plugin yet. The interface has just two controls, Lo Cut and Hi Cut, for trimming unwanted frequencies at the bottom and top of a signal.
There’s really nothing complicated here, but that is basically the point. You can drop this one onto a channel, turn the controls until the signal is clean of rumble and hiss, and move on.
Plugins like Headroomer (and bx_cleansweep, which is my current go-to) are a useful first step in a go-to effects chain or channel strip. It lets you quickly clean up unnecessary content before the signal reaches compressors, saturators, limiters, reverbs, and other processors that could react to it and cause issues.
That early cleanup can make quite a difference, especially across a large project. Compressors can respond to low-end energy you do not really need, saturation can exaggerate accumulated noise, and unnecessary frequencies across many channels can eat into the available headroom.
Headroomer uses gentle, intentionally non-aggressive filter slopes. It is not meant to replace a full parametric EQ or detailed corrective work during the final mix. It is designed for the production and arrangement stage, when opening an analyzer and carefully configuring a surgical EQ on every track isn’t really necessary.
You can use it on drums, synth layers, guitars, vocals, effects returns, groups, and buses, then reach for a more precise equalizer later if the sound needs additional work.
Another important part of the design is efficiency. NoirSonance optimized Headroomer to be light enough on the CPU that you can keep an instance on every channel without making your CPU break a sweat.
Headroomer is available as a free/pay-what-you-want download. Choose €0 to get it for free or enter another amount to support the developer. The package includes a Windows installer and a macOS installer, and the product page lists VST and AU support.
Download: NoirSonance Headroomer (FREE / pay what you want)
Deal of the day 🔥: Get the VATRA mix finisher plugin by Flame Sound!More:
- NoirSonance releases Decompressor, a FREE upward dynamics plugin
- All 12 plugins by NoirSonance are now FREE with optional donations
- NoirSonance Releases Three FREE Compressor Plugins
Last Updated on August 30, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
