Prime Studio has introduced Charly, a free (email subscription required) virtual summing amplifier effect available in VST and AU plugin formats for PC and Mac based host applications.
Charly was released on January 1st this year, but it was very quietly announced. I stumbled upon the news about the plugin’s release completely by accident in a Gearslutz forum thread. Charly is still available as a freebie on Prime Studio’s website, so long as you sign up to their mailing list and confirm your subscription (more info below).
The plugin is based on Acustica Audio’s innovative Acqua hardware sampling technology, which is quite a significant step up from capturing static impulse responses. Acqua Engine can be used to reproduce the way in which hardware devices respond to the audio signal at different input volumes, leading to a highly detail emulation of the actual hardware. Unfortunately, there’s no info about which particular device was captured while developing Charly.
In practice, Charly is a very subtle effect, even if you boost the gain of the audio signal on the input so that the plugin’s loudness meter is always in red. Bear in mind, though, that I don’t have any experience with hardware summing amplifiers, so I can’t really compare Charly’s somewhat underwhelming (at least for me) performance to the real thing. What’s slightly confusing for me is that, as far as I know, summing amplifiers are supposed to be able to sum multiple stereo pairs into one, but you can’t do this with Charly since it only has one stereo input. Perhaps the plugin will show its true colors when it’s added to multiple tracks throughout the mix, but I still haven’t tested this theory. Anyways, in case you test the plugin on your computer, please let me know what you think in the comments section below. I’d love to hear your opinion about it!
Speaking of which, here’s how to download your free copy of Charly. First, visit the Prime Studio website linked below and wait for the email subscription popup to appear. Now, submit your email address and confirm your subscription to Prime Studio’s newsletter. After verifying your email, you will receive another message in which you should enter your email address once again in order to finally receive the download link. The downloaded archive contains four different installers, two for Mac and two for PC.
Download
Charly is available for free download via Prime Studio (291 MB download size, ZIP archive containing EXE installer, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
Last Updated on February 10, 2016 by Tomislav Zlatic.
