Black Rooster Audio releases VLA-2A - Vintage Leveling Amplifier

[BlackRooster]

Black Rooster Audio is proud to present the VLA-2A - the world‘s finest emulation of THE opto electronic compressor of the late 1960s. We have put all our knowledge, engineering skill and heart into designing the most authentic native emulation of this unit to this date. We love to use the VLA-2A on drums, but it also performs outstandingly well on bass or vocals and carefully adjusting the compression really helps to make your signals shine and sit just in the mix. We give you a limited time introduction offer of $99 ($129 regularly).



FEATURES

AUTHENTIC CIRCUIT EMULATION
Our realtime component based circuit simulation approach allows for authentically capturing the sound and feel of the analog unit as close as possible. All the crucial parts, including in- and output transformers, sidechain and audio path tube stages, filters and of course the T4A cell have been faithfully modelled and matched with an original '68 reference unit.

SSE2 OPTIMIZED CODE
DSP operations are pipelined using the SSE2 instruction set. This ensures high performance operation despite very complex computations.

AUTO-ADJUSTED OVERSAMPLING FOR MAXIMUM AUDIO TRANSPARENCY
Aliasing artifacts are efficiently attenuated using a low latency linear phase Dolph-Chebyshev polyphase design. The oversampling rate is auto adjusted to your session's sample rate to save CPU while offering the most transparent sound possible.

HIGHDPI / RETINA SUPPORT
Our user interfaces support high pixel density on both Windows and Mac OS systems to present you with the most enjoyable user experience on high DPI displays. Please refer to your manual to learn whether your DAW is HighDPI capable if you're working on Windows.

ABOUT BLACK ROOSTER AUDIO

We're an avid audio software company from Germany that brings you premium quality DAW plug-ins. Our processors can be used in the most popular host applications such as Steinberg Cubase, Apple Logic, Ableton Live and many others. We put all our dexterity into contriving and creating the most state-of-the-art software. We want to support you in your everyday recording, mixing or mastering process and provide you with highly creative, inspiring and great sounding tools.

Please check http://blackroosteraudio.com for further information.

We would like to say thank you to everyone who has contributed in making this release happen!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

BlackRooster, will give this a demo when I get a chance, but I checked out the video and I'd really suggest getting into the audio examples faster. How does it sound on electric bass? How does it compare to your reference unit? Is there somewhere your LA-2A emulation really shines compared to offerings from UAD, Waves, IK Multimedia, and Cakewalk? If so, you should highlight where you think yours stands up better compared to the competition. Would love to hear more. Back to the video itself, there's so few controls on an LA-2A that I don't think we need a full walk-thru of the UI, including the knob behavior.

Also, how does yours sound when pushed hard? We know the LA-2A has a ton of headroom, but it will distort with the gain really cranked up. This is an area where many LA-2A plugins fall apart.

Any chance of adding features? For instance, a few LA-2A plugins allow you to adjust the high frequency sensitivity of the detector circuit. A mix knob and/or a clean output gain (depending on how well this unit distorts) could be nice additions. So would the ability to adjust the reference level, for instance, I tend to shoot for around -18db.

Like I said, I'll check it out. I'm honestly much more psyched about the idea of a good LA-3A, so I'm glad to see one is in the works. I hope you guys nail them both! Last question for now, any idea/word on a LA-3A discount for LA-2A owners?

[spacekid]

Hey, just choosing to install 64-bit didn't work for me. I had to choose both versions, and to be safe I chose to reinstall canary while I was figuring it out. * Edit, nope--I was looking at Canary. Only the 32-bit version of VLA-2A is installing.

[MogwaiBoy]

Gotta say... the GUI is one of the swankiest I've ever seen.

[plexuss]

Gotta say... the GUI is one of the swankiest I've ever seen.

No one sees the GUI when they are listening to your track. I'm sure it sounds nice.

[Lesha]

I've been testing it for almost a month and I have to say this plugin is among the best sounding, if not THE best sounding LA-2A emulation I've ever heard (haven't tested the UAD one, but the fellow beta tester which has it prefers VLA-2A).

Some people say it is slightly pumping and that is true when cranked a lot, it may not be a bad thing though depending on your material.
What I can say with certainty, its sound is much smoother compared to other emulations which often have that harsh, "digital" edge. I've been using it in my everyday work (mostly podcasts and audiobooks) and it really shines there.
I believe this is going to be a big hit on vocals, but it's great on drums and bass also.

Don't take my word for it, download the demo and give it a spin

[Rik]

BlackRooster, will give this a demo when I get a chance, but I checked out the video and I'd really suggest getting into the audio examples faster. How does it sound on electric bass? How does it compare to your reference unit? Is there somewhere your LA-2A emulation really shines compared to offerings from UAD, Waves, IK Multimedia, and Cakewalk? If so, you should highlight where you think yours stands up better compared to the competition. Would love to hear more. Back to the video itself, there's so few controls on an LA-2A that I don't think we need a full walk-thru of the UI, including the knob behavior.

I am familiar with the Cakewalk one, it is not bad at all but it feels more linear than the VLA-2A. VLA-2A has more character and I thought there was really a wow factor when I tried it on vocals. There is an analog feel to it especially when you start to crank up the dials.

Erik.

[AC222]

The youtube demo actually sounds very good. Very musical sounding for a software compressor. How is the cpu-usage versus other plugins guys? Looks like he's got an la3a on the way too. I wonder if we'll see some other popular compressors ahead ala 1176, cl1b, dbx 165/160, distressor, fairchild, ssl

[AC222]

BlackRooster, will give this a demo when I get a chance, but I checked out the video and I'd really suggest getting into the audio examples faster. How does it sound on electric bass? How does it compare to your reference unit? Is there somewhere your LA-2A emulation really shines compared to offerings from UAD, Waves, IK Multimedia, and Cakewalk? If so, you should highlight where you think yours stands up better compared to the competition. Would love to hear more. Back to the video itself, there's so few controls on an LA-2A that I don't think we need a full walk-thru of the UI, including the knob behavior.

I am familiar with the Cakewalk one, it is not bad at all but it feels more linear than the VLA-2A. VLA-2A has more character and I thought there was really a wow factor when I tried it on vocals. There is an analog feel to it especially when you start to crank up the dials.

Erik.

Thanks for sharing. In the audio demo, this baby seems to sound great on overheads too...

[simon.a.billington]

Yeah I too have enough ems to want to try out this one. Waves, IK, Logic

Even Plugin Alliance have one. But in all fairness it's based on a hardware unit that is inspired by the 2A.

I hope this plugin does do great, but my advice would be to look to do things that no one else is doing, or not many.

[kvaca]

I hope this plugin does do great, but my advice would be to look to do things that no one else is doing, or not many.

as long as the plugin sounds identical to hw it doesnt matter how many emus of the same brand are out there

btw- personally Its hard for me to take any emulation attempt as serious when devs dont care to post any A/B demos with their original hw...

[Lesha]

btw- personally Its hard for me to take any emulation attempt as serious when devs dont care to post any A/B demos with their original hw...

As far as I know, the hardware unit this plugin is modeled upon is no longer available to them.
I will ask if it's possible for them to get it again and make the demos.

[kvaca]

I will ask if it's possible for them to get it again and make the demos.

thanks

[Lesha]

double post

[simon.a.billington]

I hope this plugin does do great, but my advice would be to look to do things that no one else is doing, or not many.

as long as the plugin sounds identical to hw it doesnt matter how many emus of the same brand are out there

btw- personally Its hard for me to take any emulation attempt as serious when devs dont care to post any A/B demos with their original hw...

I pretty much agree in both instances there.

Although I did hear Dirk from Plugin Alliance talk about phase cancellation or "null" tests with the original. I'm sure they wouldn't be the only dev to use that as part of the testing procedure.