BREITSEITE went on sale yesterday, and today our new stereo imager is already in the news at Loop Rituals. Boris Alexander presents the plugin there, and we are really happy about it. Loop Rituals had already reviewed KA-303 in June, so the quick news item means a lot to us.
You can find the article here: looprituals.de/kreuzberg-audio-veroeffentlicht-stereo-imager-breitseite
What Loop Rituals writes about BREITSEITE
Loop Rituals calls BREITSEITE a new and exceptional stereo imager plugin and describes the core idea exactly the way we intended it: stereo width is not set with one knob for the whole signal but with a curve across the entire frequency spectrum. The bass stays mono, the mids stay under control, the top opens up, all in one window.
The article also covers the technology: spectral processing via a short time Fourier transform with a window of 2048 samples and 75 percent overlap, the resulting 1025 frequency bands, and the fact that in every band only the side signal is scaled while the mid stays untouched. Plus the analyzer that measures in the background how wide the material already is in each band and where phase problems occur.
Also mentioned are the LFO modulation of individual curve points, synced to song tempo or free running, using the LFO engine from KA-303, the bass mono function with an adjustable crossover, the A/B comparison with loudness matching, and ADAPT, which derives a starting curve from a passage as it plays. The key facts are all there as well: eight factory presets, Windows, macOS and Linux, VST3, AU, CLAP and Standalone, a constant latency of 2048 samples, 49 euros including VAT and a demo without functional restrictions.
Why the curve replaces the knob
Classic wideners have one knob, and it widens the whole spectrum evenly. That works until the bass starts to smear and the mono downmix in the club gets holes in it. The usual way out is a multiband setup of three or four tools that you rebuild for every track. BREITSEITE replaces that setup with a single curve: you drag the points to where the width should go and see at the same time what survives the mono downmix.
More on the technology, the presets and the modulation is on the product page: kreuzberg-audio.com/en/downloads/breitseite
Try BREITSEITE yourself
The demo is the full version: the complete feature set, a short burst of noise once a minute, 29 launches. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux as VST3, AU, CLAP and Standalone. The full version costs 49 euros including VAT. Installers and the manual in German and English are on the product page.
Thanks to Boris Alexander and the Loop Rituals team for the quick news item. We summarised the Loop Rituals review of KA-303 from June here: KA-303 Reviewed by Loop Rituals: 4.5 out of 5.0
Cheers,
Frank
