As hard as it might be to believe, we are now halfway through the year. Whether you’re waiting for longer days, or dreaming of the beach after that request for “just one more thing”, June had plenty to keep studio-dwellers interested. Here are some of our favourites.

Avid Pro Tools 2024.6

Kicking off our roundup is the very latest incarnation of the industry’s favourite pro workstation. As well as six new ARA integrations, 2024.6 also gets two new MIDI effect plugins and a refreshed Import Session Data window along with other tweaks to give pros more to love.

September 2022’s new integration of Melodyne ARA has now been joined by a further six new integrations, bringing the total to seven. These make standalone app round-trip tedium a thing of the past for those in need of third party magic from the likes of iZotope Spectral Editor, Synchro Arts VocAlign, RePitch, Revoice Pro, as well as Sound Radix Auto-Align 2 and Auto-Align Post 2. These processes also get their own docked or floating editors in the Edit window rounding off the ‘in-house’ feel very nicely.

As well as the ARA improvements, audio post pros also have much to get their hands on thanks to the internal Dolby Atmos Renderer which now sees options for live re-renders. Additional channel counts and the Stereo Direct re-render option from the external Dolby Atmos Renderer application allows stereo mix version monitoring without going through cascaded downmixes.

You can read about the new features for v2024.6 in full here.

Soundtheory Kraftur

Just in case your DAW doesn’t quite give you all the intelligent saturation-meets-loudness enhancement that you’ve been dreaming of, Soundtheory had news for you in June. Known for Gullfoss, the intelligent dynamic EQ, they have now put their original thinking to Kraftur, which is billed as a “saturating loudness enhancer”. Taking in the developer’s trademark clean lines that manage to deliver lots of visual feedback, Kraftur has been engineered to increase the loudness of the mix while preserving much of its dynamics. Sounds can be pushed further to imbue sounds with “colour and warmth” by inducing subtle but pleasing harmonic distortion.

Useful on mixes and masters, but also tracks and busses, the level-matching chops of Kraftur’s Match button help to keep saturation seduction at arm’s length. Kraftur also features an innovative triangular mix control that allows engineers to blend between three states, as well as its multiband functionality to tune saturation to happen exactly where needed.

Antares Vocal De-Esser

Summer heat isn’t the only thing to make things sizzle in the studio, and when it comes slaying sibilant subversion, June did not disappoint, delivering a fresh spin on perhaps audio’s least glamorous helper: The de-esser. While everyone loves a bit of airiness in their vocal, the gatecrashing esses, fizzes, and whistles that can sneak into the party call for the venerable de-esser to step in and stamp on the sizz. These devices are in essence frequency dependent compression tuned to the offending frequencies - the problem for engineers is that in among those fricative nasties is also much of the good stuff that makes a voice sound natural. As a result engineers setting these up traditionally walk a narrow line between ‘needs more’ and ‘where did the singer’s front teeth go?’...

Antares are definitely no strangers to vocal rehab, but their processing knowhow extends far beyond their better-known pitch-therapy for wandering singers. Landing in June, their Vocal De-Esser does more than just do what it says on the tin, this time deploying AI to solve a real problem.

Billed as “AI-Powered Sibilance Control”, Vocal De-Esser sets out to smooth out harsh vocal sounds with the world’s easiest-to-use de-esser. Rather than simply reacting to the level of frequencies above a ‘dumb’ threshold, this tool has been trained on the unique characteristics of the human voice to control sibilant sounds without compromising the performance or tone of vocal tracks. Sorting the fizz from the intelligibility is where analysing and learning from real human voices is where AI promises do a great job…

McDSP TAPE APB Plugin

AI might be set to change the world (or at least fix that vocal), but that’s not to say that we don’t love the anachronistic delights of a new thing pretending to be an older thing. For those unaware, McDSP’s APB scratches the itch of anyone who likes their analogue, well, analogue. This delivers eight or sixteen channels of analogue compression and saturation that happen inside the company’s bright green rack-dweller, controlled from the DAW. Engineers can choose from a number of APB flavours that are called up just like any other plugin; this fires DAW signals to the APB for conversion and processing, before firing back into the DAW to hit the fader. Yes that’s right, the analogue audio plugin actually exists thanks to APB.

June had us basking in warmth by the tonne when McDSP unleashed their latest plugin for their APB platform, this time in the form of TAPE. Taking full advantage of APB’s signal bending chops, there are no prizes for guessing what this one does, although the emphasis is on the charms of the machine itself as much as they are about this hallowed medium. TAPE uses a four stage analogue process to recreate the compression-like effect of recording to tape. The TAPE algorithm emulates characteristics of magnetic tape machines made primarily in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Different tape formulas (types), playback head configurations, low end ‘bump’ amount, and low frequency rolloff are all user controllable. The amount of tape compression is even user controllable. Input and output levels are also adjustable. Metering of input, output, and gain reduction are shown with dual VU meters.

How could anyone in possession of McDSP’s bright green box ignore TAPE’s magnetic charm?

United Studio Technologies Replay Box

Re-amp boxes are the unsung studio tools that have rescued hundreds of overcooked guitar sounds, as well as provide the portal for just about anything from the DAW that needs to hit a guitar amp as nature intended. In June, United's Replay Box promised to build on the legacy of famous hand built reamplification boxes, with two transformers, loads of gain, and incredibly low noise that United describe as “a pleasure to use for the most demanding engineers and musicians.”

Replay Box features two independent reamplification circuits. The first Transparent circuit features a custom-wound, US-made, 5043 step up transformer, for signal isolation and noise rejection. It accepts balanced or unbalanced line level input signal to deliver clean, isolated, unbalanced output capable of driving any amp, pedal, or processor. Because the transformer is wound to have passive gain, it has about 3 dB of additional gain on tap above its already +4 dB rated input from your DAW or recorder. No active circuitry or other components are involved for the cleanest gain available.

The second Harmonic mode engages an alternate transformer specifically designed to add character. This transformer is wound to offer a steeper gain ratio alongside a very gentle rolling-off of the uppermost high frequencies. It adds both harmonic and phase distortion in the sub-bass region, fattening the low mids and delivering a more aggressive and warmer tone.

Fiedler Audio Mastering Console

Although most reading this know all about the art of mastering for stereo music, those doing the same for immersive mixes might have fewer options available to them. That changed in June with the introduction of Mastering Console from Fiedler Audio. This virtual tool enables the real mastering of Dolby Atmos ADM/BWF files, similar to the traditional mastering of stereo mixes. It is the only Dolby Atmos mastering tool that includes a built-in “sophisticated” mastering compressor Gravitas MDS, allowing you to refine your Atmos mixes further.

Mastering Console provides tools to edit the binaural mode, description, and group of each Atmos channel. The software includes a feature to quickly measure the loudness of the entire mix and adjust it with one knob to meet distributor requirements. You can also edit downmix, trim, and balance, giving full control over how your mix sounds on different reproduction systems.

The result can be exported to ADM/BWF and re-renderers. It also offers a sophisticated routing system for monitoring flexibility in your studio, with options to save these settings as presets. Comprehensive speaker calibration parameters, including volume, delay, and EQ, can be saved as presets for each speaker channel. Dolby Atmos is supported for both 48 kHz and 96 kHz. Mastering Console also offers engineers personalised HRTF support for binaural monitoring. It is fully approved and certified by Dolby Labs.

Soundly Shape It

For the uninitiated, Soundly is a cloud based sound effects library which includes a powerful search engine and the ability to index and organise the local sound libraries of post pros with extensive metadata support. The platform integrates with your workflow and tools and allows you to drag and drop sound effects into any editor. It has custom integration with Pro Tools, Logic, Studio One, Premiere Pro, Nuendo, Cubase, Reaper, After Effects, Wwise, FMOD Studio, and Final Cut Pro.

Built into Soundly is the Shape It equaliser, designed for intuitive tweaks before dropping exports into the NLE or DAW. Following requests from users who love Shape It’s lightning fast tweaks, Soundly gave the world a new sound sabre in June with the Shape It audio plugin version. Best of all, it costs nothing to use…

Shape It's cuts and boosts are billed as being “lightning-fast”, making it a perfect fit for the fast-paced world of sound design. This parametric EQ has ten bands and includes various presets, including musical ones, allowing for quick adjustments or complete sound transformation. Shape It apparently started life as Soundly’s in-house tool. We take our sunhats off to them for bringing this venerable helper to the audio community absolute free of charge...

How About You?

What were your favourite things to land in the month of June? Maybe it was some real hardware to get hands-on with, or perhaps your life just got better with the latest magic virtual marvel. Is there anything we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments.