BootEQ mkIII released

BootEQ mkIII – a musical sounding Preamp/EQ

BootEQ mkIII is a musical sounding mixing EQ and pre-amplifier simulation. With its
four parametric and independent EQ bands it offers special selected and musical
sounding asymmetric and proportional EQ curves capable of reproducing several
‘classic’ EQ curves and tones accordingly.

It provides further audio coloration capabilities utilizing pre-amplifier harmonic distortion as well as tube and transformer-style signal saturation. Within its mkIII incarnation, the Preamp itself contains an opto-style compression circuit providing a very distinct and consistent harmonic distortion profile over a wide range of input levels, all based now on a true stateful saturation model.

Also the EQ curve slopes has been revised, plugin calibration takes place for better gain-staging and metering and the plugin offers zero latency processing now.

Available for Windows VST in 32 and 64bit as freeware. Download your copy here.

TesslaSE mkII released

TesslaSE mkII – All the analog goodness in subtle doses

TesslaSE never meant to be a distortion box but rather focused on bringing all those subtle saturation and widening (side-) effects from the analog right into the digital domain. It sligthly colors the sound, polishes transients and creates depth and dimension in the stereo field. All the analog goodness in subtle doses. It’s a mixing effect intended to be used here and there where the mix demands it. It offers a low CPU profile and (almost) zero latency.

With it’s 2021 remake, TesslaSE mkII sticks to exactly that by 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 to appear more detailed and vibrant, while all non-linear algorithms got oversampled for additional aliasing supression.

Available for Windows VST in 32 and 64bit as freeware. Download your copy here.

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.

64bit plugin rollout started, announcing mkII plugin versions

The very first 64bit plugin versions are out now, starting with the plugins from the public beta test earlier this summer: epicVerb, BaxterEQ, preFIX, NastyDLAmkII, NastyVCS and DensityMkIII. All versions have been carefully revised, are backwards compatible and some includes bugfixes and improvements as well. VST3 versions are not (yet) included due to stability issues. For further release notes and downloads please refer to the download page.

The remaining VoS plugins are planned to be (re-) released one-by-one until end of this year. Most likely, they will reappear as mkII versions 🙂 First one will be FerricTDS mkII which is already in the finishing process and to be released early September.

stay tuned!

Density mkII 2.0.1 maintenance release available

The 2.0.1 maintenance release for Density mkII is out now.

Density mkII 2.0.1

Density mkII – bugfixes, which and when?

Just a short update on whats going on with some already reported issues concerning Density mkII (released around two weeks ago):

• There will be a SSE1 compatible version
• The CPU spiking “denormal” issues and heavy CPU loads are already fixed
• A fix for the loading issues in Wavelab is currently under investigation and test
• Some crash reports will be further investigated

The current plan is to release a 2.0.1 bugfix release to end of September containing whats fixed and stable then.

Patrick speaks: the Density mkII UI (making of)

making of

Dear VoS community!

Someday ago, Bootsy asked me to raise my voice here and to talk a little bit about my design works and he suggested that the Density mkII artwork might be a good idea to do so.

Density mkII – reworking the audio engine

While working on the Density overall re-design I was working extensively on the audio engine as well but just for one single reason: The one thing I was missing in the original design was to have some more “responsive” gain riding possibilities but without the usual tradeoff of introducing more distortion or compromising the transparency. And (unsurprisingly) that turned out to be not that easy.

Developers friend: the oscilloscope