Every mix has a midrange problem. Vocals fight guitars, guitars blur into synths, piano occupies the same few hundred hertz that everything else seems to want. The tools available to fix this have historically required either deep spectral knowledge or a lot of blind sweeping with a parametric EQ. Newfangled Audio Fixate:Midrange takes a different approach: it names the six most common midrange problems, builds a dedicated dynamic processor for each one, and handles detection automatically.
The Developer Behind It
Dan Gillespie spent 15 years writing DSP code for Eventide before founding Newfangled Audio in 2015. We interviewed Dan back when Anthology X launched, and his design philosophy was already clear even then: the goal is to shorten the distance between a musician’s hands and ears, not to build more complicated tools. Fixate:Midrange is that philosophy applied to a very specific and very common pain point. For background on how Dan thinks about DSP and hearing-modelled processing, our 2015 interview with him is still worth reading — the ideas he was working through then lead directly to what Newfangled Audio has been building ever since.
Six Names, Six Knobs
The processors are labelled Demud, Dethin, Dehonk, Denasal, Deharsh, and a Spectral Balance section covering 15 frequency bands. Those aren’t marketing terms — each one maps to a specific resonance signature that engineers spend time hunting down manually. In the screenshot at the top of this post, Dethin is running at 51% and Dehonk at 89%; the plugin arrived at those settings automatically during the Analyze stage.
Each processor is dynamic, meaning it activates only when the corresponding problem is actually present in the signal. A chord with a nasal honk triggers Dehonk; a clean passage passes through untreated. The HINTMAP display reinforces this in real time, lighting up knobs and meters to show where problems are occurring and how hard each processor is working. For anyone who needs to explain a fix to a client — or to themselves — that kind of transparency in an automatic tool is more useful than it might sound.
Critical-Band Analysis
The technical foundation is critical-band analysis: a frequency division model based on how the human ear groups pitch and loudness, rather than on linear or logarithmic scales. Newfangled Audio has been building with this model since EQuivocate in 2017, which applied the same perceptual framework to a 26-band graphic EQ. Elevate extended it into multiband dynamics and limiting. Fixate:Midrange uses it specifically to evaluate energy relationships between adjacent bands in the midrange — catching resonances that standard FFT analyzers typically don’t flag because they don’t match the way we hear.
The Spectral Balance section includes learnable profiles for mastering, vocals, and guitar, and it can match any reference audio source. Mid/Side processing is built in, which matters for mix bus applications. Per-band enable, solo, and delta monitoring let engineers verify every automated decision before committing.
Watch It in Action
Pricing and Availability
Newfangled Audio Fixate:Midrange is available now at an intro price of $79 USD (regular MSRP $139 USD) until June 24, 2026. A fully featured 14-day free trial is available. An iLok account is required; no physical dongle is needed.
- Product page: etide.io/FixateMidrange
- Also at: Plugin Boutique and Eventide authorized dealers
Compatibility: macOS 10.14+ (Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows 10+ — AAX, AU, and VST3 (all 64-bit)
