Over the last couple of years we’ve seen the introduction of a wide range of mastering plugins that, for the most part, take one of three approaches. Some have emulated famous mastering engineer setups, some have duplicated noted mastering hardware, and some have featured completely outside the box thinking. Softube’s Flow mastering plugin falls in the last category, taking an approach that’s definitely different in both signal flow and user interface.
Flow is actually a workflow that features a suite of 16 of Softube’s mastering plugins. These include:
- the Chandler Limited Curve Bender
- the Chandler Limited Zener Limited
- the Chandler Limited Germanium EQ
- the Tube-Tech Equalizers MK II
- the Tube-Tech SMC 2B compressor
- the Weiss Compressor/Limiter
- the Weiss Deess
- the Weiss DS1-MK3
- the Weiss EQ1 equalizer
- the Weiss EQ-MP equalizer
- the Weiss MM-1 maximizer
- the Softube Widener
- the Softube Clipper
- the Softube Opto-Compressor
- the Softube Tape emulator
- the Softube Bus Processor
Of note are the Weiss plugins, which emulate the various hardware products that have been go-to devices for high-end mastering engineers for decades.
The unique part is that Softube has figured out a number of signal chains for various genres of music using combinations of these processors that can be completely transparent to the user, or individually tweaked as needed.
As you can imagine, tweaking all those individual plugins could get intense and confusing, but Softube has made it easy with some macro controls at the top of the plugin. These include Low-Mid Compression, Master Compression, Sweet EQ, High End Clarity, Widener, De-Esser, Low/High End Trick and Limiter.
These function differently depending upon the music genre that’s selected since they affect different plugin combinations, but you can dive in and tweak an individual plugin if you want. The macro controls are there to make things easy so you don’t have to do that, but let’s face, we all love to tweak things given the chance. Each control also has a drop down explanation of exactly what’s being adjusted so you can zero in on just the right processor in the chain.
You might be wondering what the Low/High End Trick control is (I know I did). It’s actually the old Pultec technique of boosting a frequency and cutting it at the same time, which gives you an interesting boost as a result of how the filters interact. It’s easy here with only the one adjustment needed to get what you need.
There’s also a Set Target control that lets you play a bit of the song and Flow will then set the level to between -18 to -14LUFS. After you do that, select the genre and you’re off to the races. A large display shows you the signal waveform and how much Flow is affecting the signal.
Flow costs $14.99 per month and there’s a free 14 day trial period. As a side note, the subscription also allows you to use all 16 plugins as individual plugins in your DAW.
You can find out more here, or watch the video below.
