Playfair Audio Dynamic Grading 2

The controls may look unfamiliar, but there’s good visual feedback and you soon get your bearings.

There’s more to this fresh take on dynamics processing than a groovy GUI!

Playfair Audio’s Dynamic Grading is a powerful one‑stop plug‑in for shaping the dynamics of an audio signal — it allows you to access compression, expansion and transient shaping in a rather different way from usual — and those familiar with the previous version will find that v2 constitutes a dynamic (see what I did there?) leap forward. In fact, it’s fair to say that after taking advice from users of v1, Playfair have created something unique. As well as its completely redesigned graphical user interface, there’s support for multi‑channel formats up to 9.1.6, a magic eye spectral display, and some helpful factory presets that can be adjusted and stored as desired. And if you’re already a registered user of v1, you get to enjoy all this for free.

Dynamic Grading 2.0 supports 64‑bit AU, VST3 and AAX plug‑in formats for hosts running on macOS (10.13 or later) or Windows (10 or later), it’s compatible with Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and authorisation is by serial number. For the purpose of this review, I used an Intel i7 Mac Mini, and installation was pain free.

Overview

A quick first glance at the GUI is not met with the familiar controls and labels that you’d expect to find on any dynamics processor — there’s no obvious threshold, ratio, or attack controls, for example. Instead, you have controls labelled Punch, Body and Floor, but don’t worry, as it quickly becomes apparent what’s going on.

The plug‑in opens to display two dynamic histograms, giving a real‑time visualisation of dynamics at the input (Source) and output (Target). Between these histograms are those three key controls (Punch, Body and Floor), and these are used to shape the incoming signal to match the desired output, as shown in the Target display. On closer inspection, you’ll realise that these three controls are in fact separate ratios for each of the three parameters — so we’re back in more familiar territory. Along the left‑hand side, a scroll bar allows you to zoom in on the histograms for more detailed information. The time slider below the input histogram can be adjusted in bars (the default, following the DAW session tempo) or changed to seconds in the settings menu, offering a longer time scale and a smoother display.

As shown in the second screenshot, when a signal is detected at the input during playback, you’ll see a white area on the display. The outline shows the average...