Variety Of Sound has unveiled ThrillseekerLA, a new VST effect plug-in for Windows described as a digital stereo leveling amplifier with truly analog qualities.

ThrillseekerLA will be released in Q1/2012 under a freeware license.

At a glance:

• Sophisticated and deep gain riding full of musical character and attitude but with virtually no inter-modulation (IM) distortion artifacts
• Feedback compression design w/o any samplerate based delay in the loop.
• Classic input level driven two knob design with additional manual attack and release time interventions.
• Highly program dependent envelope timing adoption offering attack times ranging from "instantaneously" up to around 100ms and release times from 30ms up to several seconds.
• Mix level switch to adopt the plug-ins internal gain staging to mixing levels at around -18dBFS.
• Custom SC filter option to attenuate the SC bass response while slightly boosting the HF spectrum.
• Additional one pole (6dB per octave) SC low-cut filter adjustable from 20 to 500Hz.
• External sidechain support.
• Switchable Input/GR/Output metering display.
• Variable compression range control from 0 to 100%.

ThrillseekerLA not only introduces way smooth gain riding capabilities but first and foremost features a non-linear amplifier stage which is based on a non-linearity with memory yielding creamy signal coloration duties:

• Custom algorithms based on a true stateful non-linear saturation model.
• Compression and load dependent 2nd order harmonic distortion generation.
• Controllable odd order total harmonic distortion generation.
• Six individual preset distortion profiles offering different tonal qualities like warmth and top-end sheen or simply improved depth perception.
• Authentic audio transformer simulation including typical LF distortions as well as frequency and load dependent analog circuit effects.

Specification:

• Requires Win32 compatible system with SSE2 (or higher) instruction set support.
• Tested and known to work in many VST compatible hosts.
• Advanced DSP processing.
• Assembler optimized audio engine.