Metering, Loudness and Pitch / Time manipulation experts zplane has released a major free update to their PPMulator metering plug-in. Despite the name, PPMulator does not only emulate an old-style BBC standard Peak Program Meter, it can measure a whole raft of other standards and most importantly these days, Loudness and True Peak.

PPMulator now supports the 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos Pro Tools configuration and have added to the meter functions with a new True Peak meter.

Updates

• removed: RTAS support.
• removed: Windows XP support.
• new: VST3 support.
• new: added support for 10 channel IO busses.
• new: added support for Dolby Atmos 7.0.2 and 7.1.2 tracks for Pro Tools AAX.
• new: added true digital peak meter.
• new: added file drag and drop for batch processing in standalone version.
• (Windows) fixed: crashes on un/locking plugin to host when it hasn't been fully initialized (Adobe Premiere CC / Windows).
• (OS X) fixed: offline rendering can lead to sections of silence in the outputted audio.
• fixed: wrong ppm meter visualization on overloaded input signals.

Goodbye 32 Bit

With this latest update, zplane has discontinued support for 32 bit operating systems and plug-in architecture, so, unfortunately, no more support for Windows XP or the old native plug-in format, RTAS. This means that users of Pro Tools 9 and earlier will no longer be able to use the latest version of PPMulator.

Rock Solid Workhorse

I first discovered PPMulator eight years ago when trying to find a reliable replacement for the Digidesign SurroundScope plug-in, which got discontinued and was unfortunately also horribly inaccurate.  Since then, I have not had a single mix fail that's been metered by PPMulator. As technical requirements have evolved, PPMulator has added extra features to keep me covered, such as Loudness and True Peak. It is very competitively priced and has a very low CPU / GPU load. 

PPMulator is available from zplane for £76 for PPMUlator+ and £114 for PPMUlator XL.