Yesterday I saw LiberCool requesting help with mastering and one of the plugins he said he used was AAY-Audio aQ-31 Stereo.

Since I never heard about AAY-Audio maybe some people who are using them could jump in and say something about them. Is someone using their plugins? Then how, and where, in which tracks, for what?

I downloaded AAY-Audio aTube and it's hmm...interesting in some way, though nothing special. Moving the Color know to the right makes a cut down in the 150-500 hz frequency. Moving the Warm know to the right it cuts the ~80-150 hz frequency area and adds more distortion.

 

They don't look like anything special, but then again, they ain't that expensive either. They may be worth buying if you don't wan't to spend to much money. I must say, I have never used these plugins before, but when I tried to download the asteriolizer, my anti virus program (McAfee) detected the .exe file as a Trojan and removed it, so I would be very cautious about installing them as a demo, let alone buying them.

 

For cheap plugins I would go with Toneboosters any day. I have scanned aTube on virus total and it was clean: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/39d8ea515f2e237529225d2216bf560a4340a5bcb2c04821277b63c082c42ff8/analysis/1391239367/
I don't use any mono to stereo or widener tools. I can use a stereo reverb on a mono source if I want it to sound big.
Less is more! This is a golden rule for me.