Black Rooster Audio has introduced the VLA-2A Mark II Vintage Leveling Amplifier plug-in, updating its emulation of an acclaimed late-60s-vintage opto compressor.
The original VLA-2A vintage compressor was used in broadcasting before enterprising engineers took its tubes, multi-stage release and frequency-dependent attack and response into music production. The VLA-2A Mark II Vintage Leveling Amplifier plug-in invites in-the-box engineers to follow, bringing a contemporary view of its features.
Black Rooster Audio’s real-time Spice component-based circuit simulation allows the new plug-in to capture the sound and feel of the original analogue hardware unit with all of its nuances – including its input and output transformers, sidechain and audio path tube stages, emphasis filter network, and the T4A cell – modelled on a vintage reference unit.
The VLA-2A Mark II Vintage Leveling Amplifier advances its predecessor by bringing flexibility-improving features to the table: the Ext SC switch allows users to control the gain reduction of the main signal via the envelope of the external sidechain signal; Emphasis controls the sidechain pre-emphasis; Cell Sel switches between a three different opto-electric cells, each offering different attack and release times; Make Up gain trims the signal output for optimization; and Dry/Wel balances the compressed signal with the original.
All Black Rooster Audio plug-ins support high pixel density on Mac OS X and Windows. DSP operations are pipelined using the SSE2 instruction set to ensure the highest possible performance. Aliasing artefacts are efficiently attenuated using a low-latency linear phase Dolph-Chebyshev Window poly-phase design; oversampling is auto-adjusted to any session’s sample rate to save CPU power.
The VLA-2A Mark II is available for US$129 as 64-bit AAX, AU and VSTcompatible plug-ins for Max OS X (10.9 or later; macOS 11.x not yet supported) and AAX and VST plug-ins for Windows (7 or later).
More: https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/landing/vla-2a-mark-ii
