Signum Audio’s comprehensive loudness measurement tools are flexible enough to cater for all current and future standards.
While it’s self-evident that the most important tool for mixing is the human ear, it’s also true that the ear can be easily fooled. As a consequence it continues to be essential to support those critical listening skills with a reliable reference metering system: specifically, one that can analyse the ‘loudness’ of the material against the appropriate parameters for the various media streaming platforms that dominate the consumer music experience today.
One of the latest additions to the multitude of loudness meter plug-ins now available comes from Signum Audio, Scottish audio software developers with 25 years of experience creating elegant user interfaces. The company currently offer their Bute Loudness Analyser both on its own and in the extended Bute Loudness Suite, which combines the analyser with a true-peak brick-wall limiter and a normalising processor, the core tools necessary for ensuring strict compliance with any chosen loudness standard. Both package options are also available in either stereo or surround versions, the former supporting mono and stereo applications, while the latter can accommodate 18 different channel-order formats from mono up to 7.1.
Bute is supported on Windows 7+ and Mac 10.9+ and is available in VST/VST3, AAX and AU plug-in formats. It is authorised using a licence key, and a fully functional two-week trial version is available. The Bute analyser version I tested was v1.3.2 (five updates from the initial release), while the Bute Suite version was v1.0.0.
Read the full review at Sound On Sound here.
