Philly DI

The Philly DI is a lovingly crafted emulation of the rare custom-built Sigma Sound Studios DI created by Joe Tarsia, founder and owner of Sigma Sound Studios (Philadelphia/New York).

When Joe Tarsia launched the original limited edition Sigma Sound Studios DI, he said:

We wanted a general purpose direct box that would not only direct inject electric keyboards but more importantly would get the best out of the electric bass and guitar. The unexpected results were astonishing; the Sigma DI quickly became the favorite of the bass and guitar players.

Always looking for the better mousetrap, as new DIs came to market we put our box to the test. In every head to head comparison with both active and passive store bought DIs the Sigma box came out on top.

You know the sound; you hear it in the recordings of the Jays, Lou Rawls, Teddy Pendergrass, the Stylistics, the Spinners, MFSB, Grover Washington Jr. and Patti LaBelle. It's 'The Sound of Philadelphia'.

The day Sigma opened its doors and the 35 years that followed it was the only DI I used for recording musicians like Ronnie Baker, Gerald Veasley, Steve Beskrone, Bob Babbitt, Anthony Jackson and many others.

It was only at the urging of a musician friend, who wanted a Sigma DI of his own that I considered building a few. Unfortunately I found that the heart of the Sigma DI, a high quality audio transformer, had been out of production for years and was just about impossible to find.

Only 50 of these DIs were ever made.

The MB Philly DI plug-in is a lovingly crafted digital emulation of a pristine original hardware unit provided by George Hajioannou of Studio Logic Sound - with a couple of twists.

Key Features:

• Faithful emulation of the transformer characteristics of the Sigma Sound Studios DI Box.
• Integrated level-compensated Drive control to allow you to tailor how hard you hit the transformer.
• Integrated compressor to match the signal chain that was used at Sigma Sound Studios for many classic recordings.
• A lots of presets included to get you started.
• User-selectable oversampling.
• Adjustable UI size.
• MH Preset Manager - Provides cross-platform presets.
• Cross Platform - Mac AU, Mac/Win VST + VST3 & Mac/Win Pro Tools AAX (Native).

{See video at top of page}