The levelizer is still brilliant.

[AudioAstronomer]

So I was bored tonight and I was browsing this thread: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/musi...is-thread.html

Go ahead, browse it. Look at all the distortion, aliasing and general destruction most compressors/limiters bath your finely tuned audio in.


So I opened up Fabfilter Pro-L, one of my favorite limiters and one that is very well received by most engineers. I also compared the levelizer and the Awida L1V You can also reference the dozens of tests in the linked thread... but I think the images speak for themselves.









Pretty good I much prefer the sound of the Levelizer personally, but the L1V appears to be extraordinarily transparent within the confines of this test. I am wondering if I somehow screwed something up, but I checked myself a few times and it's just that clean.

edit: I'm aware that Pro-L is doing about 2db more gain reduction, but it doesn't affect the result at all in this case. I went back and double checked. Even at 10db GR, the levelizer is still significantly cleaner than Pro-L at 2db GR (or most of the plug-ins out there at all!)

edit 2: forget that last edit. I fixed the levelizer image so it has the same attack, release, makeup gain and GR. Looks (and sounds) even better still.

edit 3: uploaded the wrong image. derp.

edit 4: added the Anwida L1V. no harmonics, no aliasing. impressively transparent in this test.

[CurtZHP]

I've often thought that Bob should make the Levelizer available as a VST plug-in for use in any DAW, not just SAW.

[Microstudio]

Interesting stuff Robert.

[AudioAstronomer]

I've often thought that Bob should make the Levelizer available as a VST plug-in for use in any DAW, not just SAW.

It would definitely sell.

I think people would also really appreciate the pop-up value menus as well. A very useful feature that not many (any?) vsts have.

Oh well though... we get it all for ourselves for now.

[Sean McCoy]

It would definitely sell.

I think people would also really appreciate the pop-up value menus as well. A very useful feature that not many (any?) vsts have.

Oh well though... we get it all for ourselves for now.

I agree. While I've been doing most of my work in...The-DAW-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named...lately, and have a zillion plugins, I frequently miss the Levelizer.

[jmh]

I wouldn't hold your breath for a stand alone. If you remember back to when Bob wrote levelizer, sawpro's engine was redesigned to advance buffers to give it lookahead capabilities. I have a feeling that this functionality is somewhat unique to saw - or if everything else about saw is taken as an indication, the way he did it is. I have not used many other daws - but others I remember seemed to read entire projects to preprocess which made you wait seconds for playback to commence as opposed to saw which does it on the fly and just goes - and isn't this saw's best feature? How do standard plugins handle time delay issues that a plug like a look-ahead compressor presents?

[AudioAstronomer]

How do standard plugins handle time delay issues that a plug like a look-ahead compressor presents?

The buss latency is calculated and the track is played 'ahead of time' by that amount. It can also be done 'in reverse'.

edit: slightly more complex requiring pre-buffers for certain mixer topologies... but that's the basic idea of how it's done in most hosts.