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This month’s free plugin is an update to an amazing maximising limiter. Here’s how to get the max from it…

> It’s exciting times with the Computer Music Plugin Suite. Our ongoing process to upgrade and enhance this wonderful resource (provided free with each issue) takes another step forward this month with Maximal 3 CM. The previous version of this limiter appeared about five years ago, offering a simple interface and analogue saturation. The latest version swaps out the analogue flavour for a raft of more traditional limiter controls. As you may have guessed from the name, Maximal 3 CM is a maximising limiter and is ideal for pushing your signal levels up to your desired ceiling limit. It’s also a true peak design, which means it will catch those potential intersample peaks that can cause problems further down the line.

In these pages we’ll show you how to grab your free copy of Maximal 3 CM and get up and running. Then we’ll run through its controls and explain how it works. It has a handful of focused presets and we’ll use these as a starting point, showing you some of the things you can do with Maximal 3 CM. With its new design it also has a bunch of ways to monitor the limiter behaviour. These include a frequency analyser and handy gain reduction trace, which are both on the foldaway graph display. You’ve also got an array of level meters that provide peak, RMS and loudness units info. On the final page we’ll talk you through the various meters so you can make the most of this excellent plugin.