The team over at Vermont-based plugin developer Soundtoys are clearly feeling the Christmas spirit this year, as they've decided to give away not one, not two, but six free plugins to celebrate the festive season.
As part of their '12 Days of Soundtoys' holiday giveaway, the audio effects specialists are giving away a different free plugin every two days between December 8 and December 19, with each product available to download exclusively at the company's website for only 48 hours.
The giveaway is kicking off today with Little PrimalTap, a vintage-inspired delay that promises to "echo, loop, warp, distort and mangle" your audio. Little PrimalTap is a cut-down version of PrimalTap, a plugin based on the Lexicon Prime Time Model 93, a 12-bit rackmount digital delay released in 1978.
When you think "digital delay", you might think of the clean and transparent sound of modern delay plugins, but classic digital delays from the '70s and '80s were a different beast. Prime Time Model 93 actually produced a characterful lo-fi sound thanks to its unique Multiply control, which allowed for the delay to be copied up to 8 more times than was specified by its other controls.
Back in the '70s, memory was both limited and expensive, so Lexicon was forced to come up with a workaround, halving the sample rate to compensate for the additional processing power required each time the delay length was doubled. This produced a noticeable change in tonality as the Multiply control was cranked up, introducing a deliciously degraded lo-fi sound to the delayed signals.
Little PrimalTap recreates this effect with its Multiply control, which lets you increase the currently selected delay time by a factor of 2, 4, or 8 while reducing its fidelity. This is joined on its interface by a control for delay time and an Adjust knob for precise fine-tuning. Alongside these you have sliders for input gain and feedback, which can be cranked to dial in even more grainy and distorted goodness.
All of this comes together in a sonically distinctive delay plugin that's capable of producing some fantastically wild, gritty and even glitchy effects. In other words, it's definitely worth a free download, as we're sure the remaining five instalments in Soundtoys' holiday giveaway will be. If you're interested, don't delay (see what we did there?) as this one's only available until 04:59 EST on December 10.
“Soundtoys plug-ins are built to inspire,” said Soundtoys' Mitch Thomas. “This giveaway event is our way of saying thank you to the creative community that continues to push the boundaries of sound and keep us inspired. We hope these tools help spark new ideas and make every project a little more fun.”
Soundtoys is also currently running a holiday sale that gives you tiered discounts across its product catalogue depending on how many Soundtoys titles you already own, along with a 50% upgrade offer to the full Soundtoys 5.5 collection.
Head over to the Soundtoys website to download Little PrimalTap.
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