New Analog Saturation plug-in from SoundToys: Decapitator

[beautypill]

Careful this download messes with your existing Soundtoys bundle.

There's a fix on the way tomorrow. I recommend waiting 'til then.

- c

[Kubi]

Careful, apparently there are possible tech issues for those already owning the soundtoys bundle. Check the SoundToys Facebook page.

[mhschmieder]

I left a bookmark for the demo registration page before logging out last night, as a reminder, as they say there will be an update posted in a day that addresses the issue of people who already own the suite.

[KEVORKIAN]

I left a bookmark for the demo registration page before logging out last night, as a reminder, as they say there will be an update posted in a day that addresses the issue of people who already own the suite.

They already fixed it. If you download the latest beta version it will correct the issue. It's version 6.

[mhschmieder]

Ah, good to know. I just received an email for them about the beta program, so they may have held back those emails for existing customers until they fixed the compatibility issue with the Suite. I'll try it tonight (well, I'll download and install it -- I probably won't have time for a session until Wednesday night).

[Splinter]

Decapitator works a treat, though I'm not much of a slam it into the red kinda guy, which is its intended use. It has Ampex, EMI, Neve, triode tube, and pentode tube models each with their own harmonic structure and good bit of variation. The quality is impeccable, but as I said, this thing was designed to make your ears bleed, so I found I was dialing the drive way down and/or the wet signal to compensate for the distortion.

I wish it had an input and output knob, but according to Soundtoys the plug auto-adjusts the output based on the amount of added drive - which can add between 20 and 60dB of gain! Still an input gain/trim would have been helpful to set the optimal input from the track or previous plug. Mitch at Soundtoys said they have and will continue to kick around the idea, but he's a drive it into the red kinda guy and said the product wasn't designed to be subtle.

Needless to say, it is very different from URS's Saturation, which I love. Saturation does subtle very well and can get raunchy as you crank things up, but doesn't sound as harmonically rich as Decapitator. That said, Saturation has more models and provides a lot of variety. Since I'm not much of a drive it into the red kinda guy, I had never used Saturation that way, but found you can obtain similar results using the same techniques... if you want to.

I think I'd be happy with Saturation, but Decapitator has a richness and quality that only Soundtoys can produce. That said, I still have yet to hear a plug that can replicate the depth, shimmer, and ballsiness of a real tube, but these plugs are getting there - Soundtoys being closer, but too aggressive for most applications.

Those are my thoughts. Oh, and it works fine in DP 5.13 on a 2.66 Core 2 Duo iMac. It did crash on me a couple times at first when I opened the plugin window, but I couldn't intentionally get it to reproduce the problem, and it quit doing it even after I opened numerous plugs and instances. Hmm... I was going to report it to Soundtoys, but then there was nothing to report. It's fairly light on the CPU by the way, but not as efficient as Saturation.

[Splinter]

Anyone else try Decapitator yet? Wadja think?