Accusonus ERA Voice Leveler $59

Also available in Accusonus’ ERA bundle of like-minded audio clean-up processors, Voice Leveler uses few controls, leaving processing voodoo unseen. Set your intended output level, and push up the big Processing knob to define the amount of processing – automatic gating, detection and timing definitions are all handled intelligently. Normal and Tight modes change the results, but their impact depends on the material and recording quality; meanwhile Emphasis automatically applies EQ if a signal is spectrally off-the-mark.

Getting a vocal up to a decent, consistent dynamic range is remarkably easy, though changing the processing strength and output level don’t seem to have as much impact on that result as we’d expected. What we’d prefer over Emphasis and Tightness control is access to the gate’s settings. This is supposedly handled by the main Processing knob, but when spill was present in the signal, we found we needed to insert a dedicated gate before ERA Voice Leveler. Even so, for artefact-free, pro results in a few clicks, this is the one.