Ever listened to a song and thought, “Wow, this sounds good. What if it sounded even better?”
I’m pretty sure this is the train of thought that led to the Oxford Inflator. It just makes everything sound better.
Ok, ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. You won’t always want to use the Oxford Inflator.
If a song is overcompressed or sounds a bit too harsh, you probably won’t want it.
The Oxford Inflator is a saturation plugin. It adds some distortion to higher frequencies that sounds pleasant to our ears.
Dialing in some subtle saturation can help maximize the perceived loudness of a song without wrecking the tone. The distortion on the higher harmonics can make your song feel bigger.
Aside from adding some pleasant harmonic distortion, it’s also brought the RMS level up. So even though these two tracks are peaking at the same level, the 2nd sounds louder.
