New Music Gear Monday: Oscillot Audio Perspective Monitor Plugin

It used to be that every mix room had a variety of speakers to choose from so you could understand your balances better across many playback systems. Even so, the car always seemed to be the ultimate arbiter of whether a mix would work, but that meant multiple trips outside for a listen. What if there was a plugin that simulated all those listening environments right from the desktop? Actually, there are several currently on the market, but the latest from Oscillot Audio called Perspective might be the most advanced yet.

Perspective is a full-featured monitor plugin that also lets you simulate the response of popular speakers, consumer electronics, the radio, and the car on your current monitors.

As a monitor plugin it has just about everything you need. There are selection switches for Mono, Dim, L/R Flip, Polarity, and individual speaker mutes. There’s also a talkback button that’s either latching or momentary so you can speak with your talent via the cue system.

Where it goes to another level is the speaker and environment simulations. There are 3 slots (A, B, and C) that allow you to load in simulations of various popular speakers, ranging from NS10‘s (called “Japan Classic” here) to ATC 25s, with a few popular models from Focal, Genelec and Adam, and even Aurotones thrown in. Each slot also has its own level control so you switch between them without a jump in level.

There’s also a slot labeled H that you can use if you’re already using one of the speakers on the emulation list. This will neutralize the its response characteristics before any of the simulations are added.

Perspective also provides simulations of two different auto interior types (sedan and SUV) that lets you add highway noise to get closer to the real thing. There’s also a simulation for laptop speakers, television speakers and even a smartphone. And to top it all off, there’s a dedicated button for an FM radio that simulates that format’s limited bandwidth (not the compression though).

There were a couple things that I wish the plugin had. A master level control would have been nice, along with a number of preset levels. Also, the trend towards a very dark user interface has to stop. It’s hard on the eyes over the course of a day in use. I had to boost the exposure quite a bit on the graphic above so that you could actually see its parameters. All that aside, it looks like it could be a very useful plugin.

The Oscillot Audio Perspective plugin is on sale at $149 (usually $199) and there’s a free trial period. You can find out more details about the plugin here, or watch the video below.

Thanks to Kurt Hoffler for alerting me to this product.

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