Audified has announced that their STA Phaser effect for Windows and Mac OS based digital audio workstations is now offered as a free download from their official website.
STA Phaser is part of Audified’s Summing Tube Amplifier (STA) plugin family, meaning that it emulates the non-linear behavior of analog gear. The STA plugin suite consists of five effects in total, however STA Phaser is the only one that can be downloaded and installed free of charge.
The phasing effect produced by STA Phaser is quite subtle and pleasant sounding. You can’t really make it sound bad, although some users might prefer if the plugin could be pushed to generate more aggressive phasing effects. On the other hand, users looking for a warm, vintage style phasing sound will probably love Audified’s latest freebie.
See also: Best FREE Phaser VST/AU Plugins!
Apart from the standard intensity, speed and width controls, the plugin also features a “wet only” button (although it would probably be more useful to have a dry/wet knob instead), a really useful tap tempo button which works great for syncing the phaser in a live performance situation (the plugin can also be synced to the host application’s BPM setting) and a saturation knob. It is also possible to change the color of the GUI which is always a fun option to have.
The tube saturation effect sounds surprisingly nice and there are five different circuit flavors to choose from, all of which are nicely explained in the user manual. It’s worth noting that the saturation effect is extremely subtle unless you really push the gain on the input and you’ll probably need to use a third party tool to achieve this, since the plugin doesn’t have an input gain control. Once you increase the gain on the input, the tube saturation kicks in and the results are quite impressive. STA Phaser’s biggest drawback, though, is the extremely high CPU usage. A single instance of the plugin takes around 15% CPU on an i5 processor and the situation doesn’t improve even if the saturation amount is set to zero. Switching off the tube emulation circuit would probably reduce the CPU hit considerably, so having the option to do this might be useful.
STA Phaser could definitely benefit from a dedicated dry/wet knob, a pair of gain control knobs and some serious CPU usage optimization. Otherwise, it is a very nice sounding phaser effect, especially if you’re looking for that vintage style phasing tone and pleasing tube style saturation.
To register your free copy of STA Phaser, visit the product page linked below and proceed to free checkout. After completing the checkout procedure, you will receive an email containing your serial number. To download the plugin, visit the downloads section of Audified’s website and enter your email address and serial number on the STA Phaser download page. There’s no activation required.
Video Demo
Check out the STA Phaser demo video:
Download
STA Phaser is available for free download via Audified (15.3 MB download size, EXE installer, 32-bit & 64-bit VST2/VST3/AU/AAX plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
Last Updated on September 17, 2015 by Tomislav Zlatic.
