August 16, 2018 — Introducing our new plug-in CoutureSee other posts

Instant control over your dynamics

Today Auburn Sounds introduces Couture, our most refined audio plug-in to date.

Screenshot

Couture is a two-headed beast: both a Transient Shaper and Saturation processor.

So what do we mean when we say you can get tailored transients?

Combined dynamics and saturation

There is often some overlap in usage cases between saturation and dynamics. Both can be used to control peaks. Some transients prefer saturation, others prefer dynamics.

Couture comes with both Transient and Saturation sections to make related decisions at the same time. For example for a drum track you can increase dynamics and smash it later with distortion.

Full volume-independence

Transient Shaping is traditionally volume-independent. We extended the Saturation stage to be volume-independent, too.

When using Couture you keep the freedom to change input gain afterwards. This avoids some gain-staging dependencies in your signal chain, that may backfire later in the mixing stage.

Compression versus Transient Shaping?

Our vision is that transient control could perhaps be something satisfying.

In general terms, a compressor is somewhat longer to tune and its parameters change volume: attack, release, ratio, threshold... they change output gain while you tune them.

Essentially, the Transient section of Couture has only 3 parameters and they have semantic meaning:

  • Sharpen: add or remove dynamics in one click, how "sharp" the signal is
  • Speed: time scale of captured transients
  • Front vs Back of the captured note.

When turned to Front, the Sharpen knob acts like the Attack knob on a regular Transient Shaper. When turned to Front, the Sharpen knob acts more like the Sustain knob on a regular Transient Shaper.

To improve predictability, we made Couture's behaviour 100% program-dependent. Couture catches transients very accurately by design.

Depth of field

To make a parallel with photography, Couture could be seen as a Depth of field effect: you can use it to blur some sources in order to emphasize others.

Introduction Price

The Full Edition of Couture is at 39€ instead of 49€ until September 16th 2018.

Available now!

Couture is available as an AAX, AU, and VST2 plug-in for your favourite DAW.

The Free Edition removes the saturation modules but has no other time limitation: you can use it forever.

Try the Free Edition today...