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Chandler EMI TG Mastering Pack Formats: Mac & PC TDM & RTAS

Abbey Road Studios are celebrated for many things, among them the unique equipment designed and built by EMI's in-house engineers. Thanks to the studio's partnership with Chandler, some of their most revered processors are available as rackmounting products, and their range also includes plug-in emulations of several key items. Their excellent TG 12413 limiter plug-in is a firm favourite, while the Mastering Pack under review here contains two EQ plug-ins based on EMI's own 'transfer consoles'. These custom-designed mastering mixers were introduced in 1972, and proved so successful that several are still in use today.

Plug-in installation is straightforward, with authorisation to an iLok key, and my only minor quibble concerns the naming of the plug-ins. This is no doubt authentic, but when TG 12413 is joined in your plug-in list by TG 12412 and TG 12414, all of which do different things, there's a certain amount of potential for confusion.

TG 12412 is a four-band equaliser perhaps best described as semi-parametric, although it has some novel features. Each of the four bands is dedicated to its own area of the frequency spectrum — low, low-mid, upper-mid and high — and offers a choice of five stepped corner frequencies. These, unusually, are centred around musical values such as Middle C and its harmonics, rather than neat numbers of Hertz. Up to 10dB of cut or boost can be applied, while the five-position Shape switch offers high and low shelving responses on the outer positions, with 'blunt', 'medium' and 'sharp' bell curves in between. The interesting thing to note here is that any of the bands can be set to low or high shelving, so if you want to, you can apply four different shelving EQs simultaneously, or have a high shelving boost turning over at 128Hz!

TG 12414 is a simpler affair, comprising stepped high- and low-pass filters plus a single band of 'presence' equalisation, with stepped centre frequency and 10dB gain. The filters can't be switched out of circuit, but have 'Low' and 'High' settings that move the corner frequencies out of the audible range (roughly 13Hz and 38kHz respectively).

It almost goes without saying that both of these EQ plug-ins sound great, but I was surprised at the difference in character. TG 12412 is like the proverbial 'make it sound better' processor, with an effortless sound that invites adjectives such as 'smooth', 'silky' and 'warm'. I was particularly impressed by its ability to add large amounts of boost without any of the usual problems that doing so can bring. It's easy to fatten up the low-mids, with none of the 'cardboard' quality that often plagues attempts to add weight in the 400-600 Hz range. Pushing the low end brings out a fantastic rounded, solid bass, while the high-frequency shelf is quite unlike most digital EQs, with the rare ability to remain fluid and warm even when large amounts of boost are applied. You could argue that it doesn't quite open out the mix in the way that some rivals can, but nor does it ever become harsh or emphasise sibilance. It's a bit like having a well-trained butler apply a gentle polish to the music.

TG 12414, by contrast, makes its presence known in a rather less subtle way. Applying the same gain settings that would result in gentle tonal shaping in TG 12414 here can completely change the character of an instrument or a mix. The manual states that the presence band is useful for "making certain instruments in a recording more or less prominent", and it is certainly a blunter instrument than TG 12412.

If that description makes it sound as though TG 12412 is the more versatile and useful of the two plug-ins, that's probably fair. To my mind, it's probably best to think of 12414 as a useful bonus that you get when you buy its counterpart. I can't recommend TG 12412 highly enough: it's one of the most musical plug-in equalisers I've heard, and its uses go far beyond mastering. Sam Inglis

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