NC-17 is a universal binary Audio Unit plugin that takes the lead in the new breed of loudenator plugins typified by the Slate FG-X, but louder, more musically coherent, much less CPU hungry and at one-fifth the price. NC-17 is $49.99.
Yes- it's another one of those plugins like Iron Oxide, catalyzed by online internet drama! Here's the backstory in a nutshell, for anyone who's interested.
Slate's company developed early versions of the FG-X, and began announcing this many months before anything was available, as an attempt to starve other competing products of sales and make people save their money and wait. Specifically, they made fun of processes such as clipping A/D converters. I thought I could address this by quickly throwing out some counterexamples using ADClip.
Woopsy ;)
Turned out Slate's programmer was on to something. It was very obvious very quickly that their thing held on to a lot more bass and fullness than simple clipping could provide. It was like FG-X was keeping track of stray bits of 'over' and tucking them back into the audio in a myriad of places, allowing WAY more bass to be snuck into the mix than you'd otherwise get. It got a little fuzzled and disassociative if you pushed it, but there was no question that it was doing something special, something no plugin of mine got close to doing all by itself.
This was a challenge! And the scorning of my previous best product was a flung gauntlet. (ADClip is still very nice for taking the digital hardness out of GENTLE peak-clipping, when you're not pushing the bass to go over 0db.)
The main thing I wanted was this: the sound can't just get disassociative, when it goes for stupid loud you have to both get the bass and also lock onto the lead vocal with ruthless clarity. It's better to sound a little dirty than to sound a little dissipated. It's better still to not abuse these tools in the first place... *shrug*
When the dust settled, NC-17 was up and running- named as a joke on FG-X and because what else would you name a plugin for making stuff obscenely loud?
It's not got MORE bass than FG-X but the bass is quicker and more driving, rather than filling in after the kick- it's not cleaner, but it'll project the intensity of a lead vocal out to considerably hotter levels without losing focus. It's more CPU-friendly. It's surprisingly transparent for this type of loudenator (ADClip is way cleaner for light duty where you're not getting many DB of overs) and it is $49.99, which is one-fifth the price of its only rival.
Try the demo of this by downloading the demo collection! You're not allowed to use the demo for actual work. It politely mutes itself briefly every couple minutes, and that's the only thing it does to spite you. It won't expire or do anything to you, and when you get the actual plugin, throw away the demo and put the real version in its place and most software should replace saved instances of the demo with the real thing seamlessly, retaining any settings. Please support my cooperative, unhostile demos with sales of the real software.
