MQA Labs’ new mixing and mastering tools employ “previously unavailable methods” for noise shapingNAMM 2025: MQA Labs is launching new studio tools enabling engineers to employ previously unavailable methods for improved impulse response and noise shaping.
In a technical whitepaper shared with MusicTech, the brand has teased information about two new plugins – the Input Plugin and the Output Plugin – with the former designed to tackle unnatural time domain effects of the analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) to preserve resolution, and the latter for use on the Output Bus to enhance an entire mix.

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With these new plugins, MQA Labs is hoping to tackle the sense of “flatness” that can come across in digital recordings. In its own words, the brand explains, “The methods to digitally record, store or distribute the analogue signal cause it to deteriorate through the addition of noise, distortion, and other unnatural artefacts. People noticed that listening to music through a digital system was a much different experience to that of an analogue system. While digital no longer had the problems of wow, flutter, warping, skipping, scratches and inherent noise, it was also noted that it lacked the same sense of space and subtlety and conveyed a distinct flatness.”
It later goes on to explain, “Digital conversion processes use filters conventionally designed in the frequency domain with the intention of preserving all the audible frequencies of human hearing. Due to choices made decades ago and based on technology of the time, conversion filters most often targeted the very edge of our audible hearing range. The filters are designed to let in all the frequencies up to a point, but then sharply filter out those beyond that point… At MQA Labs, we design systems so that sound behaves as it does in the natural, analogue world, as we hear music traveling through air.”
Head to MQA Labs to find out more or catch them at The NAMM Show, Booth 15924, Acc North Level 1.
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