Adding a number of new features and a fresh GUI to HoRNet’s 2014 mastering plugin, Magnus Mk2 (VST/AU/AAX) is a cleverly designed two-stage clipper/brickwall limiter.
The signal hits the Clipper first, where those inaudible peaks that just eat up headroom are rounded off or severely shaved, either in analogue-style Soft mode or more ‘digital’ Hard mode.
After that, it’s onto the Limiter, which incorporates three release stages: the main one, set by the Release knob, a second set to half the Release time and a third set to a quarter. In Auto mode, the main Release time is set to one bar, while the other two lock to one and two beats, which works very well indeed with dance music.
Each stage can be independently set to up to 4x oversampling, and the Auto Output option keeps the peak output level at a value of your choosing. Metering includes Integrated LUFS, dynamic Range (LU) and RMS readouts, as well as graphical peak and RMS meters.
A very versatile, transparent dynamics-shaping combo, Magnus Mk2 is an obvious bargain.
