Product Reviews

Nomad Factory's Blue Tubes Bundle V3, a Universal Binary release, comprises 13 audio plug-ins intended to deliver to your mixes that intangible virtual-valve voodoo in a suitably vintage-vibe fashion.

The plug-ins share a common interface design - all chunky knobs, push buttons and VU meters - but it's a well-designed retro trip entirely suited to the sonic signature expected of such valve-inspired tools. The familiar look also aids navigation when switching between the plug-ins, which together cover all the old-school EQ, compression, limiting, gating, de-essing and channel stripping needs you could possibly have. Given the 'vintage' nature of their sound and GUI, it should come as no surprise that as well as capturing the essence of more anonymous tube EQ and compression gear, the spirit of certain legendary hardware is more explicitly invoked: Pultec EQs and Fairchild compressors are dutifully referenced here.

Whether a plug-in costing a few hundred pounds can ever perfectly replicate such a gargantuan piece of studio hardware

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as the Fairchild 660 is open to debate, but there should be no doubt that Nomad Factory's take on its musical effect is decidedly pleasing to the ear. Recordings that sounded perfectly acceptable au naturel acquired a distinct and lovely analogue bloom, that kind of inimitable and elusive warmth everyone's been chasing since tape was abandoned.

It's a similar tale with the other plug-ins. The compression, brick-wall limiting and DeEsser and ExpanderGate options manage to be both complementary and alternative choices. The EQ selection is wide-ranging and effective, whether it's the simplicity of the two-knob Baxandall BX2S EQ (just treble and bass) or the more malleable complexity of the five-band PEQ5B EQ. Finally, there's the all-encompassing tube hit of the Analog TrackBox, featuring a little bit of everything (tube, gate, compression and EQ), making for a great tracking channel through which to route any signal.

Knob-state feedback is provided to the right of the Preset window in each plug-in, although such data can't be entered manually. Experimenting with the controls, we appreciated the usable wide sweep of each effect between its low and high extremes. Obviously, if you're not the sort of musician that craves such valve fuzziness, the Blue Tubes Bundle won't be appropriate - for anyone else, though, this is superb. What's more, it comes at a reasonably light CPU cost, too.

Our only quibble is the Presets included vary greatly in quality and quantity from plug-in to plug-in. Such trifling objections aside, however, the Blue Tubes Bundle V3 is seductively easy to love and well worth the asking price.