Crysonics has released SPECTRALIVE NXT V3, the third generation of their Audio Vitality and Enhancement Processor plug-in. To get your brain around it, think of it as a Sonic Maximizer/Aural Exciter meeting a Tube Emulator/Ultramaximizer. Listening tests here bring a solid thumbs up for this $99 problem solver. Where the “mystery” comes in is that Cryosonic claims they’re not accomplishing the outcome by adding harmonics. Instead, they’ve branded their mojo as “Vitality” and the term is not far off: across the 2 bus SPECTRALIVE did benefit the mixes we tried it on when used sparingly.

The key ingredients are a look-ahead, 10 band, frequency-dependent soft limiter with independent gain control, a no clip limiter across the 10 summed signals and the Vitality section with a simple “up means more/down means less” mentality. That’s the part meant to emulate a Maximizer or Tube circuit. There’s also a new Atomospheric section which can be used on mono or stereo signals basically letting you add more or less “stereo” to your mix. For $99, it’s an inexpensive problem solver for the project studio’s bag of tricks.