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COMP.TWO on Vocals: Tube Leveling Settings
COMP.TWO on vocals: four vari-mu starting points for leveling, parallel density, tamed peaks and finishing glue, with sidechain and gain-match tips.
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Process.Audio Journal
Sound, craft
Sound, craft
& the studio.
Deep dives into mixing, mastering, and the creative process — written by engineers who live in sessions.
Spicerack on Vocals: 4 Starting Points for Warmth and Grit
Four Spicerack starting points for distortion on vocals: Tube warmth, Amp presence, parallel grit and a Lo-Fi radio effect, with gate and EQ tips.
The Console Workflow: Why Processing Every Track Beats Fixing the Bus
Great analog records were made on consoles where every channel added a little color. In the box, most producers do the opposite, slamming one processor on the master. Here's why the console approach sounds more natural, and how to bring it into your DAW.
Multi-Mic Phase Problems: Why Your Guitars and Drums Sound Thin
You recorded your guitar with two mics or your kit with a dozen, and instead of sounding bigger it sounds thin and weak. That's phase cancellation between the mics, and it's fixable with polarity, delay, and phase rotation. Here's how, with a free plugin.
Mid/Side Compression: How to Glue a Mix Without Killing the Stereo
Bus compression glues a mix, but it can also flatten the stereo image and pull the sides toward the center. Mid/side compression solves this by letting you compress the center and the sides independently. Here's how it works and when to use it.
How to Build Energy Into a Drop With Filter Automation
The moment before a great drop is unbearable tension, and a rising filter sweep is one of the most powerful ways to create it. Here's how filter automation builds energy, why most attempts fall flat, and how to make a build that pays off.
True Peak vs Sample Peak: Why Your Master Distorts on Phones
Your DAW's meter says you never hit zero, so why does your master distort on a phone or after streaming compression? The answer is inter-sample peaks, the levels between the samples your meter cannot see. Here's how true peak works.
Why Your Distortion Ruins Your Drums (and How a Gate Fixes It)
You want distorted drums that hit like a hammer, but every time you add drive, the cymbals turn to fizzy mush. The problem is that distortion saturates everything, including the quiet parts. A gate on the drive stage fixes it completely.
How to Duck Delay Under a Vocal (and Why It Changes Everything)
Pro vocals have big, lush delays that somehow never muddy the words. The trick is ducking, lowering the delay while the vocal sings and letting it bloom in the gaps. Here's how it works and how to do it without drawing a single automation line.
Exciter vs Saturator vs Enhancer: What's the Difference?
Exciter, saturator, harmonic enhancer: three words thrown around interchangeably that actually describe different processes. Understanding what each one does to your signal is the key to adding warmth, presence, and air on purpose instead of by accident.
LUFS Explained: How Loud Should Your Master Be in 2026?
The loudness war is over, and streaming normalization changed the rules. Crush your master too hard and the platform just turns it down, so you lose dynamics for nothing. Here's what LUFS means, how loud to actually master, and how to measure it.
Gain vs Trim: The Two Level Controls Every Mixer Confuses
Gain and trim both change level, so why do professional utility plugins give you both, at opposite ends of the chain? The answer explains a subtle mistake that quietly wrecks mixes, and it's fixable with a free plugin.
How to Get the Funk Wah and Envelope Filter Sound in Your DAW
That expressive wah on a funk guitar and the auto-wah that makes a bassline breathe are two of the most recognizable sounds in music. Here's how they actually work, the difference between a wah and an envelope filter, and how to get both in the box.
What Is a Vari-Mu Compressor? The Glue Secret Explained
Vari-mu is the compressor topology behind the most glued, cohesive records ever made. But what makes it different from a VCA or FET compressor, and why does it glue so well? Here's the circuit explained in plain language.
Feedback vs Repeat Delay: The Mode Most Producers Never Use
Every delay plugin has a feedback mode. Almost none give you a programmable repeat mode, and it's the more powerful of the two. Here's the difference between feedback and repeat delay, and why one lets you compose echoes instead of inheriting them.
Parallel Distortion: The Trick Behind Aggressive, Clean Mixes
How do professional mixes sound aggressive and gritty while staying clean and punchy? The answer is parallel distortion, and the reason yours has never worked is a phase problem nobody told you about. Here's how to do it right.
808 Not Translating on Phones? Here's the Real Fix
Your 808 shakes the room on your monitors and vanishes the second someone plays the track on a phone. It's not your speakers and not your ears. It's physics, and the fix is harmonics, not more sub. Here's how to make your low end translate everywhere.
The 7 Moves Every Pro Makes Before They Touch an EQ
Gain staging, trim, polarity, phase rotation, sample delay, bass mono, high-pass. Seven moves, ninety seconds a track. Skip them and you will spend six hours using EQ to solve problems that were never EQ problems. Plus a free plugin that does all seven.
Your Beat Is Technically Perfect and Completely Boring
A loop that repeats identically 64 times is not a record. Filter modulation (LFO, envelope follower, manual automation) is the cheapest way to make eight bars hold attention for four minutes. Eight voicings, three modes, four recipes to steal today.
Why Your Tracks Sound Sterile: The Missing 0.5% on Every Channel
Consoles never added warmth on the two-bus. They added a microscopic amount of harmonic distortion to every single channel, then summed forty of them. Here is why bus saturation cannot recreate that, and how to rebuild it in the box without mud.
Why Your Mix Doesn't Glue (And Why More Compression Won't Help)
Your mix sounds like a stack of stems because nothing makes the tracks share a common dynamic behaviour. Inside vari-mu tube compression, Sowter transformers, sidechain filtering, and the German engineering behind the Rockruepel COMP.TWO.
Your Delay Is Ruining Your Mix (And You Can't Hear It Yet)
Repeats are loudest exactly when the mix is busiest, and buried exactly when they could be beautiful. That is a dynamics problem, not a delay problem. Ducking, gating, delay throws, anti-Doppler stutters, and the visual workflow that ends the guesswork.
Your Mix Sounds Amateur (And It's Not Your EQ)
EQ can only amplify energy that already exists in the signal. Professional records sound expensive because engineers generate the missing content: harmonics, transient energy, phase-corrected air, saturation.
Why Your Master Sounds Quiet on Spotify (And What the Pros Actually Watch)
Streaming platforms normalize every track to a fixed loudness target, so crushing your master costs you dynamics and buys you nothing. Here is exactly what to measure, why the loudness wars are over, and how to hit every delivery spec first time.
The Decibel Target Validators: Prepare Your Music for Streaming Platforms
Target Validators are the perfect way to know if you have met your targets. Decibel has three targets
Control Your Dynamic Range in Real Time Using a Limiter
Reach the perfect dynamic range for your track using a limiter by using the Trudedyn-s as meeting point for perfect loudness
Quick Tips | Gain Staging your Session using the Decibel Supermeter
If you ask us, gain staging is the technique of consciously managing the gain of one or more tracks across the entire path of their described audio signal.
Decibel Module: The LUFS Histogram - Track your music's loudness over time
The LUFS Histogram represents your music's loudness (LUFS) and short-term dynamics (TrueDyn) over time. It is the best way to compare different parts of your songs and see how their loudness and dynamics evolve and compare to one another.
The Decibel VU METER: Get a feel for your levels
VU Meters will help you manage your recording levels and avoid overloading, distortion and help you hit your digital converters at their sweet spots by calibrating the meter's 0VU level accordingly
Connect Decibel to many mobile devices (iOS / Android) - Unlimited real time displays
Download and launch Decibel Display from the App Store or Google Play Store.
Decibel Daemon (OSX) - Monitor & Analyze hit songs from Spotify/ Youtube/ iTunes
Fab Dupont shows you how to set up the Decibel Daemon, a background app that will help you listen and analyze any music or audio clip and compare it to your production.
Decibel Offline HI Analysis - Understand the LUFS profile & dynamics of your songs
Award-winning engineer Fab Dupont shows you how to use your Decibel plugin offline analysis feature so you can figure out the LUFS profile of your music and spot at a glance what parts of your songs are the loudest/quietest!
Decibel Modules Shortcuts - Easily configure your Decibel tabs & layout
Award-winning engineer Fab Dupont demonstrates how to use shortcuts to organize your modules like a pro.
Decibel Overview
How to use Decibel in your workflow w/ award-wining engineer Fab Dupont.
Use Sugar as a Mastering Plugin!
Sugar can be used as a mastering plugin that lets you handle some of the most critical aspects of the process with ease. In fact, you could call it an “almost” automatic mastering plugin.
Use Sugar as a Bass Enhancer Plugin!
Sugar excels as a bass enhancer. With four enhancer bands and the choice of three types of saturation, you have a lot of sonic options at your disposal for your bass enhancement.
Use Sugar as a Vocal Enhancer!
Sugar is a great vocal enhancer, it can add that extra special something to your vocal tracks. No matter what style of music you're mixing.
Use Sugar as a Saturation Plugin!
Sugar is not only a powerful sonic enhancer; it's one of the best saturation plugin. Choose between 3 different flavors: Drive, Distort, and Crush.
Use Sugar as a Parallel Compression Plugin!
Sugar is the easiest way to add parallel compression on your vocals, your drums, and every one of your tracks. Get instant great-sounding mixes.