TrebleCream

One of the most annoying things in sound and music are sharp, harsh and screaming mid-trebles and distorted transients.

From your mixing experience you probably know the frequent situation where everything sounds good — instruments balanced, well compressed and equalized — but if you want a clear and significant overall mix, the mid-trebles are inevitably very sharp, screaming and distorted, and you don't know how to make them softer and more enjoyable.

After the mix, those screaming mid-trebles are often boosted further during mastering, because your record is amplified, compressed and limited, which results in more distortion — most significant on mid-trebles and transients. Later, when the track is played loud in a car, a disco bar or at a big concert, those sharp mid-trebles and transients saw at the ears of your listeners, because power amplifiers produce even more distortion and massive higher harmonics when playing really loud. More loudness = more amplifier distortion. Then music is no longer a pleasure but a pain.

It doesn't matter whether you mix jazz, folk, heavy metal, techno or drum & bass — ask your listeners and all of them prefer nice, creamy, analog, sparkling trebles and intensive but silky transients rather than painful distortion and screaming. Even in the hardest styles of music.

TrebleCream is a new technology with special digital algorithms and virtual circuits inspired by analog electronic structures, made to achieve really pleasant, creamy mid-trebles and transients without losing any intensity of the mid-high frequencies.

TrebleCream was developed in cooperation with Analog Dimension. Their senior mastering engineer says: “More than 50% of the mixes we receive have screaming or distorted mid-trebles and/or transients, while the rest of the mix is relatively good. Sometimes a song is twice as loud after mastering because of modern trends, and all these negative artifacts are logically boosted during mastering. While many people think mastering can fix all mistakes in a mix, every experienced engineer will tell you that it is not true — mastering simply can't save a wrong mix. Many people use low quality digital compressors, coloring plug-ins and limiters, and all of these produce distortion on mid-trebles and transients if used unduly. We were always curious what to do with these low-quality mixes when re-mixing wasn't possible, because compressing or equalizing can't remove screaming mid-trebles and distorted transients — otherwise the song will sound empty and subdued after strong equalizing. So after discussions with G-Sonique engineers and long research we discovered the TrebleCream machine. First we made it as real analog hardware, and later recreated it as a digital plug-in for more comfortable work.”

TrebleCream is aimed mainly at MIX (used on individual channels) but can be used very comfortably on the mix bus / main channel as well, or during MASTERING if you receive a really wrong and harsh mix and re-mixing isn't possible. Sometimes TrebleCream can be the last chance to repair a wrong and harsh mix before mastering.