In this exclusive Production Expert Video Review we take a look at Zynaptiq's new mixing and mastering processing plug-in INTENSITY and decide if it's any good.

What Is INTENSITY?

Zynaptiq says INTENSITY is a new type of mixing and mastering processor that increases the inherent detail, clarity, density and perceived loudness of audio. Watch Zynapiq's INTENSITY Trailer video to gain a quick overview of the plug-in and to hear it in action.

Main Controls

• Intensity

• Bias

• Bias curves

• Level compensation

• Input

• Output (Gain and Saturator modes

• Preset manager

The plug-in’s based around these two main trackball sliders Intensity and Bias. Intensify, being the main control, is not a compressor, Zynaptiq makes this point very clear in their marketing. Instead, it is a smart algorithm that increases the level of detail within audio. 

Testing INTENSITY

In the video above, we test INTENSITY on a small section of a song that sounds a bit congested, The balance sounds good, however, the mix does suffer and lacks definition because there is lots of instrumentation. Does INTENSITY help to improve the clarity of this mix? Watch the video to hear the results and to decide for yourself.

Extra INTENSITY Examples Not Found In The Video Review

Below are three additional audio examples featuring INTENSITY across the entire master of each mix. We've level matched these to help you to hear exactly what each instance of INTENSITY is doing to each example.

Verdict - I Absolutely Adore It

I absolutely adore INTENSITY because it adds immense clarity and body to mixes that usually can only be achieved with a large number of plug-ins chained together, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what types of plug-ins you would need to use to get results to sound anything like what INTENSITY can produce.

This is the first plug-in by Zynaptiq that features a manual that is actually really easy to understand, that said though you really don’t need to read the manual to understand how this works, throw INTENSITY on a master or sub mix, reach for the trackballs and you'll be amazed at the results.

It would be nice if the level compensation worked better so that the levels of the unprocessed and processed were closer together, as you may have heard in the review video, that there can be significant differences in levels between them. So we went back to Denis Goekdag, the designer and creator of Intensity and asked him to confirm if what I experienced in the review is the correct behaviour for this feature or whether we had it wrong or there was a problem. Denis replied explaining…

The level compensation only takes the main Intensity knob into account - not the dry-wet, bias or the gain (and thus saturation); also, it is only, and can only ever, be an approximation as the processing is signal dependent per se; and the plug-in can add a lot of loudness that makes the difference sound bigger than it actually is in some cases. So yeah, working as intended.

The hit on CPU resources is not that bad. On my old Mac Pro 5.1, one instance of INTENSITY added around 15% load to my session which I think isn't too bad at all.

INTENSITY costs $379, which is a fair price considering that it is a super simple plug-in to use and works on a wide range of musical styles and mixing applications. For a limited time, you can buy INTENSITY at an introductory price of $149.

Visit the Zynaptiq website for more information and to download the demo. You can also visit our friends at Time+Space to purchase INTENSITY.