Recording - June 2018 - 32

Thermionic Culture
Of course all the fault was mine, as
I was expecting instant gratification
with no learning curve. Years later,
when Universal Audio released the
Culture Vulture plug-in, I took another
crack at it (starting with their suggested
presets) and took time to learn to drive
this beast.
Setting each channel's Drive dials the
same might not result in the same
signal levels. You need to watch the
meters more than the Bias dial settings,
and the transients, tonality, and input
levels of different source signals will
react quite differently even when the
front-panel settings aren't changed.
While it sounds like I am picking the
Vulture's bones clean, it is actually these
tube-induced nuances that make this box
sing. This is a delicate set-by-ear/feel device. Once you learn its fantastic quirks,
it can warm up a signal with a gentle
tube tone with a mere 0.02% THD...
or it can decimate a sound beyond recognition, something akin to a broken or
circuit-bent device.
This behavior can all be distilled down
to how hard you drive the inputs and
compensate the outputs, which tube
character you choose, and whether you
push or starve the tube with the Bias
control. Every control always affects the
others, all at the same time!
Knowing that tubes are finicky animals, each Anniversary model-and
presumably each regular model-comes
with a test sheet to let you know the best
Bias settings for a literal clean reference
point. From there you can treat the Bias
controls as volume/saturation knobs.
Counterclockwise adjustments push the
tube for more standard tube-style saturation and overdrive, while clockwise
turns starve the tube to introduce more
of a clipping effect than a distortion
(along with lower levels, unpredictable
dropouts, grungy thumps, and more).

In use

The CV20A can add grit, sizzle,
and life to the drum bus, or flatout destroy room mics or snare or
kick. On prerecorded electric guitar
32

RECORDING June 2018

tracks, a gentle dose of overdriven
Culture Vulture can help gel and glue
the guitars together.
I have been doing a fair bit of string
recording lately, and the Culture
Vulture-at low gentle settings with the
lowpass engaged-helps even out the
strident nature of the bow on the strings,
while the gentle harmonic drive keeps
them lively rather than dull.
On vocals, the Culture Vulture 20A is
great for everything from subtle roughing
up to trashed industrial vocals. With
overdrive, starved bias, and the P3
setting pushed, lyrical intelligibility may
vary. Badly.
My favorite home for the CV20A
is on the master bus. Triode setting is
best here, with the output at full and
then moving the Bias counterclockwise
to taste as a thickening de-digital-izer,
especially on in-the-box mixes.
But mixing's not all-this is one heck
of a great DI. Using the direct input on
electric guitars, bass, and Rhodes
piano, it can yield instant tube-console
overdrive and beyond. For distorted
guitars, overdrive plus P2 with a pushed
bias and liberal drive settings equals a
broken-up late-'60s British sound.
On DI bass the CV20A is even more
forgiving and versatile. In Triode mode
there is such a huge throw of sonic
possibilities from clean and solid to
growling and driven, it makes this unit
an easy choice as a permanent studio
bass DI. Unlike many bass overdrive
boxes, you can set it so the punch and
distinction of the bass notes remain with
just the right amount of top-end string
growl. It also makes a nice Rhodes DI
for similar reasons.

The Universal Audio Thermionic Culture Vulture Plug-In

The Universal Audio Culture Vulture plug-in for UAD-2 and Apollo
is an input-to-output painstaking
circuit model of this all-tube behemoth.
The plug-in is modeled on the stock
Culture Vulture, with every switch,
knob, dial, and the all-important
milliammeters represented.

There are also two additional features not found on the hardware. The
first is stereo linking, and the second is
a Mix control for blending and parallel
processing of the dry signal alongside
the effected one. I really wish the hardware offered this feature, as it really
expands the versatility of the unit and
becomes hard to live without!

Vulture in the box

As mentioned above, I learned how to
get the hang of this bird thanks to Universal
Audio's library of presets, which contain
starting points for drums, guitars, bass,
vocals, and the 2-bus. I also found that
recreating these presets on the hardware proved the best way to do side-byside comparisons, including direct bass
tracking with the plug-in printed in real
time on my Apollo Twin MKII. For these
comparisons, I ignored the anniversary
edition features when I could.
Usually the biggest discrepancy
when comparing hardware and plugin models is the variation of input and
output levels, as well as saturation and
ballistic response. Comparing the
Culture Vulture hardware to the plugin is no different, but here it's more the
hardware's fault. Since tubes are temperamental beasts, it can be hard to
match two different Culture Vultures-
even the two channels within one
Vulture will vary a bit. To tackle this,
I fine-tuned each by using some test
tones for input and output, and more
importantly relied on the milliammeters
for bias matching. Even so, I couldn't
compensate for the fact that the plugin, like the original, is transformerless,
while the 20A is transformer-balanced.
Despite the above caveats, I was impressed by how well UA really nailed the
hardware's characteristics. Not only did
UA pull a great-sounding analog triode
warmth from mere computer code, the
developers also captured the extreme
breakup and black-hole sound-sucking
when starving the tubes in the highest
pentode setting. The plug-in even simulates the low-harmonic unpredictable
punchy thump that the hardware has! I

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