Native Instruments Premiers Premium Tube Series
Native Instruments has premiered a new collection of tube-driven effects. Premium Tube Series is made up of three individual effects – PASSIVE EQ, VARI COMP and ENHANCED EQ – available either individually or as a bundle. Premium Tube Series makes these effects available for the first time as native plug-ins that run individually within a DAW in VST, AU, RTAS or AAX format. The effects are modeled by Softube, the team behind Native Instruments’ Vintage Compressors.
PASSIVE EQ is a fully-parametric, two-channel, four-band equalizer, with additional high and low pass filters plus a wide collection of presets for all use cases. Characterized by its versatile nature and natural sound, it is well suited to a wide range of production duties – from individual tracks to sub groups and even mastering. As with all the effects in the series, running as an individual plug-in in any DAW gives it significant ease-of-use advantages over hardware units, such as built-in parallel processing options, and mid/side mode.
As its name suggests, VARI COMP is a compressor with a flexible range of use cases, from instrument groups to individual tracks. Emulated to possess a clear and warm ‘analog’ sound, VARI COMP limits and compresses. In limit mode, it uses a unique automatic ratio and knee adjustment, altering the compression ratio from 4:1 up to 20:1 automatically in response to the input signal.
ENHANCED EQ is an easy-to-use effect adept at providing tracks with both subtle definition and rich loudness. Modeled from a boutique studio standard, this is the EQ for adding warmth and weight to the low end of individual tracks, thanks to a special curve produced by simultaneously cutting and boosting the low frequencies. ENHANCED EQ works equally well at adding clarity and shine to midrange.
NI’s Premium Tube Series bundle is available at the NI Online Shop for $229 / €199. The individual effects can also be bought separately: PASSIVE EQ $169 / €149, VARI COMP $119 / €99, ENHANCED EQ $79 / €69.
