A MUCH NEEDED CHANGE
KART PRO VLA 2
Compressor Plug-in
ANALOG GIRL IN A DIGITAL WORLD !
While plugins have been getting better in recent times and make you really question the need for hard-ware units , there have also been some affordable hardware units in recent times in an attempt to make it more accessible to the masses . The ART Pro VLA II compressor is a very good example . It is a Vactrol based optical compressor .
Why would you want one of these when you have dozens of up-to-date emulations in the box ? For starters , it ' s an excellent way for beginner producers and mix engineers to get into the analog world .
It sounds quite natural and transparent and shows more character when pushed quite hard . The warmth comes from the 12AT7 vacuum tube used in the clean transformer-less signal path .
The construction of the unit looks pretty solid . It has a 2U chassis and two handsome VU meters up front , along with standard looking knobs for threshold , ratio , input level , output level , attack , and re-lease . The light up switches for VU meter sources and the LED gain reduction meter might seem gimmicky and take away from a vintage hardware unit image but they do the job pretty well . The compressor can be unlinked to act as two mono compressors and in stereo mode , the same gain reduction is ap-plied to both channels .
In initial tests , the compressor performed extremely well on bass - creating a nice tight sound that sat well on the track . It also performed quite well on vocals and had the transparent smooth compression characteristics of hardware units , the soft knee really adding to this character .
In conclusion , this is an excellent place to start with as far as hardware compression goes . It could ’ ve used a mix knob for some parallel compression options . The transparency , unless pushed , may be seen as a bit of a downside for someone looking for a very character-rich hardware compressor . But for most applications , it works quite well .
UNIVERSAL AUDIO ARROW
Compressor Plug-in
The 500-600 $ range space is fast filling with a lot of interesting entries in the audio interface depart-ment . We saw the recent release of the Arturia Audiofuse which , at 600 $, offered quite an impressive array of features with some extremely clean pre amps , a ton of inputs and can neatly fit in the front po-cket of your laptop bag .
UAD has just released their counterpart and the fact that it ’ s bus powered is noteworthy as up until now UA ’ s most portable interface , the Apollo Twin , required an external power supply . The UAD Arrow is a thunderbolt interface with two Unison preamps fed by two XLR inputs at the back with high class 24 / 192 converters . While some may prefer front XLR inputs for accessability , the rear ports give it an overall cleaner look . There is a single 1 / 4 ” Hi-Z guitar input and a 1 / 4 ” headphone jack in the front . We see the familiar multifunction rotary wheel to adjust the preamp and monitor levels . Again , like the case of the XLR inputs , it puts form over convenience . There are buttons for high pass filters , phantom power , pha-se flip , pad and control inputs . The single Thunderbolt cable for power and connectivity really completes the simple and minimal experience .
Although the interface offers a decent bit at the price range , the one that will seal the deal for most people is the integration of the UAD software / hardware combo . There are 14 UAD-2 Plugins included with the unit and is powered by a UAD-2 Solo core DSP . This allows for tracking and mixing through the preamp and guitar amp emulations , which as we ’ ve seen before , are quite good .
On paper , the unit sounds like a fantastic buy for the producer looking for a sleek , elegant and compact interface . The solo core DSP and the consequential limits of the unit to run multiple plugin instances along with the lack of more inputs may end up being the deal breaker for some . But for most intermedia-te users , it may be exactly what they ’ ve been looking for .
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