AudioMedia - July 2008 - (Page 24)

If there’s no room in your rack for a full-sized Tube-Tech, you could try this is virtual version. RICHARD WENTK feels the weight. hen a metal box costs upwards of , for a single stereo instance, there’s a lot to be said for virtuality. The CL B is an official Tube-Tech plug-in, developed in conjunction with TC Electronic – a ProTools version is due soon – so it carries the weight of Tube-Tech’s analogue reputation on its virtual shoulders. As someone who hasn’t spent a huge amount of time in rooms full of analogue racks, I was curious to see if that reputation was justified. W After installation and authorisation, which requires a visit to the TC website to download a license, CL B loads into a PowerCore slot in the usual way. At . kHz, it requires of a single CPU, increasing linearly with sample rate. On a PowerCore X system you can run up to sixteen instances at . kHz, although that won’t leave many cycles for anything else. O ver view controls, ratio, threshold, attack, and release are all critical to the sound, and they need to be set ‘just-so’ before the processing clicks into place and starts to sound right. Part of the secret seems to be that there are shifts in timbre happening at the same time as shifts in dynamics. A solo bass drum illustrates this in a spectacular way – attack and release on their own can change the sound from a toppy click, to a lifeless flap, to a full-bodied gutpunch. Gain can have a similar effect, creating even more drastic changes. Transients are more susceptible to this than pads, but even small changes in dynamics, including synth pads, can be enhanced to create a livelier result. One trick seems to be to push gain and threshold until the sound starts to clip, and then dial them back a little – the best effects seem to be created near the clipping threshold. As there’s no clip indicator this has to be set up by ear. You can of course push the sound further for a crunchy audio fry-up. TC ELECTRONIC TUBE TECH CL1B Virtual Compressor Visually, CL B appears as a typical Photoshop attempt to create a plug-in panel that looks as much like the real thing as possible, complete with bakelite virtual knobs painstakingly rendered so that the highlights stay in place as you turn them. There’s also a virtual VU meter that can be switched to show input, output, and compression. Panel markings are minimal, making drive-by-number engineering unlikely – not usually a bad thing. The ratio knob is marked with : at one extreme, and : at the other, and between those limits you’re on your own. Attack and Release are barely calibrated at all – extremes are marked ‘Fast’ and ‘Slow’, and you’ll need to look in the hardware CL B manual to find that these are . ms to sec, and . sec to sec respectively. At the far left there’s a giant In toggle, that is paralleled by an on/off switch at the far right. It’s not clear what makes In different to on/off, except that it leaves the virtual power neon and the VU meter’s virtual backlight on, which presumably helps brighten up some virtual studios. I t Looks Like The R eal Thing Although Tube-Tech rack boxes are better known in music studios, the CL B has plenty of applications in post, adding body and liveliness to all-digital mixes, and also sweetening and filling-out voice-overs. Tube-Tech products seem to split engineers into solid for and against camps. PowerCore X comes with a trial version, which should give you enough time with it to decide if the CL B is doing something you’ll want more of. At GB +VAT it’s not going to break the bank, and even though multiple instances won’t look as impressive as a wall of blue anodised metal, and there’s no feature for linking multiple instances, as there is in the hardware version, this is still one of the better sounding and more creative virtual compressors on the market at the moment. If it’s not quite a must-buy, it’s certainly a must-listen. ∫ Conclusion THE REVIEWER RICHARD WENTK is the owner of Skydancer Media, a digital production company providing sound, image, design and consultancy services to various clients in London and the West Country. If the panel is minimal, the sound isn’t. Twenty-eight presets are available, and they’re a good starting point for further experimentation. When using a bus comp, the CL B fills out the bottom end and smoothes out the top. The difference isn’t dramatic, perhaps falling closer to ‘production values’ than ‘obvious processing’, but the improvement is easy to hear. On drums, it was easy to add punch and weight, and vocals and guitar were also smoothed and filled out. In short, the CL B does what a compressor is supposed to – it fills out the sound, and brings some of the more subtle detail forward. Filling And Smoothing I N F O R MAT I O N £ POCOX8 GB£949.00 (exc.VAT), Tubetech CL1B £379.00 (exc.VAT) A TC Electronic A/S, Sindalsvej 34, DK-8240 Risskov, Denmark T +45 8742 7000 F +45 8742 7010 W www.tcelectronic.com E info@tcelectronic.com A TC Electronic Inc., 5706 Corsa Avenue, Suite 107, Westlake Village, CA 91362 When set expertly, it makes almost anything sound less literal by giving it various degrees of larger-than-life polish. The catch is that even though there aren’t many An Exper t S etting T +1 818 665 4900 F +1 818 665 4901 E infous@tcelectronic.com 24 AUDIO MEDIA JULY 2008 http://www.tcelectronic.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - July 2008

AudioMedia - July 2008 Contents Recording Post Broadcast What's Up UK Geofocus: France For the Record Special Report: Develop Preview SE Electronics 4400 Sennheiser MKH800 Twin Tubetech Club Final Cut: Wanted Smart AV Tango Doctor Who Made in America DSP Roundup Product Sampler: Summer Hits Edirol R44 Video Guide AMSR Fame - Le Musical Waves MaxxBCL Yamaha AD8HR Special Supplement

AudioMedia - July 2008

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