The TesslaSE Remake

There were so many requests to revive the old and rusty TesslaSE which I’ve once moved already into the legacy folder. In this article I’m going to talk a little bit about the history of the plugin and its upcoming remake.

The original TesslaSE audio plugin was one of my first DSP designs aiming at a convincing analog signal path emulation and it was created already 15 years ago! In its release info it stated to “model pleasant sounding ‘electric effects’ coming from transformer coupled tube circuits in a digital controlled fashion” which basically refers to adding harmonic content and some subtle saturation as well as spatial effects to the incoming audio. In contrast to static waveshaping approaches quite common to that time, those effects were already inherently frequency dependent and managed within a mid/side matrix underneath.

(Later on, this approach emerged into a true stateful saturation framework capable of modeling not only memoryless circuits and the TesslaPro version took advantage of audio transient management as well.)

This design was also utilized to supress unwanted aliasing artifacts since flawless oversampling was still computational expensive to that time. And offering zero latency on top, TesslaSE always had a clear focus on being applied over the entire mixing stage, providing all those analog signal path subtleties here and there. All later revisions also sticked to the very same concept.

With the 2021 remake, TesslaSE mkII won’t change that as well but just polishing whats already there. The internal gainstaging has been reworked so that everything appears gain compensated to the outside and is dead-easy to operate within a slick, modernized user interface. Also the transformer/tube cicuit modeling got some updates now to appear more detailed and vibrant, while all non-linear algorithms got oversampled for additional aliasing supression.

On my very own, I really enjoy the elegant sound of the update now!

TesslaSE mkII will be released by end of November for PC/VST under a freeware license.

The Korg SDD-3000 – perfect for LoFi?

By accident, I recently stumbled upon the UAD Korg SDD-3000 digital delay version. When I noticed that they modelled also its amplifiers as well as the 13bit converters they immediately got my attention. Having also high- and low-pass filters on board, this could easily double as a great lofi device – so lets have a closer look.

As in the original hardware, the device offers several gain stage adjustments for both input and ouptut, intended to match different instrument or line level signals. These amplifiers are always in, no matter if the BYPASS switch is activated or not. Interestingly, UA also integrated this in its “Unison” interface feature as an preamp option.

Depending on how hard the input gain is driven, quite heavy distortion and saturation effects can occur. As soon as the Bypass is deactivated, the effect signal path containing the 13bit converted and HP/LP filtered signal can be dialed in with the LEVEL BALANCE. If this balance is now set to EFFECT only or just the WET SOLO option has been turned on (plus avoiding any amounts of feedback in this case) the device now offers a pretty much nicely degraded signal path for any sort of creative effects. Depending on the actual settings one can dial in now some really creamy or even gritty effects. Be aware, that this signal path contains an additional delay according to the DELAY TIME setting, of course.

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The analysis charts are showing – from left to right – the basic frequency response (in bypass mode), some example harmonic distortions when hitting the input gain quite hard and the filtered effect signal path frequency response according to the UI settings above. The slight frequency bump on the right side of the charts might be caused by the plugin oversampling filters – the original hardware does not show this and its spectrum ends somewhere around 17kHz.

As in the original hardware, all settings are just within limited ranges and so it is not that flexible in general. However, soundwise its pretty much awesome. Oh and by the way, it also doubles as a simple but impressive delay 😉

which Rescue version are you using?

To the users of the Rescue plug-in: Which version are you using – the standard or the AE one?

interesting guitar effects of the 1970s

Don’t miss to read the whole story at preservationsound.com!

BootEQ mkII updates to version 2.1

… and finally adds support for higher samplerates.

BootEQ mkII - analog style equalizer and pre-amp simulator

Release notes:

• support for higher samplerates
• faster loading times on systems with large amounts of system fonts
• VST vendor tag changed to “Variety Of Sound”
• stability improvements when deleting the plug-in from effect slots
• stability improvements in cubase hosts
• VU display issue on mono tracks fixed
• less CPU consumption if GUI is closed
• slightly increased 2nd order harmonic in “TUBE ON” mode
• resetting the DRV knob with <ctrl>+click w/o any audio artifacts now
• reset position for the left LF frequency knob corrected to 250Hz
• audio crackles while switching preamp section on/off eliminated
• improved HF shelving filter with freq dip and asymetric behaviour
• changed pop-up displays version number now
• some EQ code optimizations added
• preset and manual update

Known issues:

• some display/knob rendering issues mainly in samplitude (compiler bug)

BootEQ mkII is available as freeware for Win32 and VST compatible systems – to download just refer to the download page or just click here instead and please acceppt the end-user license agreement.

Additional links:

• ‘BootEQ mkII’ – preview and release info
• ‘BootEQ mkII’ – LF shaping
• modelling pre-amp goodness
• Análisis: El ecualizador BootEQMKII

NastyVCS – released today

NastyVCS - Virtual Console Strip

NastyVCS – I can has color

Similar to the EQ’s and filters in BootEQ mkII, NastyVCS stays on the musical (and not the surgical) side of the audio source. It is more kind of coloring toolbox (especially in the combination with the PHASE option) rather than allowing to shape audio disfigured beyond recognition. Some classic technical principles have been carefully selected and replicated and the overall combination and attention to detail makes NastyVCS stand out in the crowd of equalizers today.

NastyVCS – I can has dynamics

The upcoming NastyVCS virtual console strip VST plug-in will feature three pristine and complementary tools to shape the audio dynamics. This allows a vast variety of different dynamic treatments and here is a very first and brief overview:

FerricTDS updates to 1.5

FerricTDS 1.5

After 3 month of bugfixing, improving and testing, version 1.5 of the award-winning tape dynamics simulator is finally available as of today. It features numerous fixes and additions and if you did not tried it yet don’t miss it now!

from phase alignment to delay

In the recent article from phasing to phase alignment I had a closer look to what the Little Labs IBP actually does and hinted that in principle it could be easily extended to a plain but already musical sounding delay unit. And in fact, given the digital version, this could easily be done by some rather simple routing and addition: