A collaboration combining the real-world experience of veteran mix/mastering engineer Sean J Vincent and the DSP development work of Vic Lewis of Fazertone (among the first companies to emulate analogue gear using neural networks), new plug-in developer The/Audio/Firm has announced its arrival with the launch of Furnace, a three-way saturation processor with mid-side processing.
‘It’s been coming for ages,’ says Vincent. ‘About two years ago, I approached a bunch of different plug-in companies with some ideas. I had protracted conversations with a few of them; I started working with one of them for a bit, but we couldn’t really agree on how I wanted this thing to be so I called a halt to it. But I kept my ear to the ground; I was looking for someone I could work with in a much smaller way to just create something exactly as I wanted.
Earlier this year, I met such a developer. Vic Lewis from Fazertone makes fantastic guitar pedal emulations. We had a chat and realised we both wanted to do the same thing. He was very open to my ideas; I was very open to his way of working. We got on straight away, and just got on with it. We have a range of plug-ins coming.’
Furnace makes much use of Fazertone’s DSP developments, delivering the authentic sound of tape, transformers or tube saturation taken directly from real gear and modelled using custom real-time neural networks.
Photorealistic in its presentation, Furnace’s GUI is easy in use – engaging the 456 button replicates analogue tape saturation – captured using a half-inch tape machine running Ampex 456 tape; TFM replicates transformer saturation captured using a pair of 1084 input stages plus a ‘mystery’ transformer on the output; and AX7 replicates valve/tube saturation captured using a pair of 12AX7 long-plate tubes running into a Lundahl transformer stage.
‘We designed the 456 – the tape emulator – so that, no matter what you do with the drive, it’s never going to completely pop off and go nuts; this is designed to sound like tape, not tape being destroyed,’ Vincent says. ‘So if you set the drive, let’s say, at nine o’clock and the mix full up, it’s going to sound very subtly like tape.’
Further controls enable users to shape their sound – the X button adds a small amount of transformer warmth and an EQ curve with a slight side push on the highs, while the Mid-Side (m/s) control focuses the saturation anywhere in the stereo field, and Hi Boost provides a little higher frequency boost when needed.
Furnace has been designed to react exactly like hardware. With the Input control set at its initial position, there will be a subtle effect – gentle warmth and added thickness without making itself overly obvious. Pushing that input into the red, however, and things get dirty, making it perfectly possible to add distortion to guitars, basses and drums. Mix blends whatever effect Furnace has been called upon to deliver with the dry signal.
‘Here’s the thing to bear in mind,’ Vincent says. ‘I designed what this looked like, and I came up with what it was going to do, but I’ve no clue how to code anything, so that’s where Vic comes in, and he’s a very smart guy. So it’s running in real time, doing some incredible stuff – not like anything else I’ve ever heard. It sounds completely analogue.
‘You can tell the tape emulator is really cohesive – it sounds like tape,’ he adds. ‘I think the transformer circuit is probably my favourite; it’s just got that transformer warmth – it sounds like hardware. The tube does that thing, giving depth. This very much like operating hardware, that is the key.’
Furnace is available in AAX, AU and VST3 formats for Mac (OS X 11 or later, Native M1 or Intel from 2014 or later) and PC (Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11, 64-bit, from 2013 or later) with no iLok required.
The/Audio/Firm Furnace plug-in can be bought directly from Fazertone for £45/€50/US$59.99.