Tube Radios Direct, Revamped

Product Description

This is the classic sound of tube radios, captured with direct electrical connections. And now, I’ve revamped this collection entirely. You can still use the 34 different effects to get some vintage lo-fi tone with filtering and harmonics, but now you can bypass the filtering, leaving only the harmonic saturation. This opens the doors to a huge new range of uses.

You can also now crank them into overdrive, and each one offers a wide variety of distortions you can use as a tool in your mixes! This wasn’t possible in the past, but now you can use these programs to produce loud distortions that can sound great.

The last new major change is that the non-linear dynamics portion of the effects has been separated out into a new batch of programs. These only give you the tube compression as sampled from the radios, but without the tone or distortion. Doing it this way allows the compression to be more accurate than it ever was in the past, allowing instant squishing just like an over-driven tube radio would do. This also allows you to use the various compression knees sampled from the radios, as stand-alone compressors, in any situation where you need compression. I added attack and release controls taken from some of my sampled compressors, to allow for a wider range of results, allowing them to be used as mixing compressors.

This was my first ever release, but now these new updates overcome long existing limitations with Nebula, unlocking new powers, while also making the programs more accurate than ever before. You can check out the manual to see more information about how to use these programs, the variety you can find while using them, and how they were made.

Here are some videos attempting to demonstrate some of what can be done with these programs. The first one is a synthesizer loop with a basic sound design, which allows the distortion to be employed pretty heavy. The new ‘hot’ versions of the programs are shown off here (which you use to get the over-driven style distortion).

Here’s a full mix being processed by the normal programs. I used a full mix because it allows you to hear the characteristics of the lo-fi radio filtering aspect of the effects, which usually filter out some or a lot of the bass and higher frequencies. This aspect can now (with the new Revamped update) be completely bypassed, allowing you to have just the distortion or compression (or both), while keeping your fuller frequency response, but the filtering can be very useful itself!

The same full mix, and again using the normal programs, but this time the feedback control is used to add some feedback in. Check out the interesting results!

This next one is a guitar, and again I’m showing off the ‘hot’ programs. I’m using the distortion to make the guitar chunkier/thicker/fatter, or to bring out certain characteristics, like making it brighter in some cases. I do believe these programs could make a clean monophonic lead guitar (or solo) squeel in some very interesting ways, but I couldn’t find a nice clip like that to use.

Next is a long clip of me just trying out lots of different distortions on a drum loop.

Here I’m using the compression module on a drum loop, showing off some (but not all) of the differently sampled knees, and adjusting the attack/release controls to get some different results. Some of the knees are softer, some are harder, so there’s a nice variety.

Long ago this release was called ‘Tube FM 1’ but has now been completely reprogrammed, remade, and renamed to “Tube Radios Direct, Revamped”. If you own the old version called “Tube FM 1” and want to update to this version, just contact me by email (or use the contact form) to ask about the upgrade.

This library is available in four sample rates (you get all four upon purchasing): 44.1khz, 48khz, 88.2khz, and 96khz.

Max has also done a great skin for this release, which can be used to select all of the different programs by clicking buttons on the skin. This works with both N3 and N4.