CodWaves Quance is a dynamic resonance suppressor, the kind of plugin that hunts down ringing frequencies and harsh peaks and pulls them back without flattening the tone around them. It arrived in late October 2026 as CodWaves' most ambitious release, and it enters a field defined by oeksound's soothe. Quance sets itself apart on two fronts: a lower price and a quality system that runs from a zero-latency live mode up to heavy offline processing.
The detector looks for the narrow peaks that make a mix tiring, then reduces them as the track plays. Around that detector sit protection systems for tone and transients, so fundamentals, overtones and vocal formants stay in place and attacks keep their snap. You guide it with up to eight focus points, each set to either Tame a frequency or Protect it, and a Learn pass drops those points onto the most stable resonances for you.
What stands out is the five quality grades. Live Zero runs a 48-band minimum-phase filter bank at zero reported latency for tracking, while Studio Ultra moves to a multi-resolution engine at around 171 milliseconds for mastering-grade cuts. That spread is unusual at this price. The honest limit is channel support: Quance handles mono and stereo only, so surround post-production stays with soothe3. For music mixing, it is a serious and affordable alternative to soothe2, Gullfoss and dynamic EQs like TDR Nova.
Read the full first look in our CodWaves Quance article, and compare the field in our best mastering plugins of 2026.