Hi everyone,
The itch: mixing at low levels changes what you hear. Bass and treble fall away relative to the mids as SPL drops (the effect everyone files under "Fletcher-Munson"). The tools I found approximate this with a broad two-band tilt, so I built the thing I needed: compensation computed from the actual ISO 226 equal-loudness contours.
How it works: you set your quietest monitoring level and just raise the compensation knob till you hear the lowest and highest parts of the spectrum again. That's the main use, all the rest is creative, like the negative compensation ( can help with proximity effect or thinning up sounds in an extremely natural way ).
Main features:
- Zero-latency IIR mode, or a linear-phase FFT mode
- Linked/unlinked compensation, split above/below 1 kHz
- Mono up to 16-channel surround
- macOS 13+ (Apple Silicon + Intel), AU / VST3 / standalone
- Automatic output compensation ( the A button )
- 14-day full demo; €19 intro until 28 August, €29 after. One-device license, one online activation, fully offline afterwards.
Longer write-ups (the science and the design decisions):
- Low-volume mixing and the case for ISO 226:2023 — https://giovannicordova.com/blog/low-volume-mixing-iso-226-2023-equal-loudness-compensation
- Why I built it — https://giovannicordova.com/blog/nobody-was-fixing-this-so-i-built-my-own-audio-plugin
- What's in the plugin — https://giovannicordova.com/blog/elc-1-low-volume-mixing-plugin
- Product page + demo: https://giovannicordova.com/plugins/elc-1
It's macOS-only for now... a Windows build and a "ELC-2" are both real possibilities depending on what I hear from early users, and I'd rather ship those right than fast. If you try it and something feels wrong (or measures wrong), I genuinely want to know.
Thanks for reading,
GC
The itch: mixing at low levels changes what you hear. Bass and treble fall away relative to the mids as SPL drops (the effect everyone files under "Fletcher-Munson"). The tools I found approximate this with a broad two-band tilt, so I built the thing I needed: compensation computed from the actual ISO 226 equal-loudness contours.
How it works: you set your quietest monitoring level and just raise the compensation knob till you hear the lowest and highest parts of the spectrum again. That's the main use, all the rest is creative, like the negative compensation ( can help with proximity effect or thinning up sounds in an extremely natural way ).
Main features:
- Zero-latency IIR mode, or a linear-phase FFT mode
- Linked/unlinked compensation, split above/below 1 kHz
- Mono up to 16-channel surround
- macOS 13+ (Apple Silicon + Intel), AU / VST3 / standalone
- Automatic output compensation ( the A button )
- 14-day full demo; €19 intro until 28 August, €29 after. One-device license, one online activation, fully offline afterwards.
Longer write-ups (the science and the design decisions):
- Low-volume mixing and the case for ISO 226:2023 — https://giovannicordova.com/blog/low-volume-mixing-iso-226-2023-equal-loudness-compensation
- Why I built it — https://giovannicordova.com/blog/nobody-was-fixing-this-so-i-built-my-own-audio-plugin
- What's in the plugin — https://giovannicordova.com/blog/elc-1-low-volume-mixing-plugin
- Product page + demo: https://giovannicordova.com/plugins/elc-1
It's macOS-only for now... a Windows build and a "ELC-2" are both real possibilities depending on what I hear from early users, and I'd rather ship those right than fast. If you try it and something feels wrong (or measures wrong), I genuinely want to know.
Thanks for reading,
GC
