New food for loudness

Just reported about the project against the loudness war, I have to read following:

Image Line Software, the development department of FL Studio, released a new audio tool called "Multiband Maximizer Maximus".

Chief Architect and developer Didier Dambrin explained: "Used sparingly, Maximus raises the volume of the track without introducing unwanted distortion and ensures that the quieter parts, often lost in the mix, are more easily heard".

But looking more detailed into the tool, all key features also allows producers and musicians to use the tool against loudness and for dynamics, as they are:

• 3 independent user-definable High Mid Low (HML) frequency bands


• Custom look-ahead for the HML bands and Master compression envelopes


• 4 limiter/compressors: One per HML band plus a Master wide band limiter/compressor


• Each compressor has a multipoint compression curve. Create any shaped knee or special effects (limiting, compression, gating or expansion)


• Fully configurable. Any of the HML or Master compressors can be bypassed to configure Maximus to suit any limiting, compression or maximization task


• Two saturation types per HML & Master bands, with independent gain


• Phase-free mixing between the frequency dependent compressors and the master, perfect for parallel & NY-style compression


• 4 Independent stereo separation controls, one per band, for independent bass through to high-end separation shaping

This tool is available from end of October for a price $119 ($189 retail). To test a free demo of the tool check out
http://www.image-line.com/documents/maximus.html.