Make Believe Studios CGII

Loudness is the final boss of every mix. You’ve balanced everything, the mix sounds great — and then the mastering stage either elevates it to commercial level or crushes the life out of it. CGII by Make Believe Studios is the weapon Chris Gehringer — the Sterling Sound mastering legend behind some of the biggest records ever made — built to solve exactly this problem.

Most loudness tools are just limiters with a fancy interface: push the input, squash the peaks, hope for the best. CGII takes a fundamentally different approach with two complementary processors. The Density processor works on the quiet stuff — it lifts previously masked low-level detail, the bloom and air hiding underneath your peaks, without touching the transients at all. The Loudness processor then adds transparent RMS level with a touch of harmonic excitement that gives the master character instead of just volume. Together they increase perceived loudness the way a great mastering engineer does: by revealing what’s already in the mix, not by flattening it.

The interface is disarmingly simple — two big knobs, a few switches — but the signal processing underneath is world-class, with user-selectable oversampling up to 16x eliminating any trace of digital aliasing. The nixie tube displays aren’t just beautiful; they give you precise readouts of LUFS Integrated, Short Term, Momentary, True Peak, and True Peak Hold, so you always know exactly where your master stands against streaming standards.

The true-peak lookahead limiter at the end of the chain is the safety net every modern master needs. With selectable ceilings at 0dB, -0.1dB, and -1dB, you can guarantee no inter-sample overs no matter how hot the master runs — essential for Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube delivery. Add the DC-block filter to remove residual offset and dither from 16 to 24-bit, and CGII genuinely covers your entire final stage in one plugin.

CGII shines beyond mastering too. Put the Loudness processor on a drum bus to excite harmonics, use Density on a dull mix to raise low-level clarity, or drop the transparent true-peak limiter anywhere you need bulletproof level control. Many presets are included, the UI is resizable, and Metric Halo’s preset manager keeps your settings portable across platforms.

It runs as AU, VST2, VST3, and AAX (64-bit) on macOS 10.10+ (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Windows 7+, in every major DAW. Licensing uses iLok (account required, dongle optional) with two activations per license.

If your masters are either too quiet or too crushed, CGII is the third option: loud, clear, and alive.

Every customer receives their own individual license key. Instant download delivery via email.

The plugin’s pedigree is unmatched: Metric Halo’s world-class DSP, Make Believe Studios’ design, and Chris Gehringer’s ears. When the engineer behind some of the loudest, clearest records in history builds his own loudness tool, you pay attention. A free iLok account is all you need to authorize it — the dongle is optional, and your two activations cover studio and laptop.

Try Density at subtle settings on your next mix before reaching for an exciter — you’ll hear masked detail emerge that no EQ can recover.

Your individual license key is delivered by email instantly after purchase, ready to activate in iLok License Manager in minutes.

For streaming releases, the -1dB true-peak ceiling plus proper dithering means your master is delivery-ready straight out of CGII.