Rather, what it allows you to do is to subtly or comprehensively alter the tonality of a source in a way that just sounds right. Yet neither is it obviously coloured or aggressive like, say, Softube's Trident A-Range emulation. It's not transparent in the sense that a high-quality linear-phase digital equaliser is, because even small amounts of boost or cut are clearly audible. However, once I had got to grips with some of its quirks, I found myself using the Passive EQ plug-in extensively. Since my old laptop with its UAD2 Solo card has now been put out to pasture, I wasn't able to do direct comparisons against the UA version, nor against a hardware Massive Passive. The high- and especially the low-pass filters are likewise audible way beyond their nominal turnover frequencies. The results are usually very musical but not always very similar to what you'd get from other equalisers, and even at its narrowest setting, its effects are audible over a wide frequency range - for instance, if you put a 1kHz sine wave through it and apply a bell boost or cut at 6.8kHz you'll hear its level change, even at the narrowest Bandwidth setting. Another is that the Bandwidth control doesn't behave quite like a conventional Q control, but interacts with the channel gain setting. As you turn it, you apply increasing amounts of either boost or attenuation, depending on whether that band is switched to 'boost' or 'cut' mode. One design feature that is accurately replicated is that the 'zero' point for each band's gain knob is always fully counter-clockwise. If you're accustomed to a more conventional EQ design and interface, the Passive EQ takes a bit of getting used to. Unlike UA, NI haven't chosen to emulate the alternative Mastering version of the Massive Passive, with its stepped gain ranges, but they have added an M/S matrix, which can be useful in mastering contexts. As the name suggests, the Massive Passive uses no active components in its EQ circuitry any level lost in equalisation is restored using a tube make-up gain amplifier.Īs far as I know, the only existing plug-in version of the Massive Passive is Universal Audio's officially licensed emulation for their UAD platform, so the availability of a faithful copy in native form will be welcome news for many - though not, presumably, for Manley or UA. This permits a variety of strange but effective Pultec-like configurations involving overlapping frequency bands and so on. Any or all of these can be set to shelving mode as well as 'bell' or quasi-parametric mode, and the Bandwidth control is active in both. The most elaborate of them is Passive EQ, which is obviously intended to replicate Manley's celebrated Massive Passive equaliser: an interesting design which, as well as high- and low-pass filters, features four main EQ bands with stepped frequency controls. Instead, all three plug-ins can be called up directly in any VST, AU, RTAS or AAX host, and the bundle uses NI's standard Web-based authorisation system.Īlthough the visual layout and colour scheme of the Premium Tube Series plug-ins recalls the original hardware, NI and Softube have avoided any attempt at photo-realism, and the user interfaces are surprisingly plain by today's standards. Unlike most NI plug-ins, though, the Premium Tube Series was developed out-of-house by Softube and, perhaps as a consequence, it dispenses with the need to use NI's Guitar Rig Player as a 'shell' plug-in. The new Premium Tube Series falls into the latter category, containing two equalisers and a compressor that are, in all but name, modelled after well-known hardware processors from Manley. Native Instruments have teamed up with Softube to model three pieces of highly regarded valve outboard gear.Īs well as instruments that run natively, the Native Instruments product range also includes quite a few effects and processing plug-ins, from original products like The Mouth and The Finger, to emulations of classic gear.
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