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Key Features
The Slate VBC Dynamics Processing is a collection of three of the most legendary mix buss compressors ever, available as individual plug-ins and together in a virtual rack. Each of the three compressors within Slate VBC has a distinctive tone and character, meaning no matter what audio source, genre and mix style you are working with, there will be something that can help glue your mix together, adding punch, detail and fatness.
With the technology and processing power available in modern technology, Slate VBC accurately emulates every nuance, distortion and dynamic artefact that is present in analog hardware. These nonlinearities are exactly what give analog hardware their signature staple sound, full of rich character, vibe and colour that is missing from so many modelling plug-ins.
Arguably one of the most important aspects of a professional mixers production chain, the mix buss compressor is what your entire mix is run through and with VBC, you can guarantee you'll unlock a tremendous level of punch, detail, clarity and cohesion that ensures your mix doesn't start to become cloudy or fall apart under heavy mix buss compression. Thanks to the meticulous modelling, the sonic signature is imprinted to your tracks without any gain reduction applied, this means even if you're using FG-GREY, you can load up the rack mount and pass the audio through FG-RED or FG-MU to pass the audio through them for a rich and detailed tone.
Product Ref: 188990
Taking inspiration from a world-famous red-faced compressor, FG-RED delivers a tremendous level of punch to your tracks whilst retaining all of the detail and articulation as well as imposing an improved stereo separation between instruments, giving your mix a clean and polished sound. A unique compressor in that the attack and auto-release work in tandem to create a very musical response that moves with the flow of your tracks like nothing else. The true imprint of character lies in the output section of FG-RED, whereby even a small increase in output gain adds fatness, aggression and punch to your signal, making it the perfect choice for rock, metal or punk genres to react with the style and aggression of the performances. In part due to a series of nonlinearities, the character exhibited by FG-RED makes it an industry standard that many top-level producers use not just for compression, but to achieve the signature sound of the pushed output section. With this in mind, FG-RED expands on what is possible with the original hardware by adding in a DRIVE knob, simulating the effect you get by driving the output section on its own dedicated parameter, allowing you to chose whether you want to use the output gain or not.
An instantly recognisable classic, FG-GREY harnesses the sound and timbre of a classic British 4000 series console compressor, imparting the exact characteristics in unrivaled accuracy. Widely regarded as one of the most impressive and functional buss compressors, FG-GREY delivers the same 'glueing' effect that the original hardware unit employs to tighten a mix together, making for a perfectly cohesive soundscape. In auto-release mode, you will notice a transparent amount of compression or when set to fast manual modes, you can drive it up to an extremely aggressive tone.
Imparting tonal characteristics on your sound when a signal is run through the plug-in without any gain reduction, FG-GREY delivers the perfect response for a mix buss compressor to add vibe, colour and tone to your projects and mixes. A small modification was implemented to the circuit by adding the tonal characteristics of the output British style discrete transformer to the signal chain. This helps to retain the tightness and punch of the mid-range and low-end, where the original hardware units starts to attenuate drastically with harder compression settings. Not only does FG-GREY function as a complete mix buss compressor, but try using it on individual drum shells and discover a huge amount of punch and impact, perfect for contemporary pop and rock mixes.
Inspired by the pinnacle of mix buss compressors, the FG-MU accurately recreates the magic that happens when you run your mix through a premium tube compressor. FG-MU has a very smooth character to it that can thicken up the midrange, tighten up low-end and open up the top-end to bring out the articulation and detail of your mix without introducing harshness. What's more, the high-end becomes more focused and the upper-midrange overtones that can so often sound harsh and piercing become more tamed as well. Just like the hardware counterparts that it's modelled from, simply passing audio through FG-MU without any gain reduction applied will imprint a tone to your signal that brings out all of the analog character and vibe to it through the virtually modelled tube circuit.
There's simply no 'go-to' settings or even ways to use the FG-MU, it's that versatile. In almost any setting imaginable, it will deliver an authentic, rich and characterful compression tone that will glue your mix together perfectly to create depth, punch and consistency. Try it on a range of different musical genres and you will see why the hardware counterparts are reserved for only the best in the business and the biggest studios across the globe.
Where other plug-in manufacturers claim that their products are exacting analog emulations, the Slate VBC is truly indistinguishable from the hardware counterparts. Other plug-ins simply fall short in responding and sounding like an analog piece of hardware when used by the biggest names in the industry and this feedback was taken on board when developing the VBC Dynamics Processing Rack. True to the nature of analog components, the hardware compressors when analysed showed complex nonlinear artefacts within their signal path that give the compressors their distinctive sounds. Not simply based on the timing and topology, outboard equipment introduces modulations, dynamic harmonic distortions, dynamic phase distortion, saturation, crosstalk, and more.
In typical Slate fashion, no stone was left unturned when investigating these nonlinearities within the hardware circuit and so have been implemented into VBC to deliver the most accurate recreations available. You'll experience the depth, vibe and character that hardware brings to your mixes, with many leading engineers in the industry replacing their outboard compressors in favour of the VBC.