UAD-2/Little Labs Voice of God review

UAD's first collaboration with Little Labs provided the 'IBP' Phase Correction plug-in, which emulated the behaviour of the latter's original hardware design.

With the release of V6.1 of UAD's software, the pair combine with a second 'problem-solving' emulation, this time Little Labs' Bass Resonance processor, known as the 'Voice Of God', as a plug-in for the UAD-2 platform.

"While the VOG can be used to roll bass out of situations where too much is present, it's equally adept at adding plenty more bass to mixes that are struggling to provide adequate punch."

Designed to add clarity and depth to bass frequencies on all kinds of track type within your mix, the VOG hardware has proved irresistible to many a mix engineer. So, what exactly does it do?

Almighty address

Broadly speaking, VOG is an EQ tool but with a control set that provides a unique approach to either reducing or enhancing bass content, on either an individual sound or across an entire mix.

First, via buttons towards the bottom of the plug-in interface, you can select the centre frequency for bass adjustment with options of 40, 42, 100 or 200Hz the four options available, depending upon which combination of red (on) or green (off) LEDs are alight to indicate the presence of the twin filters.

This centre frequency is then further adjusted by the Frequency dial above, which enables you to target which bass frequency within a range around your centre frequency will be modified.

The Amplitude setting then provides two controls via one dial, as it simultaneously boosts the volume of content at and above the frequency you've targeted while rolling volume out by up to 24dB per octave from content below this point. If all of that seems to describe a resonant high-pass filter, that's unfair on VOG which, of course, can get down and dirty by boosting volume content on frequencies right down into sub-bass territory.

So, while it can be used to roll bass out of situations where too much is present, it's equally adept at adding plenty more bass to mixes that are struggling to provide adequate punch.

Individual treatments

While you can see how entire mixes might benefit from VOG's unique control set, what might be less obvious is just how broad a range of individual sounds can be enhanced too. It doesn't matter whether you want to bring clarity to a spoken-word voiceover, add richness and 'chest' to a sung vocal part or remove boxiness from an acoustic guitar recording - VOG can do it all.

As its central frequency controls can target such a wide range of areas, any sound that contains bass or mid-range as a component can benefit, so if you want to add richness and resonant sub-bass to kick parts, or reverse this idea by processing a bassline so that it doesn't fight your kick, this is a plug-in you should immediately check out.

Its success lies in its capacity to blend creative decisions with more 'administrative' ones. I suspect it will also find a happy home among engineers who record and process voiceover content, because its capacity to balance a vocal, enrich its natural resonances and even compensate for an under-par recording space is seriously impressive.