MASTERING FINALIZER · TRANSFORMER SATURATION, VARI-MU GLUE & BRICKWALL LIMITER
IRONWALL
The last thing before the master bus.
A last-in-chain mastering block, 100% wet, always — there is no mix control and there will not be one. TRIM into a db-cell noise stage, into a Jiles-Atherton transformer core modeling twelve real transformers, into IRONGLUE — a vari-mu compressor keyed by the transformer's own saturation, not the program level — into adjustable high/low-pass, TILT, a frequency-swept MONO fold-down, GAIN, a brickwall limiter with a provable exact ceiling, and dither. Twelve pieces of iron, one signal path, and a ceiling that cannot be beaten by any input.
- Twelve real transformer models on a Jiles-Atherton core, plus MEAN and X-FORMER — from Lundahl's clean amorphous bloom to Edcor's small-core grit, each carrying its own measured or characterized distortion curve
- IRONGLUE: a vari-mu compressor keyed by the transformer's own nonlinear excess, not the program level — it responds to saturation, so the harder you drive the iron, the more of it you hear
- A provable, sample-exact ceiling from two independent mechanisms: the gain computer can't request too much, and the smoother can't overshoot it, for any input, with no safety clipper hiding behind it
- TILT (±6 dB about 650 Hz), adjustable high/low-pass (12–72 dB/oct), and a frequency-swept MONO control that folds down only the low end you choose, not the whole stereo image
- FEED/LEVEL switch decides whether DRIVE changes tone (LEVEL, level-compensated) or feeds real gain into the core (FEED) — transformer models stay matched either way, so A/B'ing iron is always fair
- Full BS.1770-4 loudness metering — momentary, short-term, integrated, LRA, true peak — plus a live coloration analyzer showing exactly what the iron is doing to the signal
- Dither (off / 24 / 20 / 16-bit, TPDF + shaping) and a saved db-cell recipe seed, so a mastering session signed off six months ago still sounds like the one that was signed off
VST3
AU
STANDALONE
WIN / MAC
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