SoundHive has announced the release of new mastering plugin which unifies master-bus dynamics in a single window, so the loudness work is spread across three stages instead of forced through one limiter.
Most engineers reach commercial loudness by stacking three or four plugins on the master bus:an enhancer, a clipper, a limiter, and often a saturator, each unaware of the others. The limiter pumps because the clipper in front of it just changed the dynamics. The clipper starts to sound digital the moment it is pushed. The result is a chain that fights over the same few decibels.
End Game is built on a different premise: reduce dynamic range across three stages, each doing a little in its own comfort zone, rather than asking one limiter to do all of it. A dense pop mix that needs to come up 6 dB to hit its target sounds more open when that lift is shared across the three stages — a couple of dB from each, give or take — than when it is pushed through a single limiter. Similar LUFS reading, different listening experience.
End Game was designed and coded by SoundHive’s founder, Pete Dowsett, who engineers and produces records and writes the DSP himself.
“I never enjoyed stacking three or four plugins on the mix bus to push a song to the loudness it needed,” said Pete. “The all-in-ones I tried lacked the flexibility I wanted in the enhancement and clipping stages. End Game is the chain I wanted to have to hand — three voiced stages, one window, no leaving the master bus.”
“The hard part was never the idea — it was the execution. The better part of two months went into the limiter alone: getting mastering-grade brickwall control that stays clean on heavy low end without thinning the bass. The interface took as long in its own way — I wanted to keep all the flexibility to tweak, but have it still feel easy to reach for. And the enhancer voicings were built from the start to pair with the clipper and limiter, so the three stages behave like one chain rather than three plugins that happen to be stacked.”
Three stages, one signal path
- Enhance works upward. Instead of pulling peaks down like a compressor, it lifts low-leveldetail — body, sustain, room tone — and leaves the peaks untouched, so perceived loudness rises without driving them harder. The three voicings are three different algorithms, not variations on one. Bloom applies a custom broadband inflation curve that concentrates on quiet detail and eases off before it reaches the peaks — and it adds no latency. Detail is a true multiband upward compressor, with a Focus control that rebalances which bands lead without acting like an EQ. Inflate pairs upward compression with a harmonic waveshaper whose Character control reshapes the harmonic profile itself, not just its amount. All three run in Stereo or Mid/Side.
- Clip shapes fast transient peaks before the limiter sees them, so the limiter does less work. It offers four voicings — a true hard clip plus three soft modes, Punch, Smooth, and Loudness, each with its own character. Loudness is transient-aware: it eases off on attacks and tightens on sustained peaks, so transients keep their crest while sustained peaks are still clamped. The Drive control (0–24 dB) adds tape-style harmonic color to the body of the signal, leaving the peaks for the clipping stage so drive never double-clips. An optional low-frequency split keeps bass out of the nonlinear stage and recombines it in phase, so the lowend stays clean and stable.
- Limit lands the master with a multi-stage, program-dependent design rather than a single brickwall. A slow gain stage does the musical loudness work — its release adapts to how hard it is working and to what the music is doing — while a fast lookahead stage catches only the peaks left over and holds the ceiling cleanly, without the overshoot a single-stage limiter can let slip through. The six styles — Safe, Silk, Transparent, Glue, Punchy, Aggressive — are one engine retuned six ways, ordered gentlest to loudest: each has its own timing, envelope curve, and release character — including how program-dependent it is — rather than just a preset name. Oversampling runs from 1× to 16× (4× by default), with an optional true-peak safety stage that pulls inter-sample peaks back to the ceiling. It was tuned for modern, bass-heavy material — the sustained sub and trap low end that makes many limiters pump or thin out —to keep the low end intact and clean even when it is driven hard.
Metering sits on the same screen as the audio: Momentary, Short-term, and Integrated LUFS, Loudness Range, Peak-to-Loudness Ratio, and True Peak — no switching views or opening a second plugin. An ALL view stacks the three stages over one waveform so each stage’s effect on the signal is visible at once. Having every loudness reading in view at once makes it easier to master toward the level a genre actually calls for, rather than one blanket number — a particular help to engineers still building a feel for where a track should sit, who can aim for the right target instead of guessing.
End Game is available in VST3, AU, and AAX formats for Windows, macOS and Linux, at a limited time launch price of $99 USD (regular $150 USD). A fully functional 7-day trial version is available to download to try the plugin for free.
More information: SoundHive
