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United Plugins ships SounDevice Digital’s Plamen multi-band saturator as a cutting-edge audio processing tool
Independent development teams federation United Plugins is proud to announce availability of Plamen from founding partner SounDevice Digital — designed to bring unparalleled warmth, richness, and creative possibility to audio productions as a powerful plug-in providing audio engineers, producers, and musicians with an ability to apply targeted saturation across multiple frequency bands, enabling precise tonal shaping, frequency balance, and sonic enhancement — as of August 29…
Sculpting saturation
Sometimes the difference between sounding dull and exciting is simply saturation — not just the amount applied, though, but also its character. Since SounDevice Digital believes that every frequency band deserves different treatment, Plamen was created as a flexible multi-band saturator that can add a different kind of saturation to each band, resulting in a balanced tone — even when working in parallel!
Five-band tonal balance
Because different audio frequency bands can have varying energy levels, applying saturation across the entire spectrum can lead to an imbalanced sound. SounDevice Digital’s Plamen addresses this by allowing users to selectively add warmth and harmonics to five adjustable frequency bands — BAND 1 through to BAND 5 — in different parallel levels, thereby achieving a more balanced and pleasing tonal character. Creatively, it offers a diverse range of five distinct saturation types for each band, allowing users to choose the perfect colour and character to suit their audio. As such, each band can use three classic analogue pre-amp types — namely, BRITISH, AMERICAN, and GERMAN, as well as a simulation of tape saturation (MAGNETIC) or clipping (CLIP), itself a style of saturation (or distortion) characteristic of many beloved types of AD-driven input.
Crossover control
Four flexible crossover points ensure that there is enough control over the frequencies that Plamen users might wish to saturate — so much so that they are effectively free to choose what they consider to be subs, bass, low-mids, high-mids, and treble.
OVERSAMPLING for uncompromising quality
Plamen punches above and beyond the competition with its 2x, 4x, and 8x OVERSAMPLING options that ensure maximum precision and pristine audio quality; after all, oversampling audio allows for elimination of unwanted artefacts and aliasing, leaving nothing but crystal-clear, professional-grade results.
Wowing with TAPE WOW
It is also possible to bring a little more ‘wow factor’ to the production proceedings by adding an overall TAPE WOW effect, representing a relatively slow form of flutter (pitch variation) familiar from vintage tape recorders.
Putting Plamen into its rightful context
Putting Plamen into its rightful context, SounDevice Digital is a Czech software development team; it stands to reason, therefore, that they decided to enrich vocabularies worldwide with a word from their native language. Plamen — pronounced Plah-men — is a Czech expression for ‘flame’… that thing that makes other things warmer. Some say, however, that the plural Plameny might be better suited to a multi-band plug-in!
Play to win with winning presets
Plamen’s presets have been carefully crafted by audio professionals, including two-time Emmy Award-winning composer and producer Lars Deutsch; award-winning producer, sound designer, DJ, and multi-instrumentalist Zardonic (Artist Of The Year, 2016 Unión Rock Show Awards); and GRAMMY Award®-nominated record producer, mixer, programmer, DJ, remixer, and recording artist Carmen Rizzo — the latter on record as saying, “Plamen sets itself apart from other saturation plug-ins out there; United Plugins really did a great job on making a kind of hybrid EQ and saturation/distortion plug-in that really allows you to carve a very unique sound without adding too much dirt.” It is fair to say, then, that Plamen users are in good hands; whether used on vocals and single instrument tracks, or on master tracks, it is an excellent tool for sound designers and producers looking to experiment and create a unique sound. Since it is perfectly possible to apply different saturation characteristics to different frequency bands with different dry/wet ratios, users can create interesting textures, harmonics, and timbres that may not be achievable with traditional saturation techniques.
Key Features:
- Selectively adds warmth and harmonics to five adjustable frequency bands in different parallel levels
- Diverse range of five distinct saturation types for each band allows users to choose the perfect colour and character to suit their audio
- Four flexible crossover points ensure enough control over frequencies being saturated
- 2x, 4x, and 8x OVERSAMPLING options ensure maximum precision and pristine audio quality
- Overall TAPE WOW effect represents relatively slow form of flutter (pitch variation) familiar from vintage tape recorders
- Carefully crafted presets by award-winning audio professionals
SounDevice Digital’s Plamen is available to purchase for a time-limited introductory promo price of only €19.00 EUR until October 10, 2023 — rising thereafter to its regular price of €89.00 EUR — as an AAX-, AU-, VST-, and VST3-compatible plug-in (using internal 64-bit audio processing capable of handling any sample rate) directly from its dedicated webpage (https://unitedplugins.com/Plamen/), where a 15-day, fully-functional trial version for macOS 10.10 and newer and Windows 8/10/11 can also be downloaded for free.
Note that no iLok, dongle, or internet access is required for Plamen activation. (All United Plugins software uses license files for activation and owners can freely use purchased software — with free-for-life updates — on all their computers, as long as they are the user.)
See and hear Plamen in action while watching United Plugins’ illuminating introductory video here: https://youtu.be/df_DVGZK4yQ
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