Abletunes Knobs is a freeware VST/AU plugins bundle released by Abletunes, consisting of a set of three rather effective and easy to use one-knob style mixing tools.
The bundle contains three single knob plugins: Drive Knob (analog style distortion), Space Knob (reverb) and attack knob (transient shaper). All three plugins feature nicely designed GUIs with a single knob and a bypass switch. What I really loved about all three effects is that the CPU use is very low. They use around 1% of available CPU resources each, which is a great result, especially if you’re planning on using them live on an underpowered machine (I’ve been experimenting recently with a live setup based on a tablet running Windows 8).
Single knob plugins are extremely limited in terms of versatility, however some producers love them (myself included) exactly for their simplicity and ease of use. A lot of it depends on the project at hand, though, and a particular single knob effect certainly won’t work well on every mix you try it on. Still, if you do happen to get good results with such a simple tool, the total time saved during a project can be tremendous.
As for the Abletunes Knobs bundle, I really liked the Drive Knob and I’ll definitely put it to good use in some of my future mixes. It provides a juicy, crunchy analog distortion that I really like. The transient shaper effect (Attack Knob) is also decent, but I want to put it through a proper test first and compare it to some of my other transient shapers. The reverb effect (Space Knob) is more than good for quickly adding some space to a few tracks throughout the mix, however reverbs in general are one of those effects for which I really like having access to more control parameters, since tweaking a reverb to perfectly fit your mix is absolutely essential.
I was expecting to see a shopping cart and an obligatory signup procedure on the download page, but was pleasantly surprised to find a simple download button that saves the files to your hard drive, no strings attached. You get a ZIP archive containing two versions of the installer (PC and Mac), along with a user manual and a set of 35 (quite good, btw!) one shot samples that are provided as a taster of various commercial soundware releases by Abletunes. All things considered, this is quite an awesome freebie package that is well worth the download!
Abletunes Knobs are available for free download via Abletunes (36.6 MB download size, ZIP archive containing the installers, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU plugin format for Windows & Mac OS, 35 audio samples in 24-bit WAV format).
Last Updated on June 10, 2016 by Tomislav Zlatic.
