Tube Amp

Tube Amp now offers two different modes. The first one is more subtle and refers to a warmy tube saturation. The second mode gives you a more "in your face" distortion sound.

Both modes sound good and can be used for different scenarios.

Other new features are oversampling up to 8X (2x, 4x, 8x) and a soft limiter function for the output signal.

For distortion and saturation effects, I personally prefer a "Wet/Dry Mix"-knob over the implemented "Dry Mix" one, because it gives you better control on how much non-linear distortion it adds to the signal as rather dealing the dry signal back in.

Rolling down the "Drive" and "Bias" parameters individually isn't a great substitute as you can't do this simultaneously which ends up that you change the actual sound instead of getting a clean volume reduction.

As of this reason, I might prefer a different plugin when I need more subtle changes.

But a good free plugin to get.

Not many VST distortions sounded great in the early 2000's. Much less free ones. This is one of the oldest VSTs that remain on my DAW's VST list. It holds up well.

As noted by another review, it certainly isn't going to excel in the subtle presence of a soft-driven tube amp (neither did any plug-in in 2002). It does do well in being tortured to create mangled sounds.

Personally I like this plugin. I tested it with a tone and analyzer so I could understand its sweet spots and limits. It can be pretty subtle or a very agressive, like a real tube. With everything at minimum setting, it still produces some subtle harmonics, ideal for the master buss if the mix needs to sound a little more round and full. With higher settings I got a saturation similar to tube preamps and in mode 2 I added some more agressive distortion to an electric bass. Overall it is a useful tool for me and it is free so thank you Voxengo.