Vocal Preamp
Vocal preamp plugin for macOS and Windows
Five preamp characters, and a switch for stacked takes.
No audio demo for Vocal Preamp.
Lead mode is a preamp on one voice: pick a character, set the drive, and the lowcut runs from 50 to 300 Hz to take the proximity bump off a close mic. Choir mode is for the eight stacked doubles that came back as near-identical mono takes. It builds a stereo image out of them with mismatched allpass decorrelation, the same technique MS Widener uses, and watches the correlation while it does. A stack of mono takes pushes correlation negative faster than a real stereo source does, so the spread pulls itself back before the take stops surviving a mono fold.
Preamp characters
Clean
Gain with almost nothing added. The reference point for hearing what the other four are doing.
Tube
Even-order. The second harmonic grows as you drive, since the asymmetry ahead of the curve is level-dependent.
Transformer
A gentle bend that stays close to linear for a long way, with a low-end lift and a softened top.
Ribbon
Dark and rounded. Takes the edge off a bright condenser more than it adds anything of its own.
FET
Fast and forward. The most aggressive of the five, and the one that flatters a quiet double-track.
What it does
- Five preamp characters, each with its own waveshaping curve and its own frequency response
- Lead and Choir modes. In Lead the spread engine is switched out of the signal path rather than left running at zero
- Drive up to 4x, with Gain Comp on by default so the level stays put while the character changes
- Lowcut from 50 to 300 Hz, sitting first in the chain, ahead of the drive
- Stereo Spread in Choir mode, with a correlation-driven safety limiter that reins the width in as the stack approaches mono-incompatibility
- Equal-power dry/wet mix, and a DC blocker after the waveshaper
- Per-channel processing with no left/right coupling in Lead mode
- The drive curve drawn in the interface is read from the same shaper the audio runs through, so the picture can't drift away from the sound
Specs
- Formats
- VST3, AU
- Requirements
- macOS 11 or later (Apple Silicon & Intel), VST3 or AU host · Windows 10 or later (64-bit), VST3 host
