AudioThing Dials gives you Hainbach’s unique test equipment channel strip from its Berlin sound laboratory as a plugin for your DAW.
Hardware and software developers are increasingly teaming up with personalities from the music tech world for new products. This is nothing new in the guitar world, however, in the synthesizer and electronics domain, it’s still relatively new.
DivKid often works together with Eurorack manufacturers, in the software area it is Hainbach who has worked together with various developers. With AudioThing from Italy, he has already released many fascinating plugins (Noises, Gong Amp…, today it’s time for the next product.
AudioThing Dials
Let’s welcome Dials, the fifth AudioThing plugin in collaboration with YouTuber and experimental musician Hainbach. And if these two people come together, it’s definitely not another “more of the same” plugin. All the recent releases are massively inspired by the artist’s passion for rare and obscure analog equipment from electronic studios of the past.
Dials takes your signal on a journey through test equipment from the 1950s. More precisely, AudioThing modeled a creative combination of 1950s electronic music hardware that Hainbach uses as a channel strip in its studio in Berlin.
The plugin consists of two sections. First, it has a tube preamp and compressor based on a 1950s measurement instrument for broadcasting. These are capable to boost and compress your signals in a single section. Control side, you get preamp gain, volume, and the option to tweak the amount and envelope for the compressor section. The device was originally designed for calibrating radio transmitters and later transformed into a mic preamp by Wojcek Czern says AudioThing.
Then, you can route your signals through a filter section using scientific high and low-pass filters made by Allison Labs. These cannot be compared to classic filters (ladder, Oberheim…) as we know them today. Mainly because the unit was originally created for precise scientific filtering. So no sound precision and the frequency scale only provides a rough orientation.
But that is what makes the charm and the special feature of these filters. According to AudioThing, they sing beautifully instead of being super precise. The lowpass and highpass sections each offer a stepped frequency switch and multiplier knob for the fine-tune. The developers also added resonance to make the filters more flexible and creative.
Finally, it includes a trip section that lets you introduce modulation to the filters and volume. It comes with various waveforms and you can adjust the speed and intensity of the modulation applied to the parameters.
Another super niche but fabulous effects plugin from AudioThing and Hainbach. It’s certainly not a plugin that everyone needs in their arsenal, but one that is very tempting for sound designers. It can color any signal very interestingly with retro 50s sound character. I’m sure you don’t have such a channel strip in your plugin folder.
AudioThing Dials is available now for an introductory price of $49 USD (reg. $79 USD). A demo version is available on the website. It runs as a 64-bit VST, VST3, AU, AAX, and CLAP plugin on macOS (Intel + Apple Silicon) and Windows.
More information here: AudioThing
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