Anyone use Sonnox Oxford Inflator, thoughts?

It's a classic for a reason. It's a good peak-killer and 'put it to the front of the mix'-izer.

Used to use it a LOT, it's still amazing. Take some time to read the manual and watch some videos to understand it, it's really easy to screw things up when it's pushed hard. I master everything I do now, so I'm mixing a bit more aggressively and want something at the end of the chain for most of the idiots that wants their choruses hitting at 6 LUFS (which seems to be everyone at this point...). I've kind of settled on a combination of Acustica's Fire the Clip, followed by the FabFilter Limiter. The vast majority of the time, I'm able to take a rough mix and get it loud enough with those two at the end.


The thing I like the most about that combo is that it's extremely transparent. When I was using the inflator more, it was usually something I had to roughly set over the whole mix from the beginning and mix into it. I never felt like it was very transparent, but that's what I liked about it. If I get to the end of the mix and need a little more body or character, I still pop the inflator on occasionally. It does that "thing" very well all these years later. With the way my mixing has changed the last 5-6 years and having the API console to mix into, I'm really liking the more transparent combo I've found on most things.

$30 is nothing, grab that sucker...

The limiter is way better and puts the distortion just on transients if you know to use it. It spreads the distortion over short moments of time instead of distorting everything all the time.

What I heard that I liked was on a single vocal track, not on a bus - I don't think I'd use this on a bus, but never say never.

For overly dark, rolled off bass tracks, it can be a good problem solver.