If Its Too Loud You're Too Old - UrsaDSP Boost

[Music] hi and welcome back a bit of a departure for this one this is my first sponsored video which means full disclosure i'm accepting payment in exchange for featuring this plugin however our arrangement includes full creative control so no one has vetted my script and i can still say what i really think anyway please forgive my slightly tongue-in-cheek title this was the message of a poster pinned to my teenage bedroom wall to the dismay of my classical musician parents going by the name boost and a cursory glance at the marketing you might be forgiven for thinking this is just a make it louder plugin so a brick wall limiter slash mastering limiter slash maximizer those terms are interchangeable really and that's true it is although that's not what makes it really interesting in my opinion however let's cover that aspect first this instance is running on the full mix so let's crank the big knob in the middle and yep it gets louder and it doesn't distort one of the striking aspects of this plug-in is that it continues to resolutely not distort even when pushed way beyond sensible limits that's not to say you can't push it too far weird stuff starts happening in between transients when you abuse it but it's as if the peaks recognize that they're already as loud as they can go without breaking up horribly and simply refuse to go any further this is quite different to other limiters i've tried which start to distort the peaks audibly when you push them too hard this is one of the reasons that i'm not going to answer the question is this louder than insert name of rival limiter plugin the answer will depend entirely on how much distortion you're willing to tolerate which in turn will depend on the specific mix and there's no way it can be objective the other reason is i consider it a boring question all the limiters are capable of getting your mix up to levels that can compete commercially and avoid being too quiet on streaming platforms boost is no exception what makes it interesting is the way it sounds it gives a kind of punchy pristine loudness that sort of reminds me of the broadcast processes used for commercial radio although as far as i'm aware they all use heavy-duty multi-band processing to achieve that kind of sound whereas boost is just using a clever new type of full band limiting algorithm [Music] that's not to say that boost always remains clean i'm running the maximum look-ahead setting of 40 milliseconds with shorter settings we start to get some crunchiness in the low frequencies it's not always a bad thing sometimes it can give the low frequencies a pleasant extra growl but you'll probably want to stick to the higher settings when processing a full mix [Music] we also have an emphasis knob which starts to get us into the more creative territory which really makes this plugin interesting a little of this goes a long way dialing in too much of this adds a strange crunchiness to the transients almost as if there's some upward expansion pushing them into a clipper it's an effect which sort of reminds me of tape prosperity noise adding a little bit of this can help to make a snare drum sound more spicy and three-dimensional but you'll want to be really careful with this on a full mix if you use any at all [Music] however the button above changes this knob into a drive control again it adds distortion but this time it seems like a more conventional adding of harmonics you probably don't need to be quite so careful with the amount you had in this mode however i've talked for far too long already without mentioning the most unique and interesting aspect of this plugin which is the focus slider to the left of the big knob with this all the way down boost basically works like a conventional limiter or maximizer albeit one with its own distinct flavor when i turn it up boost starts to swap some of the downward limiting of the peaks for upward compression in between peaks notice how this brings up background details and ambience [Music] [Applause] [Music] you'll want to be really careful with this on a full mix it might work magic in the right context but it might also change the mix balance in undesirable ways what makes this really exciting in my opinion is its possible uses within a mix let's drill down to the drum channels and try an instance of boost on just the room mics [Music] listen to what this does to the room ambience when i turn it on [Music] if you're thinking well he just made the room mics louder well not so i've compensated the level of boost's output with its output gain slider so the overall loudness doesn't change when i bypass [Music] here's what actually happens if i just make the room mics louder [Music] it can also be very useful for sound design here's a preset from an old favorite synth it's quite complex and evolving and the levels vary quite a lot especially when the plex style and arpeggiator articulations come in i don't want that as i plan to further chop this sound up with some rhythmic gating and i want consistent levels on the way in so let's hammer it with boost i'll max out the big knob turn focus all the way up and basically just remove all the dynamics in this case it might be fun to switch to mid side mode but now i can change the mid side priority as well sliding this over to 100 m means all the processing is applied to the mid channel so the middle of the signal becomes much more solid and consistent and conversely 100 s means we're only boosting the differences making for an unnaturally hyped sense of stereo width it is possible to push this too far and make the signal too wide but not to the extent that it will disappear totally in mono in this case i think just a smidgen more s than m will work well now i have a nicely consistent sound that i can impose some different dynamics on with an instance of saturn and some rhythmic gain modulation it's also gratifyingly fun to play guitar through this thing getting that kind of extreme sustain with no distortion is a novel experience it's particularly fun with effects like delay running in front of boost as well the latency is unfortunate in that case but unavoidable for a plug-in like this however the fastest two millisecond setting will probably still feel okay and you can always switch it up after recording the part if you want it cleaner [Music] okay so now for the part where i exercise my full creative control and point out the faults with the plugin unfortunately for me the developer has been extremely responsive to my suggestions and fixed the most important ones already for example i observed the boost created lots of intersample peaks when pushed hard and suggested that some kind of over sampling or true peak mode would help it to compete in the limiter stakes and sure enough we now have true peak limiting or oversampling or both together [Applause] another issue is a bit more workflow related the big percentage knob in the middle doesn't tell you how much gain you've added and while it could in theory give you that information it would only be true as long as the focus slider was all the way down as soon as you turn that up all bets are off this combined with the supernaturally clean character of the limiting can leave you wondering how hard to push it however if you just want to use boost as a conventional maximizer you can actually ignore the big knob in the middle and just use the input gain slider instead which is helpfully calibrated in decibels as i understand it if you're not using any focus upward compression and also not using the emphasis or drive then boosting the input level will have exactly the same sonic result as using the big central knob but will keep you grounded with a db readout so it's easier to know when you've gone far enough if this were nothing more than a dedicated make it louder plug-in i would suggest that it really should have proper ebu r128 style loudness meters however it's not difficult to find third-party loudness metering plug-ins these days including free options so you're not forced to rely on boost's metering having the metering built into the plug-in doesn't provide any advantage other than the convenience of not having to open another interface the existing meters show peak levels on the inner displays and rms levels on the outer and are good enough to help you loudness compensate the output when using it within a mix which is fine really in my opinion my final criticism relates to mid side mode notice that when i switch the stereo mode the output gets quieter this is actually because the mid signal hits the limiter much harder in mid side mode than either of the left or right channels do in stereo mode so we get more limiting when we switch mode personally i don't approve of this the ms matrix should be level compensated before the limiter in my opinion so that the limiting doesn't change so much when you switch and it's easier to compare the difference if you want to compare the difference properly you'll need to adjust the gain structure through the plug-in by 6 db which fortunately i can do quickly and easily using the link parameter we want the input 6 db quieter and the output 6 db louder and now i can use the a b switching to compare the settings on equal terms [Music] of course you can only do that if you've turned the stereo version down by at least 6 db which means you can't really use mid-side mode properly if you're using the plug-in as a maximizer however limiting the mid and side channels to below full scale does nothing to keep the stereo left and right channels below full scale in fact if the mid channel is close to full scale you're almost guaranteed to clip the left and right channels unless the mix is practically mono so mid mid-side brick wall limiting doesn't really make much sense unless it's just an initial stage which is followed by another stereo instance to keep control of the left and right channels in which case you could loudness compensate the first instance and use the second stereo instance to raise the levels up to full scale anyway it's likely that mid-side mode immediately resulting in clipping would generate more confusion and support requests than the current behavior where it just results in more limiting so i'm guessing this is the reason the developer chose to disregard me on this issue finally an observation more than a criticism the release control works more like a speed limiter than a conventional release setting turning it up suppresses the very fastest release times but otherwise the limiter just carries on as before it means that depending on the material you might not hear much difference when you turn it up this is probably inevitable the more intelligent and program dependent a limiter algorithm gets the more the release time will have to be a general guideline rather than a firm rule anyway if you're using a fast look ahead time that allows for some low frequency distortion the release can be used to tame that distortion and fine-tune the amount but with a longer look ahead settings the usual relationship between release time and distortion disappears instead try using it to hold down the rest of the mix briefly after each drum hit which can sometimes help to create the impression of louder more explosive drums anyway in summary really nice plug-in if you don't already have a limiter or maximizer plug-in this might be the only one you need if you do already have one this almost certainly doesn't sound the same as your current options and more importantly it's stuffed full of creative sound shaping options that conventional brick wall limiters won't give you okay that's all for this video if you're offended that i accepted sponsorship and think i shouldn't do so in future let me know in the comments i don't promise to pay any attention but negative comments and dislikes help to boost the video so don't hold back [Music] thanks for watching you

Channel: Dan Worrall

Views: 22,572

Rating: 4.9743423 out of 5

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Id: JKGB3a0IUuI

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021