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Virtual Microphone System from Slate Digital

Does Steven Slate's new system call time on the mic locker?

Steven Slate's company Slate Digital have enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame over the past few years. This is in no small part due to their great products like the Virtual Tape Machines, Virtual Console Collection and Virtual Bus Compressors but it's also because they like to get people excited about their releases.

Their latest announcement ahead of the Winter NAMM exhibition in Anaheim, California, is their Virtual Microphone System, the second big announcement in three months (the first being the Virtual Mix Rack plug-in). 

So, what do we know about the Virtual Microphone System? Well, it allegedly recreates the colour and character of some of the most beloved classic mics and mic preamps in recording industry.

The system is a hybrid of hardware and software, using a sonically neutral mics and preamp/converter and a physical modeling process to recreate the sound of various mics and preamps. This is achieved by not only modeling the frequency response, but also the harmonics, saturations and any other non-linearities in the mic/preamp combinations.

There are two mics included in the system: the ML1 large-diaphragm condenser and the ML2 small-diaphragm condenser. There's also the VMS two-input mic preamp with A-D converter, the output of which is processed by the VMS plug-ins. The VMS preamp and converter has both AES and S/PDIF digital outputs so it can be connected to most audio interfaces easily, and also sports analogue output if you don't have a digital input on your audio interface.

The VMS software can be used as a plug-in in its own right or can be loaded into the (as yet unreleased) Virtual Mix Rack plug-in.

For audio examples and a talk-though, check out the video from Slate Digital.

http://www.slatedigital.com/vmspreview

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