Tube Gain Booster

Tube Gain Booster is a stereo, quick, audio level booster designed to complement the Anything Mod plugin, but I suspect it's good for more applications.

TGB raises the gain of the source input using waveshaping and compressing the dynamic range of the audio signal. The TGB algorithm can model the sound of a tube amplifier to some extent, since the carefully designed waveshaper has a "bias" that depends on the input level and the harmonics profile of mode 2 gets very close to the one of a triode tube saturation. And thanks to its filters network it can create radical changes in the sound source.

Tube Gain Booster has three operative modes:

1. Mode 1: tube on no bias, mostly odd harmonics added and more gain boosting.
2. Mode 2: tube on with bias, mostly even harmonics added and less gain boosting.
3. Mode 3: tube off, much less harmonics added and less gain boosting.

Also there are two envelope settings for the compressor, these change the response to transients and some of the distortion.

The effect output gain automatically try to stay below 0 dB, but an attenuator control is available if the output is too hot for the mix or for further effects added after the TGB. Anyway you need to have a medium level audio source for best results, TGB also does not clip the signal so watch your VU meters.

Filters, other two controls allow to limit the band of the audio input. These are two frequency parameters, for a high pass and a low pass filter.

The signal outside the selected band can be mixed directly with the compressed output using the Blend controls. TGB has no latency so it doesn't alter the phase of the signal, therefore the dry input signal and the effected output can be mixed together with no phasing defects.

Hence you have two levels of usage:

1. Simple. Leave the high pass and low pass filters to full band, MaxFilterFreq = 16000 Hz and MinFilterFreq = 20 Hz, and Blend controls set to zero, since these are useless if filters are set to full band. So you just use the other parameters to set the compression/boosting to your needs.
2. Advanced. Used the high pass and low pass filters frequency parameters to reduce the band of the input to be compressed. Now you have the possibility to mix the dry signal, left out of the band, with the effected output. Use the Blend controls to adjust the level of lows and highs to be mixed into the output.

E.G. The advanced mode is useful to avoid to boost and distort the very high frequencies present in your input signal, and to pass them clean to the output. Also useful to equalize the TGB output, for different sounding effects. You can even cascade two or more TGB instances to achieve multiband compression/boosting.

TGB uses very little CPU as it's designed to be used on multiple tracks.

*** What about Tube Gain Booster parameters so far?:

• Currently Tube Gain Booster has 8 parameters:
• CompAmnt: 0 dB to -52 dB, more compression gives also more tube distortion.
• EnvType: "very fast" or "smooth".
• AlgoSelect: 3 modes. 1) tube on no bias, 2) tube on with bias, 3) tube off.
• Attenuator: -12 dB to +5 dB.
• MaxFilterFreq: input Low Pass, frequency 20 to 16000 Hz.
• MinFilterFreq: input High Pass, frequency 20 to 16000 Hz.
• BlendMixHf: -100 to +5 dB.
• BlendMixLf: -100 to +5 dB.

Note: setting MinFilterFreq higher than MaxFilterFreq, or vice versa, the boosting will work on a narrow band that you can shift for selective effects.

Please read the included manual for detailed info.