There are a ton of transient shapers out there. I own many, many different ones and use them a lot. Why did I choose to write about Peakbuster specifically? Read on.

Disclaimer: I have bought this plugin. I am not sponsored by Voxengo. This article includes affiliate links.

I’ve been working with Voxengo Peakbuster now for a few weeks. It became a go-to immediately and frankly it would be hard to be without it now.

What Is Voxengo Peakbuster?

Voxengo Peakbuster does three things:

• Boosts transients
• Adds harmonic coloration
• Spectral compression.

It does all of the above really well. It can add punch, glue and loudness to your material and generally just tends to make things sound better.

Peakbuster applies Voxengo’s proprietary multiband detection process and offers controls to boost the high and low end transients separately (FX Lo and FX Hi).

It has three very different modes, labeled M1, FX1 and M3.

• In M1 mode, the plugin acts as a transient shaper and harmonic enhancer. I would describe the M1 mode a fairly natural sounding better-maker.
• In FX1 mode, Peakbuster works as spectral compressor. I would describe the FX1 mode as a glue machine and louder-maker.
• The M3 mode is for reducing transients from overly dynamic material.

How Does It Sound?

In my experience, in M1 mode Peakbuster will make almost anything sound better (used in the right manner, of course). I even found it often improves already good sounding mixes when used on the mix bus. It is the most natural sounding transient shaper I’ve ever heard.

The FX1 mode is definitely more aggressive and does not suit all situations. But when the material calls for a bit of glue and loudness, it can really deliver. Whether it works for you depends largely on the sound you’re going for. For me it seems to work quite well as a glue compressor. My advice is simply to try it with the material you have.

At the heart of Peakbuster’s magic is its transient detection algorithm. It just works beautifully with minimal effort from the user. The plugin pretty much always does its job very well and without artefacts.

You can even throw a super smashed brickwalled mix into it and it will bring the material back alive. I have not seen any other plugin do that before. See the video below for example.

Coloration and Oversampling

Peakbuster can add a special kind of harmonic coloration to the material. It doesn’t sound like a typical saturation effect. In fact it can be pretty clean as far as harmonic coloration goes, while still making things sound fuller. It kind of sounds like filling empty spaces in your music without really changing the nature of the material.

Peakbuster gives you the option of up to 8X of oversampling, switchable between minimum and linear phase. I tested it in Plugin Doctor. The oversampling reduces aliasing considerably so my advice would be to always use it if your CPU allows.

Set in auto-mode, the plugin uses 1X oversampling for playback and whatever setting you have selected in the preferences for offline rendering (this only works in DAWs that support different plugin settings for offline rendering).

The oversampling setting has a big effect on how this plugin sounds. I don’t like to leave it on “Auto”, because the plugin will then produce a different sound during rendering and playback.

Harmonic Analysis

The image above shows the harmonics being created by a sine wave of -6 dB at 99.6 Hz. The plugin is set to its default settings with the exception of oversampling set to 8X.

As you can see, Peakbuster adds a ton of harmonics. Also there is aliasing happening even with 8X oversampling. However, with moderate settings the harmonics are fairly low in level. Aliasing falls below the -96 dB dynamic range of 16 bit audio (which is the format we usually listen to).

It is good to keep in mind though that using a test tone is not a real world scenario. There will be a lot more going on with a full spectrum signal. Furthermore, if you process the signal further down the chain by adding compression, saturation or limiting, you will bring up those low level artefacts as well as potentially create further aliasing depending on the plugins you are using.

If all this technical info is a bit too much for you, let me boil it down in layman’s terms:

I think Voxengo Peakbuster sounds great and is safe to use, but I would rather use it towards the end of the processing chain when possible. This is because too heavy further processing has the potential to bring up the artefacts that will otherwise stay hidden. This is of course true with any nonlinear plugins (anything that does some kind of compression and saturation) that produce aliasing. Common sense goes a long way: Be mindful of extreme settings and over-processing.

Workflow

I love the UI and workflow of Voxengo plugins. Everything is well thought out. I like using the black theme. It’s clean and nice to work with. If you enjoy tweaking, you can configure the looks of the plugin yourself quite extensively.

There are not that many controls available which is a good thing in my books for a plugin like this. The ones that are there are meaningful. The knobs are well calibrated for smooth and precise user experience.

I won’t go into detail explaining all the knobs and functions – the user guide is there for that

The plugin has meters for gain added by processing and total output gain. These work very well. The behaviour of the plugin is gain dependent. Even though the input trim has automatic output compensation (a very nice touch), I would like to have an additional input gain meter to see how loud the signal is actually coming in.

Voxengo plugins also always include a number of nice usability features, such as A/B functionality, Undo/redo, configurable metering and visuals, and more.

Like other Voxengo products, Peakbuster fullfills a high standard and has been very stable for me. I’ve had no issues at all. This is a big deal in my books. There is nothing more frustrating than a buggy plugin that keeps messing with your workflow.

Overall, Peakbuster does its job in a very elegant manner, with minimal effort required from the user to get good results.

My typical use cases

I’ve been using Peakbuster a lot on the mix bus. I often like to compress my music quite a bit on the way in. Peakbuster in M1 mode is great for adding a little bit of natural punch while maintaining the tight feel and movement created by the compression. I also very much enjoy the subtle harmonic coloration it adds to my music.

I would also definitely use Peakbuster in a mastering context if I needed to restore transients into over-compressed material.

The plugin works equally well on individual sources. But for processing things like snares and bass drums, I often prefer something with a little bit more control. Voxengo’s own TransGainer is a good one.

In FX1 mode, I like using Peakbuster like a glue compressor. With my own material it tends to work great on mix bus too. It’s easy to overdo – tune carefully.

Copy protection

Voxengo plugins are authorised with a product key, which is a text string. No challenge/response or dongle is required. No connection to Voxengo website is required.

Voxengo’s copy protection is a well working and easy to use system. I’ve never had a problem with it.

Supported platforms

The plugin can be loaded in any audio host application that conforms to the AudioUnit, AAX, or VST plugin specification.

This plugin is compatible with Windows (32- and 64-bit Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and later version, if not announced as unsupported) and macOS (10.11 and later version, if not announced as unsupported) computers (2.5 GHz dual-core or faster processor with at least 4 GB of system RAM required).  A separate binary distribution file is available for each target computer platform and audio plugin specification.  If supported on a specific processor, the plugin may internally utilize AVX2-optimized code.

Compatible Windows and macOS plugin software: Cubase, Logic Pro, ProTools, Ableton Live, Reaper, OBS, Presonus Studio One, FL Studio, Cakewalk, Nuendo, WaveLab, GarageBand, Vegas, SoundForge, Audition, Samplitude, Digital Performer, Mixcraft, Bitwig Studio, Edius, others.  Note that for Logic Pro you should download the AU,AAX package, not VST.

Note: Mac M1 is natively supported.

Voxengo Peakbuster Review – Conclusion

Voxengo Peakbuster has become a permanent fixture in my music. The way it succeeds in adding punch without sounding artificial is very unique. The transient detection is on point and the harmonic coloration it adds is beautiful. The spectral compression mode is really nice and useful as well.

The plugin is effortless to use and it’s very quick to get good results with it. It’s stable and made to the highest standards in every respect. The pricing is sensible also.

Here is my Voxengo Peakbuster Review in short: I’m using it in every project. It’s a keeper. Well done!

Try/buy here: Voxengo Peakbuster