2CAudio - Breeze | Simple. Light. Pristine. Intelligently Adaptive. (2024)

Simple. Light. Pristine. Intelligently Adaptive.

Breeze is an industry-leading algorithmic reverb that is ultra-efficient, simple to use, and most importantly sounds absolutely sublime. In its most recent version, it has also grown to become one of the most powerful spatial tools on the market! Breeze 2.5 introduces an intelligently adpative Distance-Link DSP mode, the Precedence Link inter-plugin communication system, Multi-Instance Editing, Edit Groups, Global Broadcast and many other extremely innovate features. These features allow Breeze 2.5 and Precedence 1.5 to function as a unified Spatial Mixing Environment, achieving both an incredibly synergistic workflow as well as a truly next-generation sonic result.

All combined, the system introduced with Breeze 2.5 and Precedence 1.5, which we have affectionately nicknamed PBJ and created a special bundle for, represents a new paradigm in spatial mixing. It pairs direct sound spatialization and positioning with an adaptive multi-instance reverb environment that automatically tunes itself to augment the positional imaging established by Precedence. Achieving a cohesive spatial environment with individual track seperation, defintion, and perfect depth placement has never been such a Breeze!

WHAT'S NEW IN 2.5?

• Distance Link DSP mode
• Precedence Link Inter-Plugin Communication
• Multi Instance Editing
• Edit Groups
• Global Broadcast
• Selection Sync
• Vastly less memory usage and additonal performance
• Continued improvements of the Chameleon Color GUI system

The majority of these features are realted to the PBJ Spatial Mixing Environment, a next-generation system that transforms Breeze and Precedence into a unfied multi-instance Spatial Mixing Environment. The PBJ-related features are explained in more detail on the PBJ Pack page.

WHAT'S NEW IN 2.1?

• Chameleon Color GUI System
• Sub-Zero Suspend-On-Silence CPU-Saver
• 3 New Filter Types for Damp and EQ
• Improvement to Early Phase Response
• Phase Inversion Button
• Channel Swap Button
• Other Misc Tweaks
• New Presets

WHAT'S NEW IN 2.0?

Almost everything. Our existing algorithms were rebuilt completely from the ground up. Of course we kept the best parts of our original design, but we effectively rethought everything. We rebuilt Breeze using new techniques learned from the past 7 years of experience and countless hours of math and science RnD. Any techniques that remain from 1.0 have been vastly improved. Many new techniques that are completely unique to Breeze 2.0 have been added. Essentially the DSP core that make our reverbs sound as good as they do has been rewritten and taken to the next level. 15 seconds of listening to the demo will undeniably confirm this. At the same time we employed new optimization knowledge learned working on our innovative product Kaleidoscope and Breeze 2 has now become one of the most efficient reverbs on the market!

• Extreme gains in performance and efficiency
• One of the fastest, most effecient reverbs on the market
• The renown 2CAudio sound without the CPU usage
• The first pro-audio software on the market to offer AVX-512 optimization
• Over twice as fast as Breeze 1 on average, often significantly more
• Render entire songs in seconds
• Load hundreds of simultaneous instances on modern CPUs

• 12 Algorithm Modes
• 9 completely new modes unlike anything else in other 2CAudio products
• Ultra dense Chamber and Plate modes
• Slow building Hall modes
• Colored modes for interesting spectral effects
• 3 Classic modes that have been significantly improved

• 2 new Modulation Modes producing absolutely stunning results
• The most pristine tech specs on the market -- no modulation artifacts
• Pitch modulation for classic sounds as well as a more subtle modulation option

• 12 Damp and EQ filter types
• 8 completely new to Breeze
• All enhanced beyond our previous designs

• Alg Randomization Button
• Generate literally infinite variations of a single preset with one click

• Interactive Frequency Display
• Ultra intuitive adjustment of multiple filter parameters using X-Y mouse movement
• Double-size Freq Zoom View for fine tune control and numeric value entry
• More power and greater diversity for advanced users and preset designers

• Time Display
• Displays information about the characteristics of first 300ms of the time response
• Differentiates different preset types with clear visual aide
• Double-size Time Zoom View for extra detail and control

• Even More Pristine Sound
• Completely 64-bit double-precision process end-to-end
• Noise-floors approaching -300dB

• Absolutely zero Latency
• Early energy can start exactly at zero samples
• Incredible sense of 3D spatial impression
• Intimate ambiences

• Completely 100% procedural GUI
• Ultra fast plug-in load times even at huge GUI sizes
• No wasted disk space
• Perfectly crisp and anti-aliased images and text

• Resizable GUI
• 10 different GUI sizes starting with the original small size all the way to 4K
• Support of High DPI Screens

• Advanced color preferences system
• Customize the look and feel of the GUI
• Change your vibe, get inspired
• Dark and Light GUI themes

WHAT IS NOT NEW?

Everything that made Breeze 1.0 so widely loved, including access to its original sound, the price, and most importantly its simplicity. Breeze remains true to its own product identity, and everything said on the Breeze 1 tab above still applies to Breeze 2. The general layout and number of visible controls remains the same. Any complexity that was added to increase versatility for advanced users is hidden from the casual user on more advanced detail pages. Filter editing from the main page has even become much easier while at the same time being more powerful! This was an explicit mandate: Breeze must remain simple. Breeze is not B2 or Aether, even if it actually may surpass them in some applications at this point. Breeze must be simple. Simple. Light. Pristine. Happily Breeze 2.0 is all of these things and much more. It is truly the state of our art, and rather epic start to the next generation of our reverbs.

Preset Bliss

A world-class preset library is an excellent first step when talking about a product that is designed to be simple for users of all experience levels. Breeze 2 offers 480 Total Factory Presets including:

• • 160 Current V2 Factory Presets
• • 320 Legacy V1 Factory Presets

Four world-class Preset Expansions created by industry veterans are also available that can be purchased solo, as a pack, or together with Breeze offering:

• • 260 presets in the Simply Better Expansion
• • 200 presets in the Glacier Breeze Expansion
• • 200 presets in the Spatial Creatives Expansion
• • 222 presets in the Simplicity Expansion

Presets are a great starting point, and potentially all you need; however sometimes it's fun to get your hands a little dirty and tweak things a bit to customize your sound. Hidden behind its simple and intutive GUI, Breeze 2 offers quite a surprising degree of versatility and more adventurous users can acheive quite a diverse range of custom presets by exploring its details or using the innovative Algorithm Randomize button, which can instantly generate literally infinite variations of every possible preset!

Peformance

If there was any common criticism about any of our reverbs, it would be that some of them can use a lot of CPU-resources. This is really the only reoccurring criticism we ever encounter, and generally it applies to Aether and B2 where we offer some very extreme things; however, as we started the next generation of our reverb development we decided to make this our number one priority. Our first goal for Breeze 2 was simple: make it at least twice as fast. For years we considered this impossible as our code was already highly optimized and already hand-written as vectorized SSE/AVX assembly. We tried a few years ago in fact and failed. We couldn't see a way to increase efficiency while remaining uncompromising on the quality we are known for; we didn't want to make the various compromises our competition had done because they all had negative consequences. We were stuck at an impasse. Then while deep in the RnD trenches for our Kaleidoscope product, we started to have some realizations of how to get the speedups we were after. We built some prototypes of some new ideas and had very promising results. Then we had a few eureka moments, and we started to see 150%, 200%, 300% and in some cases 400% and 500% increases in efficiency!

Breeze 2 is now so efficient that it is easily possible to run over one thousand instances on the latest desktops and workstations such as Apple's new iMac Pro. Running a separate instance for every performer in an entire 100-person orchestra to achieve new levels of realism for example, is now quite literally a Breeze on modern CPUs. Breeze 2 is the first pro audio software of any kind to be optimized for Intel's new AVX512 instruction set and performance is simply staggering on CPUs that support it. Performance gains on recent laptops and older machines is equally impressive.

At its lowest CPU-usage settings, Breeze 2 beats literally everything we have compared it to when measuring render times, including algorithms that are over 30 years old and are orders of magnitude less complex than Breeze. Even at its most CPU-intensive settings Breeze 2 still beats all of the modern competition when we look at algorithms of even remotely similar complexity and realism. Furthermore, Breeze 2 uses full 64-bit double precision end-to-end for all internal DSP calculations, whereas almost all of the competition uses 32-bit math and other compromises which result in noise and artifacts particularly when using modulation. Relative to its exteme fidelity, Breeze is insanely efficient and simply untouchable in terms of raw speed. In summary, not only do we have arguably the best sounding algorithms on the market, but we are also now one of the fastest by large margins.

Sub Zero

Ultra low CPU usage as explained below is great, but there is one thing even better: zero CPU usage! Beginning with Precedence and Breeze 2.1, we have now introduced an intelligent Suspend-On-Silence feature in our products. If the plug-ins are not receiving any input signal, they will automatically disable processing, and enter an approximately zero CPU usage state! This is huge news for composers who use massive scoring templates and like to auto-load hundreds of instances. Maximum CPU usage will only be reached in such cases when all tracks in the project are active at the same time, which almost never happens in large sessions. Sparse arrangements can save orders of magnitude in CPU-resources, which in turn leads to more creative freedom and less annoyances such as heat and fan noise generated by powerful computers in the studio. Furthermore, if playback is stopped for a coffee break, lunch break, or overnight, processing is automatically suspended, potentially saving you significant money on your electric bill. In other words, we automatically turn the lights off for you, helping to save the planet in the process. We think that is pretty cool.

A Colorful Chameleon

Life is full of color. We find it everywhere: in nature, in art, in culture, in sports, and even in political offices these days. Why should software GUIs be any different? With the release of Precedence and Breeze 2.1 we are introducing our new Chameleon Color user preference system for all our products. This system allows extreme user control over the hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, vibrance, spectral intensity, color harmony, and other more macro design choices in our GUIs. Huge variations in GUI appearance are now possible, from subtle, elegant and professional refinement, to boisterous frisky frolics that inspire creativity and scream "be different". Approximately 150 different Color Preference Presets are supplied pre-made as well. Of course a huge number of GUI sizes are available as well for further customization. Have it your way. Life's a box of crayons.