AudioThing has released a new multi-effect plugin dedicated to the emulation of vintage signal chains.
Vinyl Strip, as the name suggest, focus on the vinyl effect, and nowadays there are very few commercial plugins dedicated to that effect.
One of the first and probably most used plugin to emulate the vinyl effect was Vinyl by iZotope, which is now discontinued.
AudioThing, with Vinyl Strip, gives a new take on the vinyl emulation, along with other modules to further mangle the audio signal.
Vinyl Strip has got a very clean and simple interface featuring 6 modules with different effects. Given its semplicity, you don’t really need to read the manual to tweak the effects.
- 1) It’s possible to swap the order of the effects by simple drag and drop by taking into account that the signal path flows from left to right. You can disable this feaure clicking on the More button
- 2) It’s possible to randomize all or only desiderd parameters. By right clicking on each parameter you can choose which one to “lock” from the randomization.
- 3) Each module has it’s own bypass switch. The master module can be disabled by clicking the bypass switch in the upper right corner.
The Vinyl section features:
- Dust Amount and Dust Rate: for the emulation of crackles made by the record player needle.
- Noise: the emulation of the background noise.
- WOW: similar to a vibrato effect, will alter the pitch of the signal.
- Record Age: emulation of the frequency response of vinyls and record players of different ages.
- Stereo: transforms the signal from Stereo to Mono.
The Compressor features:
- Amount: the amount of compressor on the signal.
- Envelope: the actual speed of the compressor.
The Distortion features:
- Drive: the amount of distortion on the signal.
- Harmonics: controls the color of the distortion.
The Reverb features:
- Amount: the amount reverbe applied.
- Size: the tail of the reverb (RT60).
- Color: changes the spectrum of the reverb.
The EQ features:
- Tilt: typical Tilt EQ gain. by moving it clockwise, it will attenuate the lows and boost the highs, counterclockwise will do the opposite
- Cutoff: controls the center frequency of the two shelf filters of the tilt EQ
The Sampler features:
- Bits: reduces the bit-depth of the sound causing distortion.
- Rate: reduces the sample rate frequency causing aliasing.
Final Notes
With the vinyl revival, it’s possible that, in the near future, the typical sound of this media will appear more often in the playlists worldwide: it’s worth noting that last year alone vinyl album sales rose by 400%.
In this context, Vinyl Strip perfectly fits in every effect chain, also considering its ability to extremily change the incoming sound with all its modules.
The sound of Vinyl Strip, as always, needs a subjective evaluation which is often dictated by the kind of music that is produced. For a guideline, I’d like to consider it in a transversal way: from the sound of old video production, to the typical DJ sound, passing through some distortion processes which, normally, would take more than one plugin to achieve the same result.
Original Source: Age of Audio
