Nugen Audio Mastercheck

October 3, 2014

Nugen Audio release new Mastercheck meter aimed at the music industry and podcast community.

Nugen Audio, whose name has become synonymous with high end, professional, mission critical, tools have launched Mastercheck, a brand new meter that aims to help us find our way through the new “loudness normalisation” landscape that has opened up before us.

With loudness normalisation having become quickly adopted by nearly all of the major music streaming platforms and some media players it’s left a lot of people, professionals and enthusiasts alike, unsure of ideal levels and “how loud is now too loud?”. Mastercheck can help with it’s five primary applications:

Audio Production To A Loudness Target

Now there’s no advantage in simply being louder than the rest, the unique “Offset To Match” feature will allow immediate referencing at the levels your listeners will be fed using all the major international standards in use today.

Measuring Dynamic Content / Dynamic Range

With a new standardised numerical measure of dynamic content/range, the Peak to Loudness Ratio (PLR), Mastercheck offers both a short-term and full program loudness dynamic content display.

Avoiding Downstream Clipping From Compression Codecs

Streaming services utilise compression codecs to deliver audio and they can cause nasty clipping if given too hot audio. Mastercheck allows for Inter-Sample True-Peak monitoring so you can see when your audio will get mangled by compression codecs.

Comparing Your Audio With Reference Material

Quickly feed in some reference material using the built in sidechain and quickly A/B between that and your audio.

“Removing” Loudness From The Signal Chain

Easily and conveniently switch between your processed and unprocessed audio with instant loudness matching. Mastercheck allows you to properly hear whether a louder master is better for your audio when loudness normalisation is in full effect.

While a reasonably simple concept, the practical implications of loudness normalisation have introduced some fairly complicated decisions into the mastering process so any tools that can make this area clearer will be very welcome indeed. If Nugen Audio can carry over their brilliantly simple design, workflows, and ease of use from their other products into Mastercheck then this will surely be a vital tool in your arsenal.

Available now for Mac and Windows PC, it’s priced at £80/$129 (plus VAT/taxes), and comes as a VST 2, VST 3, AAX, AU and Audiosuite in 32/64bit. RTAS is 32bit only. Go to the Mastercheck product page for full details.