Overall, NI and Softube have done a great job here, and although we've seen many EQP-1A style emulations before, multiband passives are less common. The Passive EQ has less competition, but we did A/B it with UA's Massive Passive - the results were pretty much a dead heat in terms of sound quality. The Enhanced EQ certainly performs well alongside all of these, though. The Premium Tube Series is up against some pretty stiff competition, and we already have several choices for Pultec EQP-1A-alikes, from Waves, IK Multimedia, PSP, UA and others. We also like the Detector HP (high-pass) and Dry blend control for finessing mix buss compression. The Limit setting is the one to go for if you're after big, fat drum kit processing, while for gentler master buss duties, try the softer Compressor option. The Vari Comp is rather different to the EQs in its modus operandi, shifting from subtle to blatant with only small changes to the Threshold or Attack/Recovery settings. And when you push it harder in the harsher upper mids, you get a beautiful, subtly saturated sound. Although experienced engineers generally cut with EQ rather than boost, if you are going to boost, this is the sort of EQ to use. It's excellent as a master buss EQ, and once again, even at high settings, you really don't feel you're ever going to do any damage to the signal. The Passive EQ is a paragon of flexibility. If you do want to tighten things up by scooping the low mids more than it might seem the plugin makes possible, you can always wind up the low-frequency cut in tandem with the boost. The low-frequency shelf is gentle and great for adding depth to pretty much anything, including full mixes. The Enhanced EQ's high-frequency band imbues the top end with great sweetness, and with its narrowest setting being quite broad, even a total novice would struggle to mess things up with it. Putting the EQs through their paces reveals exactly the sorts of sounds you'd expect from Pultec-style processing - in fact, switching these plugins in feels good even when they're flat. These range from typical Pultec-type jobs (bass, kick, snare, guitars) for the Enhanced EQ to mastering bus and submix presets for the Passive EQ and Vari Comp. "Although all three plugins are pretty easy to get to grips with, they each include 20 or so task-orientated presets"Īlthough all three plugins are pretty easy to get to grips with, they each include 20 or so task-orientated presets. The inclusion of both input level, threshold and output level makes it easy to saturate the processor circuit. Notable features include the five 'Recovery' (or release) settings, individual dry level (for parallel compression) and sidechain gain. The Vari Comp looks pretty simple, but is a tad esoteric in its labelling. Rounding things off are high- and low-pass filters. Each can be switched to either bell or shelf, and in the case of the latter, high Q results in an overshoot shape. It features four bands in parallel configuration with notched frequencies and sweepable bandwidth. This basic EQ design is then super-sized into the Passive EQ, which looks suspiciously like Manley's revered Massive Passive. Much like the Manley hardware version, the low-band frequencies of NI's Enhanced EQ differ slightly from a real Pultec unit. It appears to be based on the Manley Enhanced Pultec EQP-1A, which itself is Manley's interpretation of the classic original Pultec units built by Pulse Technologies. This 3-band passive EQ design includes low shelf, high bell and high cut, and all frequencies are notched. In case you're not familiar with the hardware these plugins emulate, we should sum up the main features.
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