New Gear Alert: Kush Novatron is Here, Waves Torque for Drums, EQ Innovation from Eventide & More

Kush announces Novatron has arrived.

Adopting select qualities from various types of analog compressors, Novatron by Kush offers a one-of-a-kind blend of tones not available in any other compressor—be it hardware or software.

Novatron is an analog-modeled compressor that borrows so many sonic properties from so many different classic hardware units that, ironically, it could only exist in the world of DSP.

Novatron has separate input and output transformer Saturations, two optional Tone circuits, and a monstrous Compressor with attack and release controls that continuously morph through the unique qualities of Tube, FET, and VCA topologies, giving you a nearly endless set of colors and styles to play with.

Novatron is available now for $149.

Waves announces Torque drum tone shifter plugin.

Getting drums to sit in a mix has never been easier, thanks to Torque by Waves—a new plugin that offers the ability to re-pitch and alter the tonality of drums.

The Waves Torque plugin is a precision drum tone shifter that will help you salvage mistuned drums, pitch them to a specific key and adjust their tone—without re-triggering or replacing, without the sonic artifacts introduced by traditional pitch shifters, and without losing body, timbre, resonance or attack.

Driven by Waves’ Organic ReSynthesis® technology, Torque detects and analyzes the drums’ formant, amplitude and carrier information, reassembles it, and allows users to manipulate the tonal and pitch characteristics, all while preserving the natural attack, resonance and duration of the original sound.

With intuitive controls and zero latency, Torque is great for the studio as well as for live shows, where FOH engineers can now have the luxury of re-pitching problematic drum tones mid-show or even mid-song.

Check out a video walkthrough of Torque here.

Torque is on sale now for $29 (reg. $69).

Eventide, in partnership with Newfangled Audio, announce EQuivocate plugin.

Eventide and Newfangled Audio have teamed up to deliver an EQ unlike any other—and it’s based on the human ear. Meet EQuivocate.

Newfangled Audio was founded by Eventide’s Sr. DSP Engineer, Dan Gillespie, the designer behind some of Eventide’s most popular plugins, including Blackhole, H3000 Factory and H910.

EQuivocate is a powerful and precise EQ perfect for mixing and mastering. It uses filters which are modeled on the human ear, making any combination of settings sound as natural as possible. Combining this with a linear-phase filter shape that reduces pre-echo makes EQuivocate an EQ with a difference you can hear.

Equivocate is available for free through October 31st, 2017 (reg. $99).

Unfiltered Audio and Plugin Alliance launch SpecOps spectral effects processing plugin.

Apply frequency-dependent gain, compression and distortion with the new SpecOps plugin by Unfiltered Audio, in partnership with Plugin Alliance.

SpecOps allows application of frequency-dependent gain, compression, or distortion to complex sources such as drums or vocals with spectral accuracy and a unique workflow. Putting FFT analysis at its creative heart, the plugin splits audio into hundreds—or even thousands—of frequency slices (or “bins”), which can then be manipulated by a slew of onboard spectral effects.

SpecOps allows you to select from 36 effects—including more usual suspects (such as Filter, Freeze, and Clip) or from more unique-sounding selections (such as Contrast or Decapitate)—to apply on one of three fully-adjustable bands that can zero in on parts of the source’s spectra at extremely high resolutions. This can be used to boost/cut, add distortion, or compress with surgical precision—or even dissect and demolish audio parts to create a totally new sound.

Check out a video walkthrough of SpecOps here.

SpecOps is available exclusively from Plugin Alliance at an introductory promo price of $89 until October 20, 2017 (reg. $129).

Soundcraft debuts the Vi1000 digital mixing console.

Don’t be fooled by the Vi1000’s compact design—it still boasts all of the same mixing and processing power as its larger siblings, the Vi2000 & Vi3000.

The new Vi1000 is the most compact member of the Vi-000 family—at just 34” x 32” in size—yet it retains all the mixing and processing power of its two larger siblings, the Vi2000 and 3000.

The Vi1000 is designed for live touring, music venue and corporate AV applications where a compact and cost-effective, but powerful console is required. Employing Soundcraft’s unique Vistonics II™ channel strip user interface, together with FaderGlow™, the console combines the operating principles and workflows from the highly successful Vi3000, 5000 and 7000 consoles with Soundcraft® SpiderCore™—a powerful built-in DSP and I/O engine based on STUDER technology, offering 40-bit floating point processing. The Vi1000 can also function as an additional remote-control surface for any of the larger consoles in the range, using their Mirroring feature.

In addition to gating and compression on all 96 channel paths, audio processing functionality includes the acclaimed BSS DPR901ii Dynamic EQ and Lexicon multi-effects via an insertable processing pool—plus the ability to insert up to 64 external devices. STUDER vMIX automatic voice mixing is built-in and BSS 966 graphic EQs are available on all output busses.

The Vi1000 comes with rear panel local I/O featuring 16 HQ mic/line inputs, 16 line outputs, and two 64 channel expansion slots that allow up to two MADI-based Stageboxes to be connected, or alternatively the slots provide access to an extensive range of D21m I/O option cards, that address all industry standard audio formats. Four channels of AES/EBU I/O plus USB and MIDI connections complete the back panel. The total I/O count of the console is 212 in x 212 out.

Soundcraft Vi1000 will be available in November; pricing has not yet been disclosed.

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