D16 Group has announced Redoptor 2, a new version of the Vintage Tube Distortion plug-in. The new version comes with several features, sonic improvements and expanding plug-ins compatibility:
- Preamp with built-in compressor.
- Output limiter.
- Fully equipped parametric equalizer with frequency ranges expanded in version 2.
- Tag based preset browser.
- Two alternative GUI sizes.
- MIDI-learn functionality throughout.
- AAX compatibility.
The price will be revealed later. Introductory and upgrade offers will be delivered later on via email to registered Redoptor 1 users. Release date is scheduled for October 10th, 2018.
Here's what D16 Group say:
Redoptor 2 is a high quality Vintage Tube Distortion emulator. The popularity of tube distortion units are as a result of their superiority over the solid-state fuzz distortions which are based on transistor clipper circuits. Tubes produce even and odd harmonics and naturally compress the signal. Transistors produce only odd harmonics and limit the sound.
In ordinary fuzz, when a signal goes over the threshold level it goes through the clipper circuit. As the signal volume falls back below the threshold (as the sound reaches its release stage), the harmonics added by clipping suddenly disappear. If the volume of a signal oscillates above and below the threshold, the clipping harmonics will appear and disappear with the signal level. This sounds unnatural and is unpleasant to listen to.
This does not happen in Redoptor. As the sound source falls in volume in its release phase, the harmonics (which were created by the sound being initially above the clipper threshold), gently disappear with the original sound. This creates a sonicaly pleasing distortion.
Exact circuit emulation
Redoptor has an adjustable tube bias parameter. This allows subtle amplification of even harmonics and gentle transient reshaping in the signal. Similarly, like a hardware tube distortion, Redoptor reacts dynamically to each change in the amplitude of the input signal. As a result, the amplitude of even harmonics is not constant in time. Redoptor has a precisely modeled tube distortion module. The emulation doesn't just focus on the characteristics of the tube part of the circuit - it also models the rest of the circuits co-functioning with the tube within the distortion unit to capture all the subtleties and dynamics of proper high-quality analogue tube distortion.
Adjustable pre-amp
In a typical guitar amplifier, the pre-amp is usually fixed. In Redoptor it is not. Redoptor allows the cut-off point for low and high tones to be set before the signal is amplified.
Parametric EQ
Redoptor has a full parametric equalizer with 4 controllable bands. Most typical amplifiers have a fixed graphical equalizer, with 3 or 4 bands and only allow gain of the signal in each band.
Independent stereo channel processing
Redoptor is a fully functioning stereo tube distortion with an independent path for each channel in the stereo signal. This allows each channel to have completely different harmonics and distortion added to it. Try doing this with synth sounds – the timbre will sound much more defined.
Controllable dynamics
A built-in pre-gain compressor module and master output limiter allow to control distortion process in more efficient way. The preliminary compressor controls your signal's dynamic range before it hits the highly responsive distortion stage. The master output limiter eliminates unwanted output peaks from signal as it leaves the plug-in.
Features:
- Exact tube and tube's coupled circuits emulation.
- Preliminary filters.
- Preamp with built-in compressor.
- Output limiter.
- Fully equipped parametric equalizer.
- 64-bit internal processing.
- Tag based preset browser.
- Two alternative GUI sizes.
- MIDI-learn functionality throughout.