In celebration of their 7th anniversary, Wavesfactory has released SK10, a freeware subkick microphone simulator VST/AU/AAX plugin for PC and Mac.
SK10 looks very interesting on paper, however it seems that the Wavesfactory servers are being absolutely hammered at the moment and I wasn’t able to successfully download the plugin from their website. I’ve added it to my shopping cart a dozen times, completed the checkout process, but it resulted in an error each and every time.
See also: Free Thump2 Sub Bass Generator By Metric HaloWith that in mind, it’s hard to say anything else about the plugin apart from what is already mentioned on the download page. SK10 was designed to emulate the so-called “subkick” microphone inside your DAW. This is the microphone that captures the lowest frequencies when recording an acoustic drum kit. Obviously, the idea is to use SK10 to process acoustic drum tracks, but there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work on other types of audio material as well.
I’m interested to find out what technique is being used “behind the scenes” to generate the boost in the sub bass frequencies. Is it some sort of clever EQ work, or perhaps a sinewave generator that follows the pitch of the kick drum (similar to Metric Halo’s freeware Thump2 plugin)? Perhaps it’s a combination of the two? Either way, we’ll have to wait for Wavesfactory’s servers to come back to their senses before figuring this out for ourselves.
SK10 is (hopefully by the time you’re reading this) available for free download via Wavesfactory (32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU/AAX plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
