Product: Antares Tube DirectX
Price Paid: N/A
Submitted
02/16/2004
at
04:05pm
by
Anonymous
Reviewer Background
:
I've been making music for 5 years, and I've been recording and engineering for 2 and a half years. I am strictly amateur with no previous qualifications in the field of sound engineering, but I am soon beginning a 3 year Bachelor's degree course in Music Technology & Innovation. I play electric guitar and sing, and I dabble in drums and piano. I mostly record my own music, but I have recorded music for friends as well.
I use Antares Tube with Cakewalk SONAR 2.2. Pretty much all the music I record is rock, influenced by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Oasis and Radiohead.
System spec:
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz with Hyper-Threading
512MB RAM
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy
80GB 7,200rpm hard drive
Ease of Use
:
10
You would be asking the impossible if you wanted Antares to make this any easier to use. Choose a tube, choose the drive level. Easy as pie. Wonderful, clear interface.
Sounds/Sound Quality
:
10
There are different tube types - the first is the blue "Little Angel" tube, which is perfect for giving very subtle tube warmth to any track. In parenthesis, the red "Little Devil" tube is crazy, and gives intense tube saturation levels, which sounds great on guitar and drums.
Then there's this feature called "OmniTube". Normally, tube saturation only occurs when the signal goes above the usual threshold of -12db. OmniTube adds a compressor to the signal before adding saturation. This means that the whole signal is saturated, regardless of the signal level.
Overall, the sound is genuinely amazing. After hearing the effect on a solo'd track, I was skeptical at first at how it would improve my mix. But after using it in a full mix, it gave my tracks some much needed life.
Overall Rating
:
10
This is my new favourite plug-in. It's most definitely worth the money.
I just love everything about this plug-in. There has been a marked improvement across all the mixes I've made since I got it. Surprisingly, it's also the most reliable professional plug-in I've found - it requires little to no extra CPU usage.
If you've been looking for a fantastic tube simulator, then this is the one to go for.
