With new loudness requirements to accommodate, co-owner/producer of In Demand Music, Chris Rudall, recently sought new software for end-to-end loudness management, metering and correction. Able to control everything from content acquisition through playout, he found Nugen Audio.
With artists such as Beyoncé, Jason Derulo, Cascada, Armin Van Buuren and Basshunter on its roster, productions from the UK-based company regularly feature on the top dance, club and pop charts across the US and Europe.
Rudall first incorporated Nugen’s SEQ-ST, MasterCheck and ISLst plug-ins into his daily workflow. The SEQ-ST provides sonic sculpting and EQ matching, as well as stereo mid/side operation and automated spectrum analysis. ‘SEQ-ST is quite useful because it’s a high-quality EQ that does matching,’ Rudall says. ‘I’ve used SEQ-ST for some precision EQing because it sounds really clean and musical at the same time. I don’t have anything else that could do what the SEQ-ST does.’
To ensure the music reaches the listener as intended, Rudall calls on Nugen’s MasterCheck, which reveals problems ahead of time. It also enables users to audition and deliver masters perfectly tuned for today’s playout systems. ‘So much of what we do is going out to radio or streaming services,’ he says. ‘It’s difficult to make dance and club music sound the same because the target is nightclubs, stadiums and laptops all at the same time. Trying to get that balance is really hard, but MasterCheck is very helpful in that application. In addition, MasterCheck allows me to get where I need to be faster. It makes it possible for me to solve my problems faster, which saves me valuable time and money.’
Rudall also finds Nugen’s ISLst limiter to be very helpful. ISLst is an intelligent look-ahead brick-wall limiter that provides highly transparent True Peak limiting for all stereo and mono content. ‘The ISLst Limiter is amazingly transparent,’ he says. ‘There are a lot of limiters that try to do lots of clever things, but sometimes end up complicating matters. With Nugen’s ISLst, you just put it on and go.
‘The plug-ins just work; they do exactly what they claim to do,’ he concludes.
