As far back as NAMM 2014, Slate made an announcement that put everyone on the edge of their seat. However, of all the products Steven has released under all manner of banners, Slate Digital’s Virtual Microphone System (VMS) is undoubtedly his greatest calling card to the spotlight so far.Ī collection of vintage microphones and preamplifiers is the dream of most engineers, but there are two barriers to ownership the cost to buy and cost to maintain.
How many slate digital plugins are there pro#
Then there’s the Slate Pro Audio side, which developed a couple of hardware signal processors, before releasing Raven hardware touch screen surfaces and the underlying software tool, Batch Commander, which many have found to be extremely useful. After Steven Slate Drums, he teamed up with Fabrice Gabriel, of Eiosis, to form Slate Digital, and together they announced a string of hardware emulating plug-ins, eventually packaging them up into a monthly subscription bundle that’s continually expanding to include effects alongside its collection of EQs, dynamic processors, console sections and tape machines.
He’s long worked to be in the lime-light, and since declaring Slate Trigger and Steven Slate Drums to be the best drum replacement solution on the market, hasn’t backed down one bit when it comes to flogging the superiority of his products with straight-faced braggadocio. Unlike other musicians who gravitate to a more behind-the-scenes role in engineering, Slate lives vicariously through the ‘wow factor’ of his products - championing them with a combination of salesman-like exuberance and frontman confidence that’s rare in the tech industry. We're still quite disappointed at the lack of internal rack routing options in VMR though, and the inability to use the plugins on their own away from it (or at least to collapse the interface down to show just the modules you're using, for instance).Įven so, we'll park that thought for now, and sum up by saying that this trio of new modules makes an excellent addition to the lineup.Steven Slate has a big, L.A.-sized ego. Put it on the slateĪll three of Slate's new plugins make worthy additions to VMR, offering a fresh take on analogue-style audio processing.
It's a simple concept with a musical sound that we fell in love with instantly, and although it's tempting to 'hype' everything with it, if you just stick to key elements such as vocals, beats, submixes and mixes, it's incredibly effective. The result is upper mid articulation at 5kHz (Present), high air at about 10kHz (Silky), overall low end weight at 90Hz (Big) and peaking lows at 90Hz (Punchy). Each band (High and Low) has just two frequency settings and delivers up to 10dB of boost.
How many slate digital plugins are there series#
Going upĬustom Series Lift is a two-band boost-only sweetening EQ based on the same hardware analysis behind Custom Series EQ. The low-and high-pass filters are very gentle, rolling off at about 6dB per octave.
Boosting with the LMF band delivers an incredibly broad peak that fills out the low mids, while the LF band boasts quite a steep shelf, aiding low-end weight. The behaviour is more typical in cut mode, with broad, predictable dips that are good for taming harshness in cymbals and electric guitars, but not narrow enough to notch out specific problem frequencies. Viewed in a spectrum analyser, it's also clear that while the HF band is a peak filter, HMF combines peak and shelving shapes. The HF and HMF bands are great for adding focused edge and musical air to vocals, snares and acoustic sounds such as guitars and orchestral instruments. The frequencies are at fixed points, rather than sweepable, which is also to be expected given the finely tuned methodology. The crucial thing here is that the boost curves emulate combinations of EQs rather than a single unit, and although this may seem like an odd approach, it actually emulates the way in which many pro mix engineers work.