I was a firm devotee of MasterX5 on PowerCore as well. I have six PowerCore PCIe cards with Mx5 licenses sitting in various old Mac Pro towers that I can't use beyond Snow Leopard and Logic v9, and I've been hoping for a modern native version for many years. I keep those old machines frozen in time just so I can go back and use Mx5 in a pinch, although I don't do it that often.

Unfortunately this new thing is closer to a Finalizer or MasterX3, with only three bands instead of five as on MasterX5. For me, the difference between 3 and 5 bands is a big deal - I couldn't get the results I wanted from the three-band version. Having the bands split as "subs / bass / honk / clank / fizz" was a huge difference from just "low / mid / high".

Still, there was some magic about how Mx5 could put the squash on the signal without just flattening the waveform (and sound) into a square brick. It was as if there was a floating make-up gain amount that would bring quiet sections up and then instantly push loud sections down without just squaring things off, very different to more modern tools like Ozone or the zillion "mastering limiters" I've bought since PowerCore was deprecated. Looking at the waveforms of Mx5 mixes vs the same mix through Ozone or whatever is very telling - the Mx5 mixes sound louder and smoother even though the waveform still has some life left in it.

Still, I hope they will come out with a 5-band version at some point.

But I will buy this anyway and keep my fingers crossed. Thank you TC!