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14-day money back guarantee included if product is not activated
You can purchase from Gear4music with complete confidence and peace of mind. All of our digital products come with a 14-day money-back guarantee as standard.
If you decide you don't want your order, you can return it within 14 days of receiving it. Provided your product hasn't been activated in that time, you can exchange it for a different product, or get a refund.
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This does not affect your statutory rights.
For more information, please refer to our Returns and Refunds Information.
If you decide your order isn't suitable for any reason you can return it - just let us know within 30 days of receiving it. Please keep hold of all the original packaging until you're sure you want to keep the order.
Eligibility for Money Back Guarantee
Important: For hygiene and software licensing reasons, some items are only eligible for our Money Back Guarantee if they are returned to us unused and sealed in the original packaging with all software still "unregistered." Details of exclusions are shown within the product descriptions. Products include:
- Monitors and Headphones
- Earplugs and Ear Protection
- Reeds and mouthpieces for woodwind and brass instruments
- Mouth and Lip-Care Products
- CDs, DVDs and Software
We can collect your return for a small fee, or you can send it back to us yourself. The collection fee can be found in the returns information on each product's page on Gear4music.
In the unlikely event that any item in this order is faulty, damaged or incorrect on receipt, notify us within 14 days and we'll arrange a free collection.
When returning an order please ensure products are appropriately packaged and protected, to prevent them from getting damaged.
This table provides an overview of your statutory consumer rights, compared with our standard returns policy and optional extended money back guarantee and warranty.
| UK & Europe | EU Standard | Gear4music Standard | Gear4music Optional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Return Period | 14 days | 30 days | up to 180 days |
| Standard delivery charges refunded? | Yes | Yes | Yes, up to 30 days |
| Upgraded delivery charges refunded? | Standard costs only | Standard costs only | Standard costs only |
| Free collection on cancellation | No | No | Yes, up to 30 days |
| Free collection if defective, delivered damaged or incorrect item | Yes, within 14 days | Yes, within 14 days | Yes, within 30 days |
We are unable to accept returns of any custom made items designed to work together as a unique package and some items are only eligible for money back guarantee if they are returned to us unused and sealed in the original packaging. For full information on our returns policy, please refer to our returns and refunds information guide.
Key Features
The Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec is a metering plug-in that enables you to audition up to five unique codecs simultaneously in real-time to monitor the effect on your audio. The ultimate tool for mixing and mastering engineers, the rise in digital streaming and distribution can often mean that your audio will be processed through different codecs depending on the platform, resulting in a different sound from the original file. Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec allows you to hear and visually monitor the changes to your audio in real-time, eliminating the need for offline exporting, to save you time in the studio to make the adjustments you need to get the best sound for a specific codec.
Supporting MP3, AAC, MPEG, iTunes plus and surround multichannel-specific codecs, you can monitor nearly every commonly found algorithm. Up to five codecs can be loaded and seamlessly switched between with no glitches, ensuring no audible distractions occur during monitoring. With comprehensive FFT and Lissajous display modes, you can visually see the change to NMR and frequency response in real-time. For experienced engineers that require audio cues rather than visual, Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec comes with two blind-test methods, A-B and A-BX which can be coupled with 'DIFF' listening mode to hear in isolation the effect of the chosen codec on your audio.
Product Ref: 228424
Signifying a drastic change within the industry, in 1995 the Fraunhofer Society altered the file extension of the universal MPEG-1 Audio Layer III to the ubiquitous MP3. This new standard of compressed codec relies on psychoacoustic properties to interpret sounds based on a series of specific frequency bands. The result is that tones in a frequency band can be masked by louder tones within the same band. This moves the inaudible frequencies into areas of the spectrum where the human hearing is less likely to perceive them and can introduce distortion artefacts. By removing these tones deemed inaudible by the MP3 algorithm, the file size is greatly reduced by 10 to 12 times for distribution purposes on CD formats and across internet suppliers and distributors. The more compression is applied, the more information is removed. This proposes a new challenge for digital mixing and mastering engineers. Ensuring your product sounds as good as it can across a wide range of common codecs is an essential process for all new modern mixing and mastering engineers to better understand how different compression algorithms affect your sound. Enter the Sonnox Pro-Codec.
Though music has become more convenient and readily available through online streaming and internet distribution, it's more challenging than ever for engineers to create a great mix that translates across different sites with different codecs. Providing you with a way of monitoring your project through all the Fraunhofer codecs, Sonnox Pro-Codec lets you audition and compare codecs in real-time without the need for offline exporting.
Quick and easy to use with glitchless switching, this enables mixing and mastering engineers to monitor up to five codecs in real-time within your DAW to more accurately make changes to your project to better fit the codec algorithm that is required of your audio. This industry-first plug-in provides you with all major Fraunhofer codecs including mp3, mp3 Surround, AAC-LC, HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 are supported, as are lossless codecs such as mp3-HD and HD-AAC. All with the ability to load up to 192kHz sample rate and resolutions from 16 to 32-bit. Not only that, a wide range of surround-sound codecs and iTunes Plus codec has been integrated, allowing you to more accurately create dedicated masters specifically for the iTunes program as well as broadcast and streaming mediums.
As every codec algorithm is different, this will have a different effect on the sound of your project, therefore being able to seamlessly pick between five simultaneously provides you with the knowledge on how to best alter your project to get the best sound. Breaking the cycle of exporting a mic to a codec, listening and evaluating the differences, the real-time process of Pro-Codec allows you to precisely audition in your DAW to make the required changes instantly.
Not only can you audibly audition the differences between various codecs, but you can graphically monitor the sum and difference of those effects on the large FFT display.
In familiar Sonnox style, Fraunhofer Pro-Codec includes an innovative display that provides you with a visual representation of several key components within your audio signal. Whilst final judgements should be made by your ear, the zoomable FFT within Sonnox Pro-Codec provides a tremendous amount of insight into the detail of your audio. FFT analysis is represented with a yellow line with the red graphical line representing the spectral content of the difference between the origin and the codec signal. Also represented is the NMR (Noise-Mask ratio) via the green lines which are placed vertically based on the intensity within that frequency range. The higher the green line, the more potential for audible artefacts within that region.
A different viewpoint can be achieved with the 'Liss' switch, altering the GUI to a Lissajous display with dual vectorscopes. This viewpoint enables you to determine the impact and presence of artefacts within the stereo field with three unique representations of 'Input and Output, 'Output and Difference' and simply the 'Difference'. For mastering engineers, this provides invaluable information about the spatial field and any reduction in stereo width that may be present when a codec is applied.
For such detailed metering, a comprehensive set of additional features and statistics can be accessed within Sonnox Pro-Codec. Each of the maximum five codecs includes information about the algorithm, including an adjustable bitrate and quality with further information presented in three tabs labelled 'Trim', 'Comp' and 'A-B'. Trim presents information on the peak level of the audio after passing through the codec. For mastering engineers working with audio with little dynamic range and enhanced loudness, this ensures that you can visually see what the likely outcome of the peak level will be within your audio. Internal filtering within the codec algorithm can often alter this level and therefore monitoring this will ensure that you can appropriately adjust the dynamic level of your track to eliminate any unwanted clipping or overshooting during final export.
The second 'Comp' tab indicates the approximate data-compression ratio per codec whilst the 'A-B' tab offers perhaps the most important feature of all. Listening in concrete terms, the A-B portion of Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec provides you with two blind-test listening modes, A-B and A-BX. Firstly, A-B lets you audition any pair of codecs with the plug-in displaying which mode you are currently listening to. Should you want to rely more on your hearing, the A-BX mode removes all visual cues and only presents the audible changes, helping you to make the final judgement based on your hearing and monitoring system rather than being influenced by your eyes.
Alternatively, you can monitor the difference in the signal that the codec is removing by hitting the 'Diff' switch in the master output portion of the plug-in. Once you're happy with the settings, encoding multiple formats simultaneously is simply a matter of enabling record in the plug-in and pressing play in your DAW. A tremendous time-saver with the ability to add comprehensive meta-data and batch processing lets you make the changes, or lack of, quickly and easily all without ever leaving your DAW.
"Once you've used Pro-Codec, you won't hear compressed audio the same way ever again." - Future Music
"...one of the most useable plug-ins for mastering and mix engineers on sale today." - PSN Europe
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