Gullfoss Master

[Roman Bayramdurdiyev]

Amajor update that will be released on July 15, 2021, introduces a no-compromise edition of Gullfoss with all quality-related parameters set to maximum. It is specifically designed for mastering engineers requiring the highest precision.

Gullfoss Master allows for finer parameter adjustments and optimizes the auditory model for small gain changes. It also increases the internal precision, so that the processing noise floor is reduced even further.

All three editions of Gullfoss are now available to users in one easy download:

Matthew Allard is a multi-award-winning, ACS accredited freelance Director of Photography with over 30 years' of experience working in more than 50 countries around the world.

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Soundtheory markets the Gullfoss as an intelligent EQ, and while it certainly scrapes into the dictionary definition of an EQ in name, its capabilities and approach far exceed that of your regular, run-of-the-mill parametric tweaker.

So in what situation would the Gullfoss be used? Gullfoss is immediately handy for mastering engineers, allowing mixes to be controlled and balanced while preserving overall balance before compression or limiting occurs. For mixers, Gullfoss is great on a buss or to push or pull frequencies in a room or overhead mics on a variety of instruments. It can be used at the start or end of your plugin chain, either to balance a source before compression for improved balance or to tie it all together on the way out.

For producers, this can be a quick and easy way to make a source more cohesive and clear, requiring less work on the individual channel or via multiple plugins at the buss. One single instance of Gullfoss is considerably less CPU-heavy than the equivalent EQ, compression, and sidechaining required to do what the Gullfoss does in one fell swoop, and can be as processed or raw as you like.

Gullfoss shines on full mixes and subgroups but also brings out individual tracks. Set Tame to target narrow resonant peaks and Recover to lift obscured sounds. Adjust Bias as a threshold for targeting resonances while leaving lower levels untouched. Add Brighten and Boost to match the original tonal balance if needed. Limit the frequency range for surgical tasks like de-essing. Dancing EQ and level meters also provide visual feedback.

Master Plan by Musik Hack is a powerful mastering plugin developed by industry professionals Stan Greene and Sam Fischmann. It has quickly gained popularity in the VST world due to its user-friendly interface and efficient workflow. The plugin features four main knobs that allow users to enhance loudness, adjust width, and control high and low frequencies with precision.

Master Plan offers a variety of effects including saturation, frequency reduction, multi-band compression, gentle compression, and frequency enhancement. It also includes meters for LUFS, Peak, and Crest to display signal loudness. The plugin comes with presets in three categories: Loud Presets, True Peak Presets, and FX Presets.

Learning the art of EQ ing is a necessary skill when mixing music, it takes time and patience to master. Wouldn't it be great if there was a plugin that automatically and intelligently looked after all that pesky EQ ing business for us? Hi, I'm Sara Carter from simply mixing .com, where each week I bring you simple practical advice to help you get better at mixing. Now I've covered EQ in some depth already on the channel, and until now I've looked at the more traditional parametric EQ's and as far as EQ plugins go, there seems to be a new one launched every week,

so I tend to ignore most because, well, who needs another EQ plugin? Well, times are changing and so are EQ plugins, and one of the newer ones to come to the market is Gullfoss from Sound Theory. Every so often there's a plugin that comes along that does something different, something genuinely unique. And when that happens, I'm always curious. Gullfoss is an intelligent EQ that uses signal analysis and real time adjustment to improve the clarity of your audio signals.

OK, so here we are, a session that I've opened. It's a recent one that I've worked on, it's kind of a indie folk tune and it comprised of drums, some percussion, a bass, a rhythm acoustic guitar, piano, the ukulele and vocals. I wanted to try on this particular session because I remembered that I'd had to do quite a little bit of EQ work on the acoustic guitar to get it to sit right for me.

So anyway, let me just play you through a chorus so you get an idea of the instrumentation and what it sounds like. I've got the vocals muted for this particular example just so that you can really focus in on the musical elements, the instrumental elements.

OK, so it's fairly straightforward, nothing too complicated, but as I say, I do recall having to work on the EQ of the acoustic guitar, so let me just bypass what I did. If you're wondering why I've got two plugins back to back here, that would have been because rather than me, the second EQ, I would have added later on, as the mix process was going along because I wasn't happy with the acoustic guitar, so I just added more EQ rather than doing it all in one EQ, sometimes I just find it easier just to add a new EQ and start from scratch, if you like.

So this was the first EQ that I used. You could see I pulled out quite a lot, actually if I reduce the scale here, you could see I pulled out a lot of about 125 hertz and the four, around about the 450hz again, another sort of eight dB'S pulled out there just to try and get a clearer sound, some clarity, because the acoustic guitar on the ukulele were kind of clashing, as was the piano. So when I listen back to the acoustic, I felt as though it generally sounded a little bit thick and wooly.

Then, the second edition EQ, again, I wasn't happy with that low end, the lower frequencies of the acoustic, so I pulled out another five dB at 90hz. But let me, let me show you, let me demonstrate what it sounds like without the EQ. There's some compression in place there, a little bit compression just to bring it, to bring the acoustic forward and I think that's a limiter there, just to catch any peaks from any vigorous strumming.

OK, so you can hear it's kind of thick sounding, not an awful lot of top end going on there. I felt that's what I was chasing with these EQ plugins. This is what I came up with after the, after all my EQ work. OK, so I was happy with the EQ that I'd pulled out a lot of the sort of lower, middle and low frequencies and added a little bit of zing and definition on the higher frequencies.

So how would Gullfoss deal with that? I wondered. Well, let's take everything off again. And let's look at Gullfoss. OK, so here is Gullfoss now, what is it and how do you use it? Well, the first thing you notice that there are none of the typical EQ parameters to play around with, like there's no Q or frequency and they've been replaced by these controls up here. And the basic idea of this plugin is that it allows you to uncover any masked elements and control dominant ones, and then you can sort of fine tune the results.

So the way that this plugin lets you do that is by these two parameters here, the recover and the tame. The recover, that does as it suggests and it enhances or recovers the masked frequencies and tame reduces the level of those overpowering elements that are doing the actual masking. So they're the two main controls to worry about. And then once you've got these in play and activated, then you can start working with the bias and the brighten control. And I'll talk about those in a little while.

But for now, let's just get going with this plug in and have a look at the recover and the tame. So what is Gullfoss? Well, it's an adaptive EQ and it analyzes the signal that's coming into the plugin in real time to try and understand which elements are competing for the same space. So that really sparked my interest and I wanted to find out a little bit more about how this, about how this would work for me.

So then when I looked into things a little bit deeper, on the Sound Theory website, it says that this plugin can even fix balance issues between the different sound elements so that really intrigued me. Apparently, what it does whilst it is doing this analysis is it's changing its frequency response more than 300 times per second without introducing any audible artefacts. So that's quite something. So as with all plug ins of this type, what does it sound like and how easy is it to use?

So what I was trying to do with my traditional EQ plugins here at 125 and 450. And then again, at 90, when the Gullfoss plugin was working in tame mode, which is where it's pulling out the frequencies that are doing the masking, then it was all happening down, down in that range and a little bit higher up as well. OK, then so let's dial in some settings to get this guitar to sound how I want it to sound.

The best way to do this, according to sound theory, is to sort of split the load between these two parameters rather than having one do all the work, have one recovering and one taming to split the load, if you like.

OK, I like what that's doing, sounds like its taken a little bit of the mud and wooliness out from the lower end here and it's added some sheen and some sparkle, which is nice. So what about this bias control and brighten, then? Well, you've got these little meters here. You can see with that little line there. And there's another meter here, when I play it, you'll see those.

So what that's saying is that this meter at the bottom here is like a brightness meter. So, as the meter moves to the left, your mix will be darker sounding and if when the meter goes to the right side, then you mix will sound a little bit brighter. And then bias, that allows you to favour either the recover or the tame functions. By using the bias, either positively or negatively affects how far you're leaning towards the recover or the tame settings.

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