Flux:: BitterSweet II is an audio plugin that emulates a dynamic processor, which was designed to aid advanced computer users such as music producers or sound engineers manage audio transients in. BitterSweet II turn the central button to the sweet side decreases the transients amplitude. Free Flux Sound and Picture development Windows XP/Vista/7. BitterSweet also features a control.
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The Flux:: Full Pack 2.1 v3 plug-in bundle gives you an array of EQ and dynamics processing plug-ins that provide pro-quality results. The Full Pack includes Alchemist v3, Epure v3, Solera v3, Syrah v3, Elixir v3, Pure Compressor v3, Pure DCompressor v3, Pure Expander v3, DExpander v3, and Pure Limiter v3. You get up to eight channels of processing with all the clarity and resolution your projects demand. While these plug-ins provide enough features and depth to satisfy any professional, they’re also incredibly easy to use and control. Make mixes and mastering projects sound their best with the Flux:: Full Pack!
Flux:: Full Pack 2.1 v3 Plug-in Bundle at a Glance:
- Alchemist v3 delivers powerful mastering dynamics control
- Enhance your tracks and your workflow with Epure v3
- Get comprehensive dynamic control with Solera v3
- Syrah v3 provides simplified dynamics control
- Elixir v3 for natural-sounding limiting
- Pure Compressor v3 and Pure DCompressor v3 put you in command
- Pure Expander v3 and Pure DExpander v3 clean up the noise
- Pure Limiter v3 provides transparent dynamic control
Alchemist v3 delivers powerful mastering dynamics control
Designed with mastering in mind, Flux:: Alchemist v3 gives you everything you need to transform a mix from drab to fab. Able to operate as a single broadband processor or as a multiband processor, Alchemist v3 will help you resolve dynamics issues that would confound most other plug-ins. Each of Alchemist v3’s five bands include a compressor, expander, de-compressor, and de-expander, all working in parallel. The real magic; however, lies in Alchemist v3’s ability to use the dynamic range content of your material rather than its level like other processors. Translation – Alchemist v3 will turn your mixes into gold!
Enhance your tracks and your workflow with Epure v3
The Flux:: Epure v3 EQ plug-in arms your studio with stunning EQ power. Built around an algorithm that delivers superior audio quality, Epure v3 is a powerful equalizer for your day-to-day session work, and has the fortitude to go the extra mile when you have complex processing tasks such as separate processing of mono and stereo components. Epure v3 sports five bands, each delivering 24dB of boost/cut and covering the complete frequency range. You can even process multiple tiers from within one single plug-in instance. Need a powerful go-to EQ? Get Flux:: Epure v3.
Get comprehensive dynamic control with Solera v3
Flux:: Solera v3 delivers compression that preserves the sonic integrity of your track, without artifacts. It adds loudness while protecting quick transients and natural airiness. It even lets you recover lost dynamics. Solera combines the power of a compressor, expander, de-compressor, and de-expander – and a well-designed user interface that facilitates parallel processing. Clipper, a discrete peak limiter, is positioned at the end of the processing chain, to round off your peaks smoothly and musically. Solera v3 gives you up to eight channels of simultaneous processing for multichannel/surround operations.
Syrah v3 provides simplified dynamics control
Powered by Flux::’s unique BitterSweet technology, as well as their adaptive-dynamics engine, the Syrah v3 dynamics processor plug-in provides you with a creative and musical solution for recording, mixing, and mastering. We get our hands on all kinds of dynamic processing plug-ins here at Sweetwater, and the simplified control set Flux:: Syrah offers is refreshing. Thanks to its real-time dynamic detection and level-dependent processing, Syrah adapts to the music and to the beat of your material. And with capabilities such as A/B comparison and preset morphing, you’ll be amazed by the results you can get with Flux:: Syrah.
Elixir v3 for natural-sounding limiting
Flux:: Elixir v3 is a unique program limiter plug-in that accomplishes its task while leaving your program material sounding completely natural. Perfect for broadcast, post production, and mastering, Elixer v3 delivers True Peak output level that conforms to international standards. For multichannel/surround use, Elixer furnishes up to eight concurrent processing channels. Elixir’s user-friendly interface makes it amazingly easy to achieve great results, even under tight deadlines. Just set your input level, adjust the threshold to dial in the amount of limiting you want, and finally set your make up gain. With Flux:: Elixir, limiting couldn’t be easier!
Pure Compressor v3 and Pure DCompressor v3 put you in command
Whether you seek subtle control over a track or want that over-the-top pumping effect (or anything in-between), the Pure Compressor v3 plug-in is made for the job. Like other plug-ins in the bundle, the Pure Compressor v3 includes an A/B morphing function that lets you slide between settings to find that perfect spot. You get a huge array of modes to choose from. Like its name implies th Pure DCompressor restores the natural dynamics of a track. Working with these two plug-ins lets you get the best sound possible out of your mixes while remaining in complete control.
Pure Expander v3 and Pure DExpander v3 clean up the noise
Bittersweet V3 By Flux
Using Flux::’s exclusive “Angel’s Share” algorithm, the Pure Expander v3 lets you remove unwanted reverberation and noise from tracks without adding any artificial character. You can go from subtle expansion to a hard noise gate with this effective plug-in. Conversely, the Pure DExpander v3 allows you to enhance low sound levels while keeping your sound very organic. It includes external sidechain inputs and dynamic detection algorithms.
Pure Limiter v3 provides transparent dynamic control
Flux:: designed the Pure Limiter v3 plug-in to give you the most transparent dynamic limiting they can provide. The natural sound is a result of the unique release envelope, which assures you that no processing artifacts will be produced. Recording engineers at Sweetwater recommend setting this plug-in as the very last processor in your signal chain to maintain complete control over your dynamics. And with its large, precise input and output meters, you’ll know exactly where your levels will be when you finish your project with the Flux:: Pure Limiter v3 plug-in.
Flux:: Full Pack 2.1 v3 Plug-in Bundle Features:
- 8 channels of processing provide ample clarity and resolution for your projects
- EQ and dynamics plug-ins deliver pro-level sound
- Morphing Slider for seamless transition between two full parameter sets
- Intuitive interfaces allow for a fast and efficient workflow
Related posts:
- Sound Quality
- Ease of use
- Features
- Bang for buck
- Overall:
Product: BitterSweet Pro V3
Developer: Flux
Formats: AAX DSP and Native, AU,VST and Merging VS3 MassCore/Native Plug-in for Mac (10.7.5+) and Windows (7+)
DRM: iLok (dongle not required)
Demo: Fully functional for 10 days
Price: $199 USD MSRP
The scope: Taking its highly successful freebie transient processor plug-in to the next level, Flux brings us the BitterSweet Pro V3, a highly upgraded version with more than a handful of new features. Based upon the intuitive “BitterSweet” control of its predecessor, “Pro” enables a higher degree of control and tweakability, allowing user to treat transients on many different ways. The original “BitterSweet” plugin had a core concept that by the name of it might ring some bells but let’s recap and go over it again so no one gets left behind: “Bitter” means transients will be enhanced while “Sweet” means they’ll be softened.
The BitterSweet freebie had a simple interface with reduced controls limited to the “Bitter-Sweet” knob, a slow/medium/fast timings switch, main/center(mid)/stereo(side) operation mode, period control and an output gain slider. Besides all of that BitterSweet Pro has a number of extra tricks up its sleeves, the main ones being the fact that it can process only a certain region of the frequency spectrum through a set of variable slope (6-12-24-48 db/octave) HP and LP filters and the fact that it can do deeper manipulations of transients and sustain on each part of the stereo field, which can really can really help on mastering situations when mixing revisions aren’t possible. Along with Fast/Medium/Slow envelopes Bittersweet Pro also includes a lookahead option, which wasn’t present on the freebie. To further the envelope timings there’s also the “Geek” panel, which gives access to attack/hold/release tweaks and also a couple of options for monitoring the signal within the plugin. At the very end of the signal chain there's an optional clipping functional with tube and cubic modes (even and odd harmonics respectively) that will only kick in at very high levels near 0 dBFS, so crank that output knob if you want to hear it.
Developer: Flux
Formats: AAX DSP and Native, AU,VST and Merging VS3 MassCore/Native Plug-in for Mac (10.7.5+) and Windows (7+)
DRM: iLok (dongle not required)
Demo: Fully functional for 10 days
Price: $199 USD MSRP
The scope: Taking its highly successful freebie transient processor plug-in to the next level, Flux brings us the BitterSweet Pro V3, a highly upgraded version with more than a handful of new features. Based upon the intuitive “BitterSweet” control of its predecessor, “Pro” enables a higher degree of control and tweakability, allowing user to treat transients on many different ways. The original “BitterSweet” plugin had a core concept that by the name of it might ring some bells but let’s recap and go over it again so no one gets left behind: “Bitter” means transients will be enhanced while “Sweet” means they’ll be softened.
The BitterSweet freebie had a simple interface with reduced controls limited to the “Bitter-Sweet” knob, a slow/medium/fast timings switch, main/center(mid)/stereo(side) operation mode, period control and an output gain slider. Besides all of that BitterSweet Pro has a number of extra tricks up its sleeves, the main ones being the fact that it can process only a certain region of the frequency spectrum through a set of variable slope (6-12-24-48 db/octave) HP and LP filters and the fact that it can do deeper manipulations of transients and sustain on each part of the stereo field, which can really can really help on mastering situations when mixing revisions aren’t possible. Along with Fast/Medium/Slow envelopes Bittersweet Pro also includes a lookahead option, which wasn’t present on the freebie. To further the envelope timings there’s also the “Geek” panel, which gives access to attack/hold/release tweaks and also a couple of options for monitoring the signal within the plugin. At the very end of the signal chain there's an optional clipping functional with tube and cubic modes (even and odd harmonics respectively) that will only kick in at very high levels near 0 dBFS, so crank that output knob if you want to hear it.
On the left: 12 “modes” which should be pretty intuitive, except for the one labeled with “Ø”, so here goes a snippet from the user manual: “Ø - Means that Dynamic/Bitter is increasing the Transients and decreasing the Sustain, while Dynamic/Sweet is doing the opposite, increasing the Sustain and decreasing the Transients.” On the right: “geek” submenu for further fine-tuning.
BitterSweet Pro also get the “Flux V3” treatment, with the trademark A-B settings morphing slider which is just lovely, a well-organized preset menu, a utilities menu to enable OSC support, change the frame rate (host request or fixed 15-30-60 fps) and to access the user manual. Overall this is a very polished plugin, which has always been the case with Flux but they have taken things to a higher level now and it seems to me that BitterSweet Pro marks the beginning of a new era at Flux. It’s been awhile since the immensely talented frenchmen at Flux came up with a new design and now it looks like they’re seriously re-entering the game, something that’s very much worth watching!
Sound quality: Easily one of the most natural sounding transient enhancers out there, if not the most! I’m mainly using it to enhance since I’d prefer a well-featured compressor for eating out the most pronounced transients, but on that particular application it’s absolutely a blast, very transparent and transients will poke out of the speakers beautifully. Flux masterfully created an amazing plugin that will do well basically every time some transient work is required and with its smoothness and range of controls it can be of great use when mixing or even mastering - if there wasn’t a so-called “mastering-grade” transient processor out there...now there is.
Ease of use: The controls are quite intuitive and just turning the knobs up or down will get a decent setting running in no time, but it does take a bit of time to get used to the dynamic function and to the operating modes. Most times the “Tr. Main” mode will do the trick but I’d recommend a read of the included documentation to get the best out of it - I should note that it’s a very well written user manual which can be accessed from the plugin itself and Flux also made some good videos to explain some of the features and they’re also very helpful. Interface-wise it’s also very good, everything is well organized with only one sub-menu for the “geek” envelope settings and the new action graph looks great and runs very smooth with the OpenGL implementation, but I missed conventional input and output metering and that kind of hurts the workflow a little bit. Nevertheless, it’s an easy to use plug-in that shouldn’t make for much head scratching - maybe all the transient/sustain and mid/side/stereo modes will be a little daunting at first sight but nothing that should impede their best use. It’s also worth mentioning that it has no latency (unless you’re using lookahead) and the CPU footprint is totally manageable, allowing for many instances to be used on the most crowded DAW sessions.
Features: I’d really welcome automatic volume compensation and proper input and output meters, those are features that would certainly add a lot to the ease of use aspect. A variable clipping level would be another good thing to have it as well, especially since it features two distinct clipping modes. Right now you’d have to push the output levels until it hits the clipping stage at 0 dbfs and then take care of the volume elsewhere with a fader or another plugin down the chain. Having said that, this is a plugin with some clever and interesting features such as the frequency range filter and all mid/side/stereo modes. Those two features are particularly useful and considerably extends BitterSweet Pro’s possibilities.
Bang for buck: BitterSweet Pro V3 is definitely one of the very best transient processor in the market right now and Flux has delivered one excellent plugin that is very effective and totally fulfills its goals. Highly effective, flexible and clean sounding, ease to use, well polished and optimized, it really delivers on all fronts!