DSM V2

  It lists for $329, but they're offering it for $279, plus using the coupon code "newx3x50off" for 50% discount, my total price was $139.50! I've had my eye on this for a long time but it was too expensive and had an iLok. Now that both of those obstacles are gone I bought it. I played around with it for a couple hours and am truly amazed and loving it! Check out the videos. I'm pretty sure the coupon code works for everything at PA, btw.

Oops forgot the link to Plugin Alliance: https://www.plugin-allian...pectrum_mapper_v2.html

Could I ask, exactly why is this so different from other mastering compressors / plug ins? Still seems a great deal of money even with all the discounts.
Would love to hear your thoughts 
Nigel

This plugin is unique and difficult to describe but I'll try. Realize I've only had it for a day. I think of it as a a multi-band compressor with a massive number of bands. The bands are not set manually like your usual multi-band comp. The bands are set automatically to match the frequencies of a source sample that you capture (or use one of the preset curves). There are many uses for it other than as a master compressor. Another use that I've seen highly praised in other forums is as a deesser. You capture a clean section of the vocal track and DSM matches the entire track, reducing/removing esses and pops. That also evens out the vocals on the track. Another use, I've got a lot of old tapes from the 70's/80's of live recordings which were recorded poorly. Most everything I tried to improve the sound makes them sound worse (eq, compression, melda autoeq, harbal, ozone). I popped this on one and went through some of the presets and was amazed at the improvement.

Thanks so much - I think I am starting to just about understand what this is! It does sound intriguing - a lot of money still but perhaps I can see why.
Oh well, start to prepare the justification defence as to why this is essential to my plan for world domination of the current music scene and why I JUST HAVE TO HAVE IT!!!!
Thanks again
Nigel

Hi I just watched all the videos - they do make it look good I have to say.
One thing that occurred to me was that in some ways this reminded me of the Harbal plug in. I actually purchased this some years ago but never got satisfactory results - OK to analyze a track but the corrective EQ was not good in my opinion. I never upgraded this so only have a very old version.
Have you ever tried Harbal? Are there similarities and how's your experimentation getting along?
Cheers
Nigel

Hi Nigel. I owned Harbal but haven't used it in several years. If I recall correctly, it matches a captured sample by creating a fixed eq curve. DSM matches a captured sample by applying compression to many individual frequency bands in real time. DSM doesn't modify a particular frequency unless that frequency gets louder than that frequency in the captured sample. DSM can be very transparent, but Harbal applies eq to the whole track and is anything but transparent. I've been playing with DSM some more and getting to know some of the controls. It sounds very natural and smooth to me. I'm sure some other people won't like it though so, if you're interested, I suggest downloading the demo to see how it sounds. The 50% coupon code is good until tomorrow, Oct 31.

From what I saw on youtube, it seems like a mix rescue limiter for the master bus? It seems (again 1st blush) like if it's recorded properly, bused properly, EQed, compressed and limited/gated/expanded/excited, De-essed, delayed, verbed, widened, and panned properly all along they way? Well, I'm not the mix guru, but there's a lot of guys I look up to here who do what I just described and get "AMAZING" results...

Hey Johnny One Note, ol pal...could you post links to some of those "amazing mixes"??

Well I downloaded this and to be frank I could hardly believe some of the results I got in a the first few minutes of trying it. I tried this on a track which I had mastered with my normal preferred set up of Ozone and Xeon - simply stunning - a few clicks (I just tried one of the included pre captured response curves) and the result was easily as good if not better than what I had achieved after some time with Ozone etc. As some would say here, real Snake Oil!!!
Now I do not pretend to be the best mix / mastering person on the planet - we normally have our finished stuff done externally, so perhaps someone far more skilled than me could get great results using the normal compressor / eq etc set up.
But for people like me, this could be really useful - so there went the money for my new synth!!!!!
Nigel

I posted about the new DSM in an earlier thread, and I put the demo thru its paces, but I've decided to pass.  I would advise anyone considering this plugin (or any plugin, for that matter) to demo it on your own material before purchasing.  For me, it proved "interesting" but I couldn't really get it to improve any of my tracks or mixes.  I felt it imposed an unnatural sound on most anything I tried it on -- weird pumping effects on mixes, increased tape hiss and noise on old material, and too much "color" on most individual instruments and vocals.  I did try varying the threshold, wet/dry control, gain, etc. but getting rid of the odd effects also made the more positive attributes inaudible (to my ears). 
 
I can see how this could be used as a special effect, especially for synthetic music, but that ain't my thing.  It was an effective de-esser, but I'm already covered in that department.  Bottom line for DSM:  not a panacea for everything, YMMV, and kudos to Mr. Frindle for developing and supporting a unique tool which may indeed be useful in many instances.
 
Cheers,
Eddie

Nigel, that's exactly how I felt when I first tried it! Note that the threshold on most of the presets are set at a whopping -24dB. Frindle said in a thread on GS that he set them high so you can immediately hear what the curves do to as you cycle through the presets, and that the threshold should be adjusted for the particular material you're affecting. I experimented more with it today.. If you want to quickly get a feel for how it works, put an eq ahead of DSM in the effect chain then watch and listen to what DSM does as you raise and lower frequency bands in the eq and adjust controls in DSM.

  Eddie, Excellent advice about trying before buying. I haven't noticed the pumping you mentioned. I did notice the exaggerated hiss from some old tapes but got rid of most of it by putting a hiss filter before DSM and modifying the curve with the controls on the bottom of the plugin.

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I have been demoing the DSM V2 and I have found that it will not keep my curve or settings when I save my project.

dstrenz, are you having this issue?  Are you running 32 bit or 64 bit DSM?

Thanks!

It used to be a known issue- do you have the latest build?

p.s. regarding PluginAlliance. Never buy at full price- keep an eye on their facebook page- they often have short sales with massive discounts, eg next 99 plugs sold $99 each, half price off mastering plugs week etc.

I just installed the plugin the night before last so I do have the latest build as far as I am aware.

I tried the plugin in Reaper and it works correctly, but I don't use Reaper I just wanted to see if it would work.

I hope I can get this working right.

The latest version (2.0.3) supposedly fixes that problem: -------------------------------- Dynamic Spectrum Mapper V2 - Changelog Version 2.0.3 (Jan 16, 2013) - fixed threshold curve not retained bug -------------------------------- If that's the version you have and it still doesn't work and your determined to use it, realize that you can save and load curves manually. I'd also let them know about the problem. They seem to be fast to fix things and posting updates. EDIT: Sorry about the formatting. Apparently Firefox and the forum software don't get along well.

Yeah, that is the version I have and it still doesn't work.

I am trying the Melda MSpectraDynamics at the moment as a substitute, but its not the same as far as I can tell.

I have emailed their tech support and am hoping they can answer me before my trial is up.

I see the Plugin-Alliance team posting on Facebook from NAMM so you might have to wait for a response. When DSM was over my budget at $300+, I looked for alternatives too including the Melda plug and Voxengo Soniformer, a 32 band compressor, but didn't actually try them. The Melda plug cost almost as much as DSM. Soniformer was more affordable at about $90. Neither of them do curve matching, which is unique to DSM as far as I know. If you want to quickly get an idea about how it works before your trial ends, capture a curve at the best sounding part of a track. Make sure there are no other compressors enabled on that track, especially before DSM in the chain. Watch the display as you play the whole track. Frequencies that show above the curve are automatically reduced by DSM. Frequencies below the curve are not. Play with the threshold and gain. Insert an eq before DSM and experiment with raising frequencies that show below the curve. Don't forget to consider how the frequencies in the section you capture will affect curve matching. Ie. capturing a piano playing in the upper octaves will obviously produce bad results trying to match the curve when it's playing in the lower range. But then again, trying to do that may help show how DSM works.

dstrenz,  are you using it successfully within Sonar X2?  What host are you using?

I have heard back from tech support (very quick!) and they say it is a known bug that still affects some people.  I have tried it in a different DAW and it is working correctly, but I don't know the other DAW and only downloaded a demo to test the plugin.

I love this plugin, but I really don't want to have to load the curves each time.

Thanks!

I haven't tried it in Sonar X2. I don't know that it's okay in a Sonar forum to mention the host I'm using with DSM but it's not Reaper, and the curve is correctly saved/restored. Using the 64 bit version, btw.