Plugin Review: Vertigo Sound VSM-3 from Brainworx & Plugin Alliance
We’re always hearing about the good old days of analog, when all of the non-linearities of tubes, transistors, transformers and tape combined to color recordings in a wonderful way. From the beginning of digital, producers and engineers have been trying to figure out how to get the flavor of analog with the convenience and price of the new technology. But now, many desirable and popular analog devices have made the crossing to the world of the plug-in.
The Vertigo Sound VSM-3 by Brainworx is a plug-in reproduction of the hardware VSM-2, a fascinating, well regarded (and expensive) tool for mixing and mastering. The original hardware VSM-2 was designed to add harmonic distortion, and act as a bit of a “hub” for the mastering studio. The VSM-3, offered by Plugin Alliance, eliminates some of the hub features, but keeps all of the tonal capabilities of the original.
Description
The VSM-3 has six sections for control and monitoring. The input section contains an input level control, a four-segment stereo meter and a global system bypass.
The meat and potatoes are the two harmonic modules, the “2nd Harmonic Fet Crusher” and the “3rd Harmonic Zener Blender”. Aside from the logo marking each section, the controls are identical.
The Vertigo Sound VSM-3 from Brainworx and Plugin Alliance. Click for full-res image.
Each harmonic module offers continuous controls for “drive”, “level”, “shape”, “THD mix” and includes a six-position input filter to select the frequencies to be affected.
Toggle switches let you choose between soft and hard distortion and section bypass. There is also a switch to assign each module to an internal mid-side processor.
The modules feed a mix knob that allows you to set the balance of harmonics. Another switch toggles between running the processors in parallel or series.
A close-up view of the Harmonic Modules on the original VSM-2 hardware unit.
The monitoring section lets you solo the internal mid/side channels, and also solo either of the two harmonic modules. An output section sets the final level of left and right channels, and provides a 16 segment stereo LED meter.
Installation starts with a visit to the Plugin Alliance website. I created an account, and soon saw the VSM-3 show up in my list of purchased plug-ins. From there, I could download the installer. You get an authorization file as part of the registration and installation procedure, and with this method, no dongle is required.
If you prefer, you can install the authorization on a portable USB drive, and move it among machines like a dongle. A total of three authorizations are provided, so you can have the best of both worlds. My system was online during the installation, which made things go pretty smoothly, but there is an offline method available as well.
First Use
To acquaint myself with the VSM-3, I wrote and recorded a simple instrumental piece, taking advantage of the extravagant fuzz-pedal aspect of this plugin, which was the first thing that caught my attention.
I demoed the native version of the plugin in Pro Tools 10HD, and record-arming the track put the plugin into bypass mode. So, I bussed the output of my record track to an aux input, with the VSM-3 instantiated there. I had an atmospheric drum loop already, but I wanted something kind of apocalyptic sounding for my Kala UBass.
There is a lot of flexibility here in the VSM-3. The theory is that 2nd and 3rd harmonics are best generated by tubes, transistors, transformers and tape, but circuit topology is intimately involved as well. Having so many variables means that an emulator would have to cover a lot of ground to become a one-stop shop for all your saturation needs.
The Vertigo’s six-position input filter sets the basic character of the distortion. Though the knobs are identical on the FET and the Zener modules of the VSM-3, the selections sound very different.
On the left side of each module, a “drive” knob goes from very subtle to very distorted. The level control functions post-drive. You can also select between soft and hard distortion—hard being more aggressive and compressed.
The “shape” control is a low pass filter meant to tame high-frequency harmonic artifacts. As you roll it back, the the plugin fills unprocessed frequency high-frequency content back into the mix. To my ear this control could offer lots of improvement, rounding off some of the less musical distortion, but without muffling the tone.
The “THD mix” knob can be used to set the overall balance between the distorted signal and the original, clean signal. And the 3rd Order Zener Blender, as advertised, generated a harsher iteration of the distortion than the FET.
Splitting the processing between the 2nd and 3rd order harmonics is a fairly brilliant idea. In the case of my little apocalyptic bass line, it didn’t take long to find a range of nice options.
The THD Mix knob, which balances the 2nd and 3rd order distortions, provides an additional level of finesse. When I added concert ukulele I tried a more subtle approach, going more for a tape-saturation-vibe.
Things get very interesting here: The input filter lets you quickly zero in on the part of the sound you’d like to modify. It behaves like an additive eq—in that it’s boost only—but the combination of THD mix, drive and level offers a very wide range of control in exactly how much distortion is added. That got me curious to try the VSM-3 for some mastering work.
It’s fun to just dive in and fool around, but at this point I reviewed the brief documentation, both for the VSM-3 and the hardware VSM-2. This is an unusual unit and the manual is essential reading if you need to know what is really going on with the controls.
Mastering
I applied the VSM-3 to a song that I’d just mixed for a Hudson Valley R&B band, Lex Grey and the Urban Pioneers. We’ve got a nice mix but I know it will require mastering, along with the rest of the tracks on the CD.
The snare felt a bit muddy, I was able to dial up a combination of high frequency 2nd order and mid frequency 3rd order distortion that perked things up in LR mode. I started by over-cranking the drive and level a bit and sweeping the filters. I found a frequency with each processor that sounded right, backed off the drive and level to taste.
With the individual THD mix knobs dialed back a lot, and with the shape filter rolled back to ten o’clock I got a nice tape saturation feel. The various controls work together to make it very easy to make adjustments that are on the subtle end. Zeroing in on problem areas without affecting the rest of the mix felt more straightforward with this unit than with an EQ.
I’m not easily drawn into long conversations about subjective descriptions of sound, but a lot of adjectives apply to this one: “Smooth”, “warm” and “silky” are there; you can also get to trashed, mangled and destroyed if you’re looking for something more festive.
The VSM-3’s mid-side implementation is handled internally. If you input a stereo track and select “M/S”, your L/R is converted to M/S before it hits the harmonic modules. The encoding is a sum and difference matrix, which provides access to the decorrelated reverberant space separately from the direct sound in a stereo recording.
The harmonic modules can be assigned to either mid (direct) or side (ambient) field. This is a deep control tool to emphasize elements of a mix that are otherwise difficult or impossible to access. After the processing, the MS is re-matrixed back to stereo, so no additional decoding is necessary.
The monitoring section allows easy soloing of mid or side. It also allows soloing of each harmonic module, providing the ability to quickly check various points in the path make it easy to zoom in to problem areas. Processing the signal in this format offered a lot of creative range in terms of imaging and detail.
Final Thoughts
I can’t speak to how the VSM-3 compares to the original, but in keeping with the intent of the hardware unit, the sound of this plug-in is definitely “hi-fi”. I will keep this on hand for mastering work, and I suspect it will be most useful in that domain. It’s also great for fattening up individual tracks. You can treat it like a big, mean fuzz pedal or just put a little hair on an acoustic track.
At $299 this probably isn’t an impulse buy. If you don’t yet have some sort of saturation/distortion emulator, this could be a very comprehensive option. If you’ve got emulators already, but you suspect they could be better, or if you are looking for something that provides different kinds of controls and tones than you are used to, the Vertigo VSM-3 is certainly worth a listen. The amount of control available is very nice, I can see it finding many uses, in many studios for both mixing and mastering.
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