This is the last version of the standard E series eQ. The “242” type is the famous and rare equalizer from the early eighteen classic console. Cleaner and punchier than the Brown, you can crank it up but doesn’t distort. Instead, it saturates nicely while staying steady. With taller bell curves it’s perfect for vocals, acoustics instruments and electric guitars.
I wanted to capture as much of the analog sound as possible, so again, I sampled these filters with dynamics. This is still a very rare thing in the Nebula world. The vast majority of EQ/filter related programs out there are non-dynamic. Having sampled dynamics in the filter programs means that for any position of the filter you select, you are getting a dynamic model of the unit for that position. With most EQ/filter libraries, the EQ/filter programs themselves don’t have dynamics and you have to pair them with a pass-through program without filtering which does have dynamics, but this isn’t quite the same because it doesn’t give you the dynamic behavior of the unit for each position of the EQ/filter. The programs in this set do.
Much time and effort went into making sure that the end results were faithful to the classic sounding hardware, which was sold with several phonograph consoles back in the 1950’s. For the main portion of this library, the EQ, it was sampled in 3 different hardware setups, for 3 different flavors. The ‘bass’ knob mostly acts as an adjustable high pass, and ‘treble’ as a shelf. Together they can also be used to create ’tilt-like’ eq setups (check the freq response graphs in manual to see what’s possible). The filter FX side of the library is a (nice) bonus.
When this set was first released (September 2012) it had the distinction with many Nebula users as being the first Nebula compressor that ‘actually works’. Before this release, Nebula had a reputation with many as not being very good for actual compression, and compressor programs were commonly used just for their tone, in combination with VST plug-ins to do the actual gain reduction. I think it’s more than fair to say that this release helped change all that. The hardware has a great reputation for precision, and being somewhat transparent, while still having its own character. It has lots of controls and features (including an extra high frequency control section, which I sampled for use here), which made it very tricky to sample, but that’s part of what drew me to them. It also has amazing specs as far as noise/distortion goes, and who knows, they may one day be considered a modern classic. Some people seem to think of them as such already.
Slap back delays, repeating echoes, static flange, doubling, short feedback reverbs, distortion; all of this and more is possible with the Tube Delay Station. Delay times range from .2ms to 1.884 seconds, with choices in increments between .2 to 4ms, depending on the time range. The delay itself can be set to any of 63 different sampled tones, each with different frequency response profiles. Many filter the lows and/or highs in various ways, but some are almost perfectly flat, so there’s a lot of variety. There are also 9 sampled distortions you can combine with the main tones, for some subtle thickening, noticeable grit, or complete destruction. When using feedback along with a tone selection that filters the input, the repeating echoes get filtered more and more with each repeat. This can be used to produce evolving sonic textures and washes of sound. The pan control allows panning of the delay, and of course with feedback, each repeat moves further and further away from the center.
These programs are ‘based off of’ a pair of rack mounted, ultra clean and clear compressors, which are essentially remakes of the channel compressors that were found in the famous ‘9k’ desks. These are very transparent compressors, but if they do add any color to the sound it might be a slight slickness to the high end (some character also shows through the attack and release behavior). With several dBs of gain reduction, other compressors can start to sound congested in the mids/bass, but these still sound clear and open. They can also be used to give very snappy attacks to percussive elements. These qualities have translated well to the Nebula realm. Two modules were sampled in a stereo configuration.
THE-D is based on a stereo opto compressor (some call it “Edward”), made famous as it was used for one of the busses by an engineer named Michael, who mixed a lot of famous records. In his multi-buss system, the fourth bus “D” employed this compressor. This compressor is quite rare and not known by many. When I found it in a studio in Berlin, I asked its owner if he would be interested in making a plug-in out of it. He allowed me to capture it and THE-D was born. THE-D features a Preamp and a Compressor program. Our libraries require Nebula3, N4, or N4.5. They do not work with N4 Player or with non-commercial versions of the software.
