Kjaerhus MPL-1 Mastering Precision Limiter RELEASED!

[mammath]

Listen to the limiter test on the site.

The MPL-1 goes up against four other Mastering Limiter candidates and is revealed only at the end of the test.
Impressive as hell!

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/mpl-1.php

[AdamJay]

now, KVR said a month ago this was gonna be available for OS X as a universal binary...

i don't see the UB on their site...

[scruffydog]

Well..I like these plugins.
And for once I am actually glad I do some audio work on my office pc.
I would imagine MAC stuff will appear...
They do seem to me to have pretty much everything I was always wanting out of my plugins.
Look great...(some dont care)
Sound lush...(waves stuff is a little less so to my ears)
Low'ish cpu use too... and still a great service from a small company...I guess.
And I think the price is Reasonable enough to call generous.
So for me...a real winner!
Scruffy

[thermos]

Wow, nice test. That was the best. Mac please!

[mammath]

Combined from two different posts on kvr:

The MPL-1 is expected to be released for Mac VST and AU in 1-2 month. After that we will release other plugins for Mac.

You will be allowed to use it on Mac and PC with no additional payment. We might make a small cross grade fee once Mac is released but it will be free for orders until then.

[Kiwiburger]

Try the demo before you buy. People (like the vendors of the other products being compared here) say that this comparison test is very biased. He could have used alternative settings on the other limiters that would have made them sound a lot different in this "comparison".

I haven't got the demo yet, but from what I can tell from opinions of people i trust is that this is a "safe" limiter. It is more like a compressor, and will pump. It preserves the transients this way, and therefore has the effect of pushing the sound into the background. Fine if that's what you want, but if you want a modern forward sound, you might get better results with something like Elephant or a clipper.

[genlock]

Actually what the test says is: MPL-1 produces less harmonics compared to "some" competitors (under $400) with their default settings on (presumably without oversampling). It doesn't say anything about how MPL-1 performs under real-world conditions in the loudness race. That doesn't mean that it's bad. It doesn't mean anything...

[farjedi]

I tried the demo and it sounded ok..didn't seem to effect the balance of the mix really but I only had threshold on around -6. It seemed to me a bit smoother than my recollection of Waves' L3, which I've always thought sounded quite harshly digital.
To be fair these are amazingly cheap plugins and they are quite decent.

[AdamJay]

for folks with PC's using the Demo, could anyone compare it to the WaveArts FinalPlug ?

[Bang]

Originally Posted by farjedi

I tried the demo and it sounded ok..didn't seem to effect the balance of the mix really but I only had threshold on around -6. It seemed to me a bit smoother than my recollection of Waves' L3, which I've always thought sounded quite harshly digital.
To be fair these are amazingly cheap plugins and they are quite decent.

Only -6? Most peak limiter sound bad after 1.

[Kjaerhus]

Greeings!

Kiwiburger, It wont pump unless you compress very hard (into the RMS level) and even then you can avoid it just by increasing the PDR amount. So it does not have to be that "safe" You should try it

Cheers
Torben

[farjedi]

Originally Posted by Bang

Only -6? Most peak limiter sound bad after 1.

It sounded allright to me..maybe it's good

[Kiwiburger]

I'll certainly be trying it soon. Kjaerhus stuff is excellent, and the Golden series are my go-to eq and compression. The Classic limiter holds it's own with most software limiters, so MPL-1 is very likely something very special.

[genlock]

I just had the chance to test the MPL-1 demo against an "acclaimed competitor" and I must say it holds up very well: The tonality is balanced with no tendency towards harshness, the soundstage remains 3D, pumping can be controlled well (and minimized) with the PDR controller. Transients got smeared a bit (I guess I could have shaped them better if I took the time to fiddle around a little more with the pro-settings) but even when I tried to smash it, the dynamic character of the original was somehow preserved. Furthermore the interface is well designed (meters, controllers, autogain on/off!). My conclusions: this is a hell of a limiter and an excellent value for the money. You'd need the "Pro"-Version, however. Now I'm just waiting for the Mac version...

[Lagerfeldt]

Hej Torben

Give us a Mac version, and I'll take it seriously :-)

hilsen

Holger

[Kjaerhus]

We are working on full steam here in the begging summer heat to get the Mac versions ready, so have faith

Torben

[vaesion]

this is the first limiter ive heard yet that i would put up against timeworks mastering compressor. the fact that it limits each stereo channel indiviually makes a nice difference. It maintanis the crunch. Ive used them all in a acoustically treated room and I think this may be my favorite. The highs are more prestine.

[defjamm]

Originally Posted by vaesion

this is the first limiter ive heard yet that i would put up against timeworks mastering compressor. the fact that it limits each stereo channel indiviually makes a nice difference. It maintanis the crunch.

imho they have not much in common(if you mean the sonic timeworks in hard mode). the timeworks one acts like a clipper in hard mode and the kjaerhus one is a high quality limiter, they offer a totally different sound. the kjaerhus can provide relative clean results and the timeworks one is for loudness und distortion on transient heavy music.

[vaesion]

i agree with ya. i guess my point is mpl1 maintains more of the dynamics of the snare more than the other limiters ive heard out there except for time works.
I love how open it sounds. great limiter. depending on the material timeworks and mpl1 are my fav

[osci]

Anyone done an A/B between this one and the Voxengo Elephant?

[4damind]

For my A/B comparison with plugins I always own like Voxengo Elephant, Wavarts Finalplug and some other free Limiters, MPL1 beats them all ;)
MPL-1 sounds more transparent then Elephant and works better for loudness maximizing then FinalPlug.

Its a great limiter. I dont own a UAD and cannot say something about the precision limiter how it compares to the MPL1.

[P. Rene]

i gave it a whirl and had too say wow! very very transparent and super tame-able, heck i use it on vocal channels (if needed) as a comp and it does its job.

[James Lehmann]

I'm looking for a decent Limiter plug-in to replace the Elemental Audio (RIP) Finis as I am finis-ed with that company after the RND debacle.

An OS-X version of this product would be seriously considered here...

[rwhitney]

I tried the demo of the MPE-1 on a classical choral piece. It seems transparent and smooth, but it did allow some overs which my SONY Oxford Limiter didn't at the same amount of gain. Has anyone compared the Kjaerhus to the SONY?

Another thing I noticed is it interefered with simple keyboard control commands in ProTools LE (like space bar=play). Is it just the demo that does this?

[AMIEL]

Overall which Plug ins sounds better, Kjaerhus or Sonalksis??

[luctellier]

I've just purchased the Kjaerhus MPL-1 Pro SE. I'm going to test it under real conditions. I mainly do rock/punk music. I'll post some examples soon!