Thrillseeker XTC – behind the scenes

The basic idea to build a VoS style Enhancer/Exciter was already there way earlier but to that time it simply wasn’t doable until my ‘stateful saturation’ approach emerged. Later on and when I asked “how a modern exciter/enhancer should look like“, several concepts were laid out on the drawing board and I knew that with this exciting (sic!) new approach they all would be accomplishable w/o any compromises. Finally, one of them made it into a prototype which led to ThrillseekerXTC.

Old or modern approach?

So, is the audio Enhancer/Exciter just an ancient relict from the days of dull tape recordings or still a valid concept today? In the digital age, technology and production techniques completely changed and of course the production aesthetics did also. Opposed to the old approaches of audio excitation which mostly were focusing on high frequency loss restoration, the demand shifted towards other tasks as well. Presence and definition in the (upper) mid range is the name of the game and getting the low-end right is the key in a modern production. Instrument separation in a busy mix is a tough challenge, also.

What the heck is Mojo?

In some other cases (mostly digital productions) – definition, presence and transparency is all there but at the cost of a rather thin or sterile sounding production. Even worse, the HF department might be exaggerated too much during the processing chain and taming and sweetening is a challenge then. Some of the artifacts that we’ve found in certain analog devices might add tonal qualities described as thick, fat and round by ‘pleasingly degrading’ a sound source. This is what Mojo is all about. Whether that’s some circuit crosstalk, tape flutter or transformer distortion stuff alike.

Why parallel EQ?

Because it’s a proven concept. Even after decades, it’s unsurpassed in lots of domains / applications.

Blue or black?

In case of ThillseekerXTC, this is just a matter of internal gainstaging and the question arises: Why not just add a simple switch but two different plug-in versions? Well, all different directions actually do have different tradeoffs. A simple switch (such as in ThrillseekerLA) does not hold its state during preset switching. Making it more sophisticated to hold its state (the Dry/Wet switch in NastyDLA does this just as an example) does not work reliable in each and every host. And why not add a knob with full control over a huge gain range? The minute you do that, some people start complaining gee, this is so complicated, why do I have to worry about gainstaging with this plugin?

In the meantime, I’m simply enjoying the blue version and just in some rare cases where levels are too low, the black one chimes in. Easy as that.

64bit, anyone?

With the upcoming Flowstone DSP framework, full 64bit support was already hinted in the developer community (see FlowStone 3, VST and x64). As soon as this is available and reliable, VoS plug-ins will be finally updated for 64bit support.

Again, old or modern?

Both!