some FlavourMTC coverage from the net

Short review from Bedroom Producers Blog – Variety Of Sound Releases FREE FlavourMTC Passive Equalizer Plugin:

Variety of Sound is one of the legendary old-school freeware VST plugin developers, providing top-tier audio software that easily rivals the quality of paid plugins. Their incredible FerricTDS mkII is still my favorite tape saturation plugin.

If you’re looking for mixing and mastering software with a taste of analog hardware, I highly recommend checking out Variety of Sound’s plugins. It is one of the best freeware plugin collections for Windows-based music producers.

Thread over there at gearslutz gearspace –  A completely new plugin after a long streak of redesigned classics:

This sounds like analogue gear. Incredible.

… it’s a big fat lump of ‘ashish dissolved in a bucket filled with two parts honey and one part roasted sesame on a warm Himalayan afternoon. Dip yer finger, don’t forget to lick it and soon not only sesame opens …

tips&tricks with SlickEQ

Note: Some of the tips rely on features from the GE version.

Mixing against HP/LP combo

A good generic practice when EQing several tracks in a mix is too start by dialing in HP/LP combinations by an  appropriate level and then do further EQing/mixing against those settings. Also using the tilt filter is a good idea to apply very first and rough tonal corrections and then working out the details afterwards with the three EQs.

Preserving low-end energy when high-pass filtering

A cool trick to preserve some low-end energy when high-pass filtering is applied is to boost the low-end while using the EQ-SAT feature. As you can see in the routing diagram the HPF comes after the main EQs and EQ-SAT. This way, harmonic overtones are generated based on the fundamentals before the HPF is applied.

Decoupling the low-end

The low-end EQ features a “Phi” option switch which allows to decouple the low-end by an allpass filter network. The crossover can be freely adjusted with the normal frequency control in this band while the gain control does not have any effect in this mode. This may work great for that mellow bass drums just as an example but in other cases it might loose some definition as a trade-off.

Compare different settings

SlickEQ contains two effect settings slots, A and B. Use them in combination with the automatic output gain control to AB test different settings. Within the plugin you can move settings between A and B but also copy&paste is there to freely copy settings between different plug-in instances. Also, undo/redo comes in handy here.

Adjusting precise values

The gain/frequency displays can also be used to enter specific values and also shortcuts are accepted, e.g. “5k” can be entered to set a value to 5000. And did you know that SlickEQ has mouse-wheel support?

 

 

short links, year end 2010 edition

Since we’ve had a great delay plug-in release this year some might be interested in some further reading about that topic. A short history about delay effects is given here and some more specific readings about tape delay can be found in the mixonline magazine. Need some overview about the Roland tape echo stuff? Just look here.

From time to time some effect developer apprentices are asking where to start. Today, almost everything can be found in the cloud. Sometimes DSP suppliers/developers are offering good overviews and introductions such as this example. Don’t hesitate to search for all those papers which are freely available,

more vintage. good tone.

as found on http://www.toothpastefordinner.com

NastyVCS – behind the scenes

Planning

When preparing the final bits of an upcoming plug-in release, other research and prototyping typically has already been done for other potentially upcoming projects. This usually is the time when the decision is made about the next project and the new plug-in gets outlined and planned in detail. In this case it was around 9 month ago in August 2009 when FerricTDS (our entry for the KVR DC ’09) finally went into the late beta testing stage. Since quite some time I had in my mind to improve the “Nasty” plug-in series package but to that time it had become finally clear that the next step would be to put it into one single and consistent “console strip” style plug-in.

NastyVCS – released today

NastyVCS - Virtual Console Strip

NastyVCS – virtual console strip

virtual console strip

I’m really proud to announce the NastyVCS virtual console strip which finally brings the beloved “nasty” signal coloration series onto the next level.

Build entirely new around an opto-electric style compression unit, NastyVCS offers everything you need to shape your channels dynamics and tone. It offers a dedicated input stage featuring crunchy pre-amp saturation and a brickwall safety limiter  in the output stage while everything is set up to work in zero latency and so to have it available for hassle free tracking and mixing. Two dedicated filters can be used in either the audio path or in the compressors sidechain which can be external as well.