bloom
what we wish an EQ would do
- Control irregularities in a rough sound
- Increase warmth, clarity, or brightness in a safe and controlled fashion
- Transform the tone of a sound with natural-sounding results
- Track through Bloom with low latency mode
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find your tone with bloom
Bloom is an adaptive tone shaper. It analyzes the character of a signal and applies corrections to the perceived tonal balance for a more even and refined sound. It also lets you shape the tone and character of a track, for example, by adding warmth, brightness, or clarity. Tonal adjustments made with Bloom are dynamic and context-aware. This, together with its carefully designed user interface, makes the plug-in quick and intuitive to use and helps keep the material sounding natural, even when making radical changes.
fits the occasion
Bloom boosts and cuts frequencies only when needed, helping to mitigate energy build-ups and reveal more detail. It lets you make tonal changes quickly while being considerate of the source material. For example, you can boost the high-end on vocals without emphasizing unwanted sibilance. With Bloom, bright doesn’t need to mean shrill, and big doesn’t need to mean boomy. Use it to shape tone with confidence.
starting point or finishing touches
Bloom can work as a good starting point when shaping a sound. Useful for quickly crafting single tracks towards a cohesive mix, it’s also equally functional as a bus processor, whether for sculpting groups or sensitively shaping a master. Get your mix up to speed effortlessly, or dive deeper to bring that exact sound you envisioned to life.
I had access to the Bloom beta for a couple months before release and it’s made its way onto every project I’ve been working on since. Bloom has been great for giving life to any track or bus that isn’t holding my attention enough or that I can’t wrangle with individual plugins. I like to throw a couple instances in series on my instrumental bus and just sift thru presets to add new dimensions to things I didn’t even realize were dull before. My go to to presets are Bye Bye Boxiness, Parallel Soft Width, Side Exciter, and Mix Bus Sheen.
Buddy Ross
Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, Travis Scott
read more testimonialsmake it personal
A good mix is not one-size-fits-all. Bloom can do a lot of the heavy lifting, but at the end of the day, it’s your ears that decide what’s right. Bloom’s four tone controls allow you to shape the tone freely to your liking. The controls change the overall tonal balance Bloom is working towards rather than making absolute cuts or boosts, as found in an EQ. This way, you can reach your vision fast without needing to compensate for bigger moves or automate around problems.
squash sounds into shape
When bolder moves are needed, crank Bloom’s amount control to engage squash mode. With squash engaged, Bloom applies frequency-dependent upward and downward compression to reduce the dynamic range of the signal and mold it towards the specified shape. Use it to subtly bring out detail or dramatically over-emphasize it, adding grit without saturation.
so… what is it exactly?
In addition to being a quick broad-strokes EQ tool, Bloom can be thought of as our take on a color box. It can give character, glue, or grit to your sound in a way that fits your vision. You might use it in place of a dynamic EQ, multiband compressor, saturator, or even compressor, but it falls under none of these categories. We call it an adaptive tone shaper.
Bloom is an adventure every time; you’ll discover colors and energy you didn’t know were hiding in your audio. Since the beginning of beta testing, its had a classic oeksound interface that encourages experimentation and quick results. It's great for potent tonal shifts and snappy compression. I expect to see Bloom both used and abused!
Andrew Maury
Shawn Mendes, Tones And I, Madi Diaz
read more testimonialsour process behind bloom — three questions
The idea for Bloom came from research questions we’ve studied since 2018. The initial research question was, What is warmth in audio? and later in an unrelated venture, we studied the question: What is presence? Both led us down a rabbit hole involving the balance of overtone series and a third research question: How do we bring out and balance overtones present in a sound? This was the basis for Bloom’s first prototypes, and from there, Bloom started to take form as a tone shaper.
Two years of critical listening followed, leading to numerous prototypes and thousands of incremental improvements to the DSP. A lot of this process is about seeing how the plugin reacts to different sound sources and iterating until it behaves in the way we want it to.
In parallel, we spent a lot of time testing how to present the idea to the user in an approachable way. After testing users’ interactions with different designs, we landed on one that not only felt the best but also helped us and our testers make the best-sounding decisions. One of the bigger challenges of Bloom was giving the user all the control they need while making sure the plug-in is still fun to work with.
The end result is something novel and far more complex than we initially imagined. But Bloom still follows our ethos. It offers new ways to manipulate audio, presented in an approachable manner.
technical specifications
Windows 10 – 11 (no ARM support)
64-bit VST3 and AAX (Pro Tools 11 and up)
Mac OS X 10.14 (Mojave) – macOS 15 (Sequoia)
64-bit VST3, AU and AAX. Both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs supported.
VST is a trademark and software of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.
iLok
iLok account and iLok License Manager installation required. iLok dongle is not required. Online access required for the initial activation of the product and trial. One license allows activation of the product on 3 machines. Licenses are valid for both Windows and macOS platforms.
Please ensure system and DAW compatibility by using the free, fully featured trial license before committing to purchasing a full license. All purchases are final.
try before you buy
Download Bloom and use it on your own projects for 20 days without any limitations. After the trial, if you find yourself reaching for Bloom, you know where to find us.