Vox Samples has released Aurora, a free air enhancer plugin that easily adds pristine high-end to your mix!
When it comes to recorded audio, Air has an almost mythical quality. I’ve lost count of how many EQs, saturators, and so forth will get you that magical sheen on a vocal line.
I appreciate that Vox Samples’ latest release, Aurora, doesn’t really hide what it’s doing behind marketing jargon. So, with the engine primed, let’s explore Aurora a bit more.
Aurora is a simple plugin at its core; you’ve got three rotary knobs with clearly defined purposes. Freq allows you to single out the frequency you want to boost, pretty on the nose if I do say so.
Air is where the actual boosting goes, allowing for a fairly large lift on higher frequencies. This is rounded out with gain, intended to help you gain stage Aurora into other plugins or just for the final metering.
However, gain does allow you to impart additional harmonics thanks to being tied to a saturation module under the hood.
Now, I won’t lie. You could probably do a chain with these functions on your own with stuff just in your DAW. A high shelf with a little saturation goes a long way, after all.
However, what Aurora does afford the time-crunched producer is a sense of immediacy.
I love my collection of EQ and saturation plugins, but building a custom chain of plugins to get relatively simple results can be tedious. Aurora is quick and immediate, which I greatly appreciate.
If there was one drawback I’d assign to Aurora, it is the lack of a cute character on the GUI itself. A minor nitpick, but I’ve had my expectations placed in the sky after previous releases from the developer.
That said, the plugin itself works well. I was able to get the presence out of vocal lines and also help things like lead guitars and synths pop out of a mix.
The additional harmonics are greatly appreciated and make for a far cheaper alternative to purpose-built saturators like Saturn or Spectre, provided you’re sticking to the upper limits of the frequency range.
Aurora is free from Vox Samples, you’ll need a Windows or Mac computer to make the best of it, however. Supported plugin formats are VST3 and AU.
Download: Aurora (FREE)
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