DUY DAD Valve Mac Plug In for Adobe Premiere

A Find for those looking to use an old Mac and programs like Logic 4.8 which support Premiere plug ins. New Old Stock Software!

Valve emulation in software is nothing new, but DUY have modelled a whole range of triode, pentode and tetrode valves at different bias and drive levels, to create a very flexible plug-in. Their system deals with the dynamic and spectral aspects of valves separately, because although it's well known that valves compress signal peaks when they're overdriven, the resulting harmonic structure varies with the valve type and biasing arrangement.

The Spectrum part of the process simulates the frequency and transient response of the valve, while the Dynamic part emulates the distortion caused by the valve's non-linearities. In addition to the input level slider, there's also a drive control called the Pusher, arranged as a horizontal fader, but there's no output level control, so it's not always possible to balance the processed and direct levels for comparison. A further control, called Lobe Flip, inverts the effect of the valve, to reverse the positive and negative-going characteristics, which may be quite different in a typical valve circuit. With symmetrical input material this will make no difference, but where the material being processed is very asymmetrical (brass waveforms are very asymmetrical, for example), the subjective difference can be quite noticeable.

The various valve characteristics are arranged as a matrix of 40 presets for the Spectrum processing and 40 for the Dynamic processing, each set being laid out as a drop-down 5 x 8 menu of instrument icons, to provide some idea as to which types work best with which sounds (the same icons are present in both sections). A Link button forces the same preset to be chosen from both Spectrum and Dynamic settings, but unlinking it allows any preset from one group to be combined with any preset from the other. This may all sound a bit anorakish until you listen to the effect, but it's an easily verifiable fact that some kinds of non-linearity sound great on some instruments or voices and awful on others.

In either case, mono or stereo signals may be treated. The effect is both authentic and controllable, and used with care it can add a little welcome character back to an all-digital recording.

System Reguirements

Mac Power PC OS 8 or better and a Premiere capable Host Program.