New Gear Review: Kaya Saturation Plugin by Sly-Fi Digital and UBK
When I was presented with the opportunity to review the Kaya from UBK’s new plugin line, Sly-Fi Digital, I decided I wanted to approach it in a different way.
“Kaya” by Sly-Fi Digital and UBK
The timing coincided with starting mixes on a new project, so instead of general descriptions of the plugin I thought I would discuss how they worked (or didn’t) in the context of real work.
The project is the upcoming album Save Yourself from Brooklyn emcee Elucid, and perfectly fits the identity of this bundle: warm, big sounds that embrace saturation, noise and distortion.
The Sly-Fi releases include Deflector, a model of a modified Empirical Labs Distressor, Axis, an API 550 style EQ, and Kaya, a model of a one of a kind-distortion-unit. Since UBK’s intention was never to exactly model the stock units I refrained from any direct sonic comparisons to hardware.
Features and Sound
Of the three, the Kaya plugin is the one that intrigued me the most, as it is roughly based on a one-of-a-kind hardware unit.
According to the Sly-Fi website, “S. Husky Hoskulds made it by taking an old Ampex tube tape deck and hardwiring the preamp directly to the tape head. He calls his unit ‘Pa’, a minimal box with swampy distortion and a very heavy bottom.”
This description turned out to be right on the money, and the sound was too. I used Kaya on a break-beat drum loop and is indeed responsible for much of the heavy low end on Elucid’s Lest They Forget.
Bigger bottom is on the top of his request list for every mix, and this certainly did the trick. Kaya adds a lot of punch right out of the gate, so in this case I didn’t need much of the Breakup knob (it made the snare a little too trashy) but the Abuse dial definitely added a lot of attitude.
As of this writing, UBK has not provided manuals for the Sly-Fi bundle, and at first I did miss one for Kaya. Half the fun of this plugin is just seeing what it’ll do to a signal, but part of me wondered what specifically the “Breakup” and “Abuse” knobs were doing. They added two different flavors of drive, presumably one driving the preamp and the other driving the tape head input. The other part of me decided to just crank them up and see what happens—which I think is really the spirit behind UBK and Sly-Fi’s philosophy.
The “Movement” knob seems to be a release time control, and on the loop for “Lest They Forget”, I definitely wanted plenty of movement. Higher Movement values seem to equal faster release times, and when working with full drum loops I prefer faster releases to maintain or enhance the pumping and energy of the loop.
On the murky and distorted “Obama Incense” I really wanted to match that with the vocals in the intro, so I went to Kaya for this as well. The loops are low-passed here, but I wanted more character than just a filtered vocal as we had to match the grimey, vivid imagery of the lyrics to set the scene of the song. I used the treble knob to roll off some of the top end while going heavy with the Breakup control and was able to add a ton of grit to Elucid’s voice without losing the intelligibility so crucial to the opening of the song.
Other Offerings
In writing this review of Kaya, I couldn’t resist also checking the other two new Sly-Fi plugins.
Deflector, turns out to be quite the flexible dynamics unit. On the clean setting it’ll grab what you want and hold it in place, and the wide ranging attack and release times help you avoid artifacts (unless that’s what you’re going for.)
This plugin also offers saturation emulation and the THD setting “1” is definitely a step beyond subtle distortion, while setting “2” is close to full on fuzz. (The hardware unit this is modeled after was modified to have more aggressive distortion than a stock version of the Empirical Labs Distressor.) Add in the “Push” knob which focuses the compression at either 2 kHz or 6 kHz (these are not subtle and not intended to be) and you’ve got a wide range of sounds.
For Elucid’s latest release I started with Deflector on the vocals, which he wanted full, in your face and always intelligible. This is not club music; his lyrics are dense and the content is crucial to the impact of the song. Deflector was a great choice for this. I recently heard a compressor described as “grabby” and I think that is an accurate description here. I was able to put the vocals right up front where they needed to be, and without compromising the clarity of the high end.
Except where vocals needed to be intentionally distorted, even the first THD setting was too much unless I used the Mix slider. I’ll often add a small bit of distortion to a vocal if I need some aggression, but with Deflector, it is tough to make that bit small enough.
(The exception here was the song Burnt Sugar where the lead vocal is purposely very distorted and we went for it with the THD set on 2. This turned out to be just the trick when combined with setting the sidechain high-pass filter at 250 Hz. The compressor didn’t choke on the lows and the vocal remained intelligible and present.)
The Axis EQ also found a home on vocals from guest rapper Billy Woods, which while decently recorded, needed some help. The saturation dial couple with a significant boost at 100 Hz was just the trick for the lows in his voice, though similar to the Deflector, a little bit of saturation goes a long way.
This is how I prefer my saturation/distortion plugins actually. Subtle is great, but give me enough room to really fuzz something up and trust me to be responsible with it. I wound up using the “B” revision for this vocal, though having the option of the “UBK” setting, which fully variable settings is a great bonus. Stepped controls are great for recalls in the outboard world, but they’ve always struck me as a bit unnecessary in the the box.
Summing it Up
These new plugins from Sly-Fi Digital are not designed for the subtle or the faint of heart. These effects are aggressive, coloured and gorgeous if that’s your thing. Kudos to UBK for stepping out of the lane of 1:1 reproductions and adding some unique ideas and variations on classic sounds.
There is no shortage of distortion plugins on the market, but Kaya is certainly a unique flavor. It’s aggressive, fat, and most importantly—musical.
Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.