Support

Yes and no, depending on how you see it:

• Yes, and it’s 100%!
• No, because you don’t need it.

To make it clear: Dynamic Grading 2.0 is a FREE update! All you need to do is download and install the new version, and it will work with your existing license.

We understand where you’re coming from: there are graphs that look like a spectrum analyzer, and somehow you can adjust what looks like crossover frequencies. But take a closer look!

Those scales are in Decibels, not Hertz. So what you’re seeing is not the typical spectrum analyzer display, but a histogram of loudness levels that occurred within the analysis time window. Consequently, think of the markers and ratios not as something that splits the audio, processes it independently and then puts it back together. Rather, these controls work together to achieve a complex gain curve in a convenient and meaningful way.

There are no crossovers and no frequency ranges involved in this product. It all works in a broadband way.

You are not alone in thinking that would be great. But it’s not that simple.

As explained just above, Dynamic Grading does not really “split” the ranges to process them and put them back together. So it’s not like you could just mute one or two “channels” or listen to one of them individually.

Let’s think about how we would expect a solo function to sound like. Soloing the punch range would be the simplest case, as it basically comes down to a noise gate. We just mute everything below the punch threshold.

But what about soloing the floor range? We would have to keep everything that’s below the floor threshold, and mute everything above it. It’s possible, but weird and we doubt it’s really helpful in the real world.

Finally, soloing the body range would entail a combination of both. Cut everything below the floor threshold, and above the punch threshold. That’s really weird.

That said, we don’t categorically rule out adding such a feature in the future, as it is often requested. So adding it for the sake of completeness can be of value, as long as it doesn’t make the product as a whole worse. We’re pretty sure though that users will rarely use this feature productively. But maybe it’s a good feature that can be “creatively abuses”?

The reason we kept away from factory presets so long is that a specific setting only makes sense in conjunction with specific source audio and can hardly be transferred to other (even similar) recordings. That is generally still true. However, adapting a preset to the different sources has become easier starting with Dynamic Grading 2.0.

With the new hybrid UI that combines graphical markers and ratio knobs, we’ve decoupled the parameters better from each other. That way it’s easier to adapt settings. For example, when loading a preset you might keep the combination of ratios and timing settings, but only adjust the source markers to match your audio track, possibly using Source Learn in the process.

That said, we’d still like to discourage our users from relying on presets. You will get much more out of Dynamic Grading if you consciously explore how each of the parameters affects results. With Dynamic Grading 2.0 we’ve made many efforts to present it’s capabilities in a more approachable and comprehensible way.