Strong opinions.
Every Playfair tool starts with a hard look at a real problem, and a clear view of how it should be solved.
Take the compressor
Dynamics processing has worked the same way for decades: set a threshold, a ratio and an attack time, and learn by ear what they do to your audio. We asked what mixing would be like if nobody had ever invented the compressor.
The answer became Dynamic Grading. It shows you the dynamics of your signal and lets you shape them directly, on an engine that gets the details right that most compressors don’t, like spectral weighting and lookahead.
A few of our opinions
- Habit isn’t a reason
- A lot of audio tools work the way they do because hardware did, decades ago. We’d rather start from what the job needs.
- You should see what you’re doing
- Guessing what a setting does is slow and frustrating. A tool should show you.
- The hard part is our job
- The signal processing details decide how a tool sounds. They should be right without you having to think about them.
- Every feature has to earn its place
- If it doesn’t help in a real session, it’s clutter.
- Good tools make better engineers
- Working with them should sharpen your ears and your understanding of sound, and that pays off in every mix.
Behind Playfair Audio
I’m an electrical engineer and software developer in Hannover, Germany. Before founding Playfair Audio in 2022, I spent more than a decade building audio DSP for Kemper Amps and Sennheiser.
Playfair Audio is a one-person company: I design the algorithms, write the code and answer the support emails. And yes, the strong opinions are mine.
Hear it on your own mix
Dynamic Grading is the clearest example of how we build tools. The 14-day trial is fully functional.
Try Dynamic Grading free