ThrillseekerVBL – free Vintage Broadcast Limiter v1.0 (WIN)

[alphatonez]

ThrillseekerVBL

Thrillseeker VBL is an emulation of a “vintage broadcast limiter” following the classic Variable-Mu design principles from the early 1950's. They were used to prevent audio overshoots by managing sudden signals changes. From today’s perspective, and compared to brickwall limiters, they are rather slow and should be seen as more of a gain structure leveler, but they still are shining when it comes to perform gain riding in a very musical fashion – they have warmth and mojo written all over.

Thrillseeker VBL is a “modded” version, which not only has the classic gain reduction controls but also grants detailed access to the amount and appearance of harmonic tube amplifier distortion occurring in the analog tube circuit. Applied in subtle doses, this dials in that analog magic we often miss when working in the digital domain, but you can also overdrive the circuit to have more obvious but still musical sounding harmonic distortion (and according side-effects) for use as a creative effect.

On top, Thrillseeker VBL offers an incredibly authentic audio transformer simulation which not only models the typical low-end harmonic distortion but also all the frequency and load dependent subtleties occurring in a transformer coupled tube circuit, and which add up to that typical mojo we know from the analog classics. This would not have been possible with plain waveshaping techniques but has been realized with my innovative Stateful Saturation approach, making it possible to model circuits having a (short) sort of memory.

ThrillseekerVBL is a freeware VST audio plug-in for Windows x32

Website & Download

• http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/...dcast-limiter/

[dope]

NICE! i will book mark that one and download later.
this is the sort of plugin that i would probably attempt to use. not overly complicated and probably just does one trick really well.
thanks man
i noticed on the download page there other free ones too... could be other gems in there!

[theBadger]

As a computer scientist and musician, I’m enjoying designing DSP algorithms and plug-in concepts. It’s a pleasure for me to share my efforts with other people without having to worry about commercial interests. In each of my effects there is a special technical design, workflow or concept combination I haven’t found in existing tools. Many developers these days just stick to old concepts, but you will never see a straight copy of existing gear from me. I always add some innovation, or find a way to evolve and take it to a new level.

Have you DLed and tried ThrillseekerVBL yet? You should. You really should. Get your mix right first then dial in a sound you like.... and then press the on/off switch.

I haven't had chance to check out any of varosound's other free plugins yet. But if they are even a fraction as good as this then they are probably well worth checking out.

tB.

EDIT: I've had a little noodle with a few of the other free VSTis on this site. Um. I'm no expert in these things but i'm very impressed so far. (I didn't get the baxterEQ at all) but the rest.... wow! They are odd. A bit like those boutique hardware effects that only fit in a 'lunchbox'. But very musical sounding from what I've tried so far.

Oh and no presets. Make your own sounds you lazy b'stards seems to be the mantra. I quite like that. Especially when it is so easy to get a great sound with these pluggies.

[theBadger]

EDIT2: Well I've had a bit more of a play and here's what I think:

These are not sound editing tools.

Neither are they mastering tools, although you could use some of them for a bit of mastering.

These could be mix polishing tools.

Here's the workflow as I see it:

You make a song and mix it using your usual methods. Get the mix as close to right as you can....

Render all the tracks.

Then use these tools on each rendered track to polish your mix: give a little more weight to the acoustic guitar, glue the drums together, realign the phase on the rhodes piano and spread it a bit wider using the m/s features. That sort of thing.

Unfortunately, I haven't got the time or the talent for that sort of buggering about.

There's magic in here I think. Real boutique soundcraft stuff. The tape saturation plug in is outstanding imho.

But for my needs it's all a bit esoteric. Bloody clever I'm sure, and very difficult to ruin a sound, but also difficult to find the magic sweet spot unless you are prepared to spend the time experimenting.

Do try some of this stuff out. All it will cost you is time.

tB.

I just wish I knew what all the dials and buttons were supposed to do. Some of them appear to do nothing.

[dope]

ok a couple questions...
when you say "render each track" what do you mean?
do you actually bounce every track down to wave before you mix?

[theBadger]

I dunno mate; it's been such a long time since I've done any proper recording or mixing.

I seem to remember that, back when I had time to do music stuff, I used to render any vstis, loops and special FX down to audio files.

Partly to save processing power. Partly so that next time I loaded them they would still work. Partly so that they could be ported to another system for mixing.

But mostly so that I would stop fiddling with the arrangement and synth voices and get on with the task in hand.

The disadvantage of doing this is that I would have to go back to the original to correct any errors that have slipped through.

To get back to the varosound plug ins... these do not seem to me to be the sort of plugins that I would use during the writing, creating or arranging stage but more in the polishing the mix stage.

tB

[dope]

ok i understand now!
i just have never done it that way. i've all ways just worked right off the desk and never bounced "stems" or tracks like a lot of people do now days.
i'm not sure why .. i just mix as one whole unit... maybe thats part of my problem! lol if i would force myself to stop and be satisfied by mixing tracks down perhaps i would stop messing with it so much.
but usually end up with more errors than i think i have once i get fresh ears and other peoples ears listening... then i have to change things... so maybe its best i just keep going the way i do (sub bussing)

i can see your point though... some effects are too subtle or not useful in the early stages. every vst certainly has its place!

[moose]

These days many DAWs (most, I guess) have the "track-freeze" option. The tracks is rendered but a new track or wav is not created. The DAW does an internal rendering which can be undone in seconds by simply selecting "undo freeze".

It is a very useful option if your PC, like mine, is not very powerful.. something that I should remind myself to do more often.

If you do freeze tracks, however, I would suggest first to make a copy of your mix project and give it a different name (just add a number to it...) so that, should something go wrong with the freeze or un-freeze, you'll be saving lots of money in psychiatric treatment.