Neural DSP, an audio engineering startup who have spent the past 6 months developing circuit modelling and digital signal processing techniques, has partnered with Darkglass Electronics to release their first product, a plugin modelled on Darkglass's Ultra pedal series, including two of their most famous products, the B7K Ultra and the Vintage Ultra.
"Darkglass Electronics' Microtubes B7K Ultra has 5-10 times more components than a typical tube amplifier or classic overdrive, which makes modelling it considerably more challenging. We had to go as far as creating models for the 4049 CMOS chip completely from scratch so that we could recreate the distortion characteristics and capture the sonic effects of every component with the most accuracy. The resulting algorithms are so accurate that they're indistinguishable from the Darkglass pedals."
Bass plugins are an extremely niche product in the plugin marketplace, with most producers needing to copy 3 or 4 DI tracks that need to be filtered and processed separately to get a high-quality distortion sound. With the Neural DSP Darkglass Ultra Plugins, all of this stress is alleviated.
YouTube.com/watch?v=FB8Xhpvg0kg
Plugin exclusive Features
On top of all the original features of the original pedals, the plugin includes:
- Input and Output Gain knobs: Input will affect on how much signal the plugin will feed in. This will affect the amount of distortion range of the drive pot. Adjust according to your purposes and input signal levels. The output will affect on how much signal the plugin will feed out to your DAW channel. Meters will show if input or output signals are clipping by holding a red indicator for "X" seconds.
- Link/Unlink EQ Switch: Originally the pedals come with a fixed EQ that will be applied to both Clean and Distorted Signal. With this new feature, it is possible to have different and independent EQ's for each of them. Activate switch to make them independent.
- Stereo Signal Processing Switch: Original hardware has the power to process only a mono input signal. With the Stereo switch you are able to process a Stereo input signal. Ideal for experimenting with new bass sounds, synths and more.
- Quality Switch: Changes the quality with which the plugin will process the signal, based on different levels of oversampling (Specific numbers will be administered soon). The higher the quality more processing CPU power needed.
- VDU/B7K Switch, Change between both pedals inside the same plugin, each pedal will keep its own configurations, except for global plugin configurations such as Quality, Input, Output, Stereo, EQ and Resize.
- Resize Button, Toggles between the two different window sizes for the plugin. Allows to have a smaller or bigger view depending on your workflow needs.
Neural DSP's Darkglass Ultra Plugins are available to purchase immediately for €99 and are perfect for the artist or producer who wants album-worthy bass tones from a single plugin.
