Finish Him

Loop a section with the kick, snare and most sustained material playing together. Start with restrained Drive and compare Transparent and Punch at similar apparent level. Listen to the front of the snare, the recovery after the kick and whether the sustained instruments move with the rhythm.

Dense and Safe offer further ways to compare the trade between density, movement and restraint. A style name is a starting direction rather than a promise about every recording. Character and Release Bias change the behaviour around that choice; turn one control at a time.

Try Finish Him on a percussion stem with a few exceptional hits, or on a distorted guitar group whose occasional peaks prevent a useful balance. Adjust Drive until those events are controlled, then compare the stem in the complete arrangement.

Use Bass Recovery when a sustained low note or kick makes recovery conspicuous. Output Match is for comparing character, and Meter Target is a visual reference: it does not normalise the track. Delta Listen can reveal what changed, but make the final decision in normal playback.

Lookahead, Detector Quality, Stereo Mode, Dither, Noise Shaping and Render Ultra are stopped-only settings. A requested setting during playback may be waiting for the next prepare; read the applied state before making a comparison or export.

Linked control is a useful starting point for a stable stereo image. Adaptive mode permits bounded programme-dependent movement, so compare off-centre hits and stereo tails. A true-peak ceiling constrains the plugin output; later sample-rate conversion or lossy encoding can change peaks and needs its own delivery measurement.