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Softube FET Compressor

Hard on the inside
To date, Softube have been best known for their amp-modelling software Vintage Amp Room, which we reviewed in SOS September 2007 (and on-line at www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov07/articles/vintageamproom.htm). In recent months, the Swedish team have been developing a new compressor plug-in that’s built around “a model of great complexity and accuracy”. Even the meters are modelled from hardware!

Softube claim that the plug-in, simply called FET Compressor, is designed to be “the most accurate emulation of the most famous solid state compressor”, which we take to be the practically omnipresent Urei/Universal Audio 1176. They don’t actually confirm this on their web site, but the ‘all’ setting on the ratio dial and ‘back to front’ attack and release knobs (with the fastest setting fully clockwise) give the game away enough to confirm our suspicions.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is distinctly non-1176-like: the stylish meters and knobs look like they’re from a vintage hi-fi amp, and there are additional controls never found on a factory hardware device. A cluster of four knobs control the compressor’s detector circuit, allowing for high- and low-pass filters to be applied to the side-chain, and an external side-chain to be mixed with the main signal. There’s also a control to apply up to 1ms lookahead to the detector circuit. A separate knob controls the wet/dry mix of the main output, so parallel compression techniques can be implemented without the need for fiddly routing in the host DAW software.

Softube’s FET Compressor is available in Native and TDM versions, the former of which is compatible with VST, Audio Units and RTAS host applications. The TDM version works on all native formats and also runs on Pro Tools TDM and Digidesign Venue systems. Respectively, they cost £239 and £384 including VAT in the UK, and $279 and $449 in the USA, excluding sales tax.

www.softube.se

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