Variety Of Sound

I love compressors. Not that I have tons of bus compressors, but there are quite a few sitting in my VST folder, which are considered as one of the best by many many users. But Density mkIII is my favorite one. There are many reasons for that. First of all, for a compressor, that doesn't have any latency and look-ahead, it extremely fast in catching transients without any distortion (here I am talking about LIM mode, which is actually not a limiter, but just a very fast compressor with attack starting with 0.1 ms.). The "glue" factor is astonishing. I see that a lot of work and passion was given to this baby. There is no 'Ratio' control, the compressor does it automatically and does It well. It is versatile enough to handle any bus duties - drum bus, master bus. It sounds clean, but alive. You can add some mojo with the dedicated 'Color' control. I do mostly electronic music and it shines there perfectly. And It is free. Thank you Variety of Sound for such a gift.

It's one of the best freebies out there. You can slap several instances of it on a track with hughe benefits.

This EQ differs from others because of mainly 5 things:

1. 'Auto Gain Compensation' - the plugin keeps unity gain and allows to notice more accurately what the equalization (and saturation, if applied) is actually doing to the signal, without changing the volume. A very important feature. I wish incorporating this would be more popular amongst developers.
2. Four switchable curve shapes (American, British, German and Soviet), which differ in slope, steepness but also attenuation of certain frequencies. (the Q value changes proportional to the gain).
3. Gain-dependent saturation ('EQ Sat' button) and gain-independent calibration of the saturation.
4. Another very subtle output saturation stage comprised of 4 saturation models.
5. Highpass-Filter after the EQ-section to preserve added harmonics to the low end.

This plugin can glue the signal feed in and give it more warmth but be aware!

It does that even without to engage/turn the 2 main knobs 'Saturation' and 'Dynamics'. You can hear but also see that by taking a look at the corresponding meters. So, 0% value is not 0% effect. Keep that in mind while using it. I personally prefer an exponential parameter, but it works well tough.

In fact, I can put it on a track without even to consider to touch any knobs, and it does it job quite well.

I have to say that, after I put a meter behind and tested the effected with the bypassed signal (DAW-bypass, not the one in the interface), FerricTDS seems to increase volume a little around 0.4 to 0.5 db. So no exact unity gain comparison but still the signal is better in comparison to the bypassed signal turned louder accordingly.

If you using it on individual tracks, it however could make the sound a little muddy or dark (especially due to the no 0% effect). So if you feed a clear and already EQ-ed signal into it, might be prepared and put a EQ afterward or use it before any EQing.

Native Bypass-Switch is also a very very helpful feature by adjusting the parameters.

Great plugin.

There are not many valueable free multi-effect / channel strips available. Many lack in sound or design, but this plugin belongs to the good.

NastyVCS is an all-round-tool which you can really use even alongside expensive channel strips. It offers many special things like a saturation knob, an AIR-Filter (which really surprised me), boost and cut low-end filter, and many different sounding attack and release modes for the compressor.

Plus it offers a sidechain capability and you can enable/disable individual sections for quick A/B comparison. A much appreciated feature which many pricy competitors are missing.

And this isn't in 32-bit only despite being a bit aged. VOS updated NastyVCS to 64-bit in 2021.

Really worth to at least checking it out, even if you already have fency channel strips in your arsenal.

Powerful baxandall EQ plugin. M/S-Mode is fantastic and you also can adjust Mid and Side volume without even applying the shelves or cuts.

The only reason why I reduce one star and I can imagine this plugin isn't way more popular is because it is kind of hard to read the parameter values and specific elements are not easy to distinguish from each other, even if you get a little more familiar with the plugin.

If the developer could maybe enhance the GUI in an updated verson, I guess this plugin would be used by much more people.

На данный момент, я считаю, что это самый чистый эквалайзер на рынке. Я проверял его на такой программе, как "Plugin Doctor", по результатам нету никакого насыщения даже при усилении в +18 db! Однозначно заслуживает внимание каждого звукорежиссёра.

Мой самый любимый эквалайзер на данный момент. Не смотрите на то, что он бесплатный, его алгоритмы просто чудо! Он способен очень мягко, тепло и ярко добавлять как верх, так и низ. Так же есть модуль преампа, это нечто.