Better? Or Just Louder? How can you be sure?

Loudness changes our perception of music. Louder may seem better at first, but it’s easy to be fooled. When mixing and mastering, you must constantly ask yourself, “Is this really better? Or just louder?” The way to make reliable, real-world judgements is to listen with matched loudness. This has always been a key skill for mixing and mastering engineers, which can take years to learn. Until now…

Loudness Deception: Make informed decisions about your music.

Perception AB instantly and automatically matches the level of the music you’re listening to, allowing you to hear past the “loudness deception” and make clear, real-world decisions about the best possible sound for your music, quickly and easily. You can bypass entire processing chains to make before and after comparisons of EQ settings, compression and more while mixing or mastering. You can even bypass external analog gear!

Level-Matched A/B Testing: How does it work?

Simple. First, insert the Perception AB plugin before the processing chain you want to test, and select “Pre”. Second, insert the plugin at the end of the chain and select “Post.” Click “Match Level” and you can toggle between the Pre and Post audio to compare your music before and after the processing chain with level-matching and full delay compensation.

Faster, More Flexible: Now optimized for mixing and mastering

The original award-winning Perception was ground-breaking – the first ever plugin to offer easy, loudness-matched A/B comparisons in mastering, for any processing chain. Now Perception AB is the first to be fully optimized for mixing as well, enabling you to seamlessly bypass your entire mix (or any part of it) with a single click, without hearing a change in loudness.

The ultimate A/B plugin for mixing and mastering: With Perception AB, you can…

• Compare before and after: With level-matching.
• Quickly A/B test effects: With plugin delay compensation.
• Bypass your entire mix: With a single click.
• A/B test individual channels: In the context of the whole mix.
• Spot sneaky plugin presets: Hear what your processing really sounds like.
• Compare with reference tracks: At online streaming levels.

Features

• Bypass any processing chain
• Fast A/B testing
• Automatic loudness matching
• Plugin delay compensation
• Optimized for mixing – new Bypass All function
• Multiple loudness matching modes
• Easy bulk insertion