Harder, faster, stronger
soothe has always been a processor that requires a delicate touch, and with soothe2’s new Soft mode (the other mode, Hard, is more like the previous behaviour), the ‘intensity’ of the processing and operational sweep of many of the controls can be reined in, tightening the tolerance of the effect and making it harder to overcook. oeksound describe Soft mode as “more autonomous, easier to use and faster to set up [than Hard mode]”, and that perfectly sums it up – the shortened parameter ranges greatly reduce the potential for damage and speed up workflow, and the lowered sensitivity to input signal level results in greater transparency and preservation of transients. The ‘down side’, if you want to call it that, is less detailed control for narrowing in on specific problem resonances, and the ruling out of extreme dynamic cuts thanks to the lower depth of resonance reduction.
The addition of Soft mode is a canny move on oeksound’s part, giving less experienced engineers a relatively foolproof option for safety’s sake, and experts a quick and thoroughly effective alternative to the twitchier setup of old for ‘workhorse’ usage. In fact, Soft mode is so well suited to the majority of expected use cases, that it’s the default when loading the plugin.