There’s a ridiculous offer currently running over at VSTBuzz. Up until June 27, you can save a pretty hefty 83 % on the Valves emulation plugin by AudioThing. Valves usually retails at $54, but for a very brief period of time, you can get it for just $9!
Valves is a vintage valve emulation plugin that is designed for adding drive, warmth, and analog character to various mix elements like guitars, synths, drums, and even vocals.
The GUI comprises 4 effects panels that can each be activated or bypassed independently with a simple click of their respective ON/OFF toggle switches.
Valve
The VALVE panel is used to dial in the amount of tube warmth or overdrive to your incoming audio signal.
Triode mode generates a warm, less reactive amplification, while Pentode creates higher amplification ratios and has a more reactive dynamic. You can use the Drive dial to set your desired amplification amount and make tonal adjustments using the Bias and Tone knobs within the panel.
Cabinet
The CABINET section offers a selection of 8 different types of guitar amplifier emulation: Stuffed, Banked, Deluxed, Oranged, United, Blue, 1965, and 1940.
Some of these preset names will be very familiar to experienced guitarists, and the profiles range from subtle slight warmth to sharp grungy overdrive tones. The CABINET window also includes a bass and treble dial for basic EQ tweaks.
Filter
Valves uses a Multi-Mode Resonant filter that is modeled off of vintage ladder filter designs.
You can choose from four different filters, including low pass, high pass, band pass, and notch. Included in the FILTER section are some handy cutoff and resonance dials, and you can also set the FILTER pre or post-Valve with a single switch.
Master
The MASTER section allows you to make your final volume and input/output adjustments.
There are separate level dials for both the input and output channels, as well as a useful soft clipping switch to saturate any audio that exceeds peak levels. The MASTER section comes with a Mix dial at the center that you can use as a Dry/Wet knob for quick mix adjustments.
One of the most useful subfeatures in Valves is a Parameter Lock function. You can use this function to lock specific parameter states while you test out adjustments and tweaks so that you never lose your original processing.
There’s also a Randomizer function that randomly adjusts every parameter on the device in case you want to explore and experiment with different sounds.
Most bedroom producers can’t deny their inherent desire to add some kind of analog warmth to their home recordings. In an ideal world, we’d be able to buy and rely on valve technology just as much as any other piece of studio gear.
The reality is that genuine analog tubes are both fragile and expensive to maintain. With 16x oversampling, Valves might not be able to fully replicate and replace the warmth that a real tube amplification generates, but it will get you pretty close, at a considerable fraction of the cost.
Valves is available in 64-bit VST2, VST3, and AAX formats for users of Windows 7,8, and 10. Mac users can get the plugin in VST2, VST3,AAX, AU(64-bit) formats if they have OS X 10.9 or later
Buy: Valves (83% off until June 27th – Available for just $9)
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Last Updated on June 22, 2023 by Tomislav Zlatic.
