By contrast, tube mic preamps are often associated with a warmer, thicker tone than their solid-state counterparts. Driving a valve preamp hard can add rich-sounding harmonics that make the signal warmer without becoming dull.
This one comes free with Computer Music magazine, and provides crunchy, tube-style distortion, plus a three-band EQ with low, mid and high bands, and a clear, easy-to-use interface. Useful for gentle colouring or more obvious distortion, depending how hard you push the Gain control.
Another modelled tube preamp, complete with two-band Baxandall-style sweetening EQ, positionable before or after the saturation. The detailed modelling sounds glorious, but there is quite a hefty CPU hit, especially in High CPU mode with 4x oversampling.
Great for subtle valve-style colour, from warm and fat to glossy and shiny. The key is to tweak the Character knob (which goes from Warm to Sizzle) and the Frequency Response. This plugin includes three other useful saturation modes, making it quite a bargain at the price.
A dual-drive tube input channel and EQ based on a tube mixer from the 1960s. You get a choice of mic or line inputs, optional added noise, and classic warm, vintage-style saturation. Their smaller Little Radiator plugin is simpler, but also sounds great.
A one-stop shop for all manner of saturation or distortion types, Saturn includes three different Tube modes: Clean Tube sounds bright and glossy; Warm Tube adds a load of even harmonics for a lovely thickening effect; and Broken Tube is filthy and full of character.
"There are certain names I deeply wish were on the guest list tonight, but we lost them too early": Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder remembers his lost musical peers and covers Nine Inch Nails' Hurt in Seattle, Johnny Cash-style
Discovering how a tube actually works requires one to take a deep wormhole into the technicalities of circuit design and the world of physics. The short version of it is something like this: A vacuum tube heats something called a cathode, causing electrons to flow from a plate through the battery and into the cathode, ultimately establishing a current.
For me, the Black Box has turned out to be a real workhorse. It works wonders on single instruments, but it also works great on groups, and it also works equally well on a mix bus or in the mastering chain.
This is a flexible tube processing box and it does what it is meant to do: It sounds like a tube and gives you control over the extent of saturation. With it, you can add some very nice glow and edginess to otherwise bland or lifeless synths, basses, vocals, mixes, you name it! Throw it on and give it a tweak.
The plugin does exactly what its analog big brother does. It may even offer some benefits over the original: The differences with tubes in the analog domain is they can go out, need plenty of up-keeping, and also sometimes have variable tone or sound depending on their age and design; so most units sound different due to this.
It is a bit more expensive than the other plugs on this list (typical for UAD), but when you compare it to dropping the money on bringing the real-deal analog version into your workflow, it puts things in a whole other perspective.
As far as offering subtlety for mixing or mastering, I am not sure I would find as much use for it as I would as an effects processor for single instruments. But it can be a super cool distortion plugin.
I almost had to leave this one off this particular list because of just how flexible it is. It borders on being a tone shaper that goes beyond just saturation. The capabilities here may be overkill at times, but it is first and foremost a saturator, and when it comes to delivering tube distortion, this plugin can get the job done nicely.
One nice feature of this plugin are the pre-amp switch and pre-amp gain knob that allow you to really drive the input nicely to get more saturation with gain staging. If you drive it heavily and then use the Wet/Dry ratio knob you can have much more control over whether it comes across more like saturation or distortion.
Soundtoys is another great company for creative effects. Their delay plugins and another solid saturation plugin called Decapitator are on my go-to list for most sessions. Their Radiator does not disappoint either.
This plugin is based on a vintage 1567a tube mixer, and is especially great on drums and bass. Like any good tube saturator, the more you push the more it saturates, before working its way clear up into distortion.
With this plugin, you can crunch up any signal as much as you like by simply pushing the input gain stage. You can then add either bass or treble to the signal and mix to taste with the wet/dry ratio knob. The mic and line switches provide an additional option for different frequency responses or curves.
This plugin can really tighten up a signal and add warmth and snappiness where it would otherwise be bland or floppy. It also has the benefit of being what is probably the most easy-to-use and most straight-forward plugin of any of these in the list. Sometimes less is more!
Bear in mind that it is not quite possible or sensible to try and match settings or exact amounts of saturation, so I tried instead to go for tones that showed off the general vibe of each plugin when pushed to varying degrees.
Vari-Mus are tube-based style compressor that are notoriously great for drums, groups or mastering. I love the MJUC, so when I saw their SDRR I had to give it a try too. It takes the great tube sound they have infused into their MJUC and isolates it, making for an excellent-sounding and easy-to-use plugin.
For such a cost effective plugin, you have so much control over tube types and tones. But in addition to providing a warming tube tone, it includes a few other flavors of saturation: Digi, Fuzz and Desk.
Like the other entries in this honorable mentions section, the RC-20 does so much more than just emulate tube saturation, allowing you to stack up to 6 types of saturation, distortion or signal destruction in a row.
Just choose the types and amounts of modules and fx you want to stack inside the flux engine, and get to work. With this one, you can pull off nearly any old vintage color or tone with a very 21st century GUI and workflow.
For more great insights into both mixing and mastering, try our full-length courses with SonicScoop editor Justin Colletti, Mixing Breakthroughs and Mastering Demystified.
By artfully capturing our "golden unit" Avalon's flagship VT-737 hardware's class-A tube amplifier section, LED-style optical compression, and discrete four-band EQ, you can give your tracks the signature Avalon sound heard on thousands of chart-topping hits.
Excelling on vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, and voice-over work, the VT-737 plug-in's dynamics section gives your tracks the hardware's gentle touch, rather than adding squash or crunch. This transparent compression is perfect for "stacking" the compressor again at mixdown, so you can control a vocal in a dense mix.
The Avalon VT-737 plug-in's four-band EQ, gives your vocals a lively presence and sophistication, placing them front-and-center in any mix. Like the hardware, the EQ can be placed before or after the compressor, and the mid bands can be engaged as sidechain filters for laser-focused compression. And with the 32k high frequency "air band," you can add delicate shimmer to everything from strings to background vocals to acoustic guitars.
terrible customer service, when you buy plugins they don't belong to you at all. If you buy multiple interfaces in particular, you cannot transfer any of the plugins with them unless you completely leave the uad system. the worst. the support is incredibly unfriendly too.
Hola les comento que compre el avalon 737 en mi interfaz arrow lo cual yo queria usar en la tecnologia unison de mi interfaz pero al momento de cargarlo me sigue saliendo como demo expirado y unicamente lo puedo cargar como plugin cualquiera dentro de los daw, ayudenme a solucionar esto por favor porque realmente lo compre solo para usarlo dentro de mi interfaz con unison y no he podido usarlo de esta manera. Ayuda por favor
Es increble con la tecnologa unison suena igual al hardware, las felicitaciones para Universal audio por el trabajo minucioso, estn en todos los detalles.
Este pre en formato Hardware lo utilice cuando trabaje en un estudio pro de Uruguay.
Ahora que tengo la forma de probarlo en formato software es increble, uaudio ha realizado magia, solo queda agradecimiento. Ojala pueda obtenerlo ahora solo estoy usando la demo.
Si tienes dudas, te digo mas de 25 aos de experiencia tengo y este Avalon vt-737 es fantstico.
I rushed to purchase it when I purchase Apollo interface thinking it would be great for bass. But in the road, I found that other preamps like Helios and Neve, even UAD 610B are more suited to bass. It shines in vocals though. I Don't know how it compares to the real thing but honestly I don't care.
In general, the response time of optical compressors tends to soften the attack and release, which can smooth out uneven volume fluctuations. Emulating an all-tube, optical design, the Tube CB compressor delivers musicality, preserving the clarity of the signal even at the most extreme settings.
Hi! I've got a new plugin you can have! These plugins come in Mac AU, and Mac, Windows and Linux VST. They are state of the art sound, have no DRM, and have totally minimal generic interface so you focus on your sounds.
Amazing as always. Every post is a magnificent gift and I am impressed as the first time here, when I was realizing how good is your coding creativity by reading a post on Gearslutz. Peace out to Airwindows !!
Valves is a vintage valve emulation plugin with multimode resonant filter and cabinet/EQ section.
The valve section is modelled after classic vintage tubes, with added grit and custom gain control.
Valvola comes with many different vacuum tube emulations, including triodes and pentodes, from the classic 12AX7 used in pre amplifiers to the EL84 power tube, well using more than one instance of Valvola you could create your little tube amplifier emulation.
795a8134c1