M Media Audio has announced the release of Reference Player, a new standalone desktop app, and Third Rail, a new plugin.
Reference Player
Reference Player is a desktop audio player for Windows, available now for $29 on the Microsoft Store and on Linux at M Media Audio – macOS will be out very soon.
Reference Player is a mastering-grade desktop audio player built by working audio engineers for the rest of us – a real signal chain underneath the playback, not exactly a file list with a play button.
VCA-style bus compression tuned to respond musically, a full 31-band graphic EQ with real ISO center frequencies, and a brickwall limiter sit underneath every track. None of it is required to use it well – press play and it already sounds better than a stock player. When you want to shape what’s coming out of your speakers, the same tools an engineer would reach for are right there, along with real-time spectrum, phase, and BS.1770 LUFS metering, and two large RMS-based VU meters that are the actual centerpiece of every view. A live theming engine changes the colors, artwork, and character instantly, no restart, so it doesn’t look like a spreadsheet, it looks magnificent, like something worth leaving open. File, CD, and Line In from one transport, CD ripping straight to MP3, and a watched-folder library round it out.
Third Rail
Third Rail is a tube-driven stereo 31-band 1/3-octave graphic EQ – real ISO center frequencies, one fader per band, ±24 dB of range, nothing hidden behind a frequency knob. It’s not based on anything.
Tube EQs and graphic EQs went two completely separate directions in real hardware. Tube program EQs stayed to a handful of broad controls, sometimes full parametric or a variation, but mostly a couple of shelves and a peak or two. Graphic EQs with a fader per band went solid-state almost across the board, because running 31 individual tube stages in one box would have been a heat, cost, and reliability nightmare with the technology of that era. Nobody could make it practical. So the two design languages just never crossed.
So we thought, “Hey, we can still do that though. Let’s build one.” You will not believe how nice it sounds.
Push the INPUT knob hard and a tube saturation stage kicks in on its own, the way it works on real tube gear. Push it and the bottom end puts on real weight right when you want it, and the top end brightens up smooth the whole way, never harsh, never brittle – it’s not something you can see on a frequency graph, you just have to hear it. COLOR is a continuous hue knob that recolors the fader highlights and LED meters live, with zero effect on the audio, just because the plugin is going to be open for hours at a time. Ten factory presets, A/B compare, save/import/export. $19, perpetual license.
Third Rail is available now for $19 at mmediaaudio.com/plugins/third-rail, VST3 on Windows and Linux, VST3 + AU on macOS (Universal Binary, signed and notarized), with a full demo mode.
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