Page 31 - The score

A MUCH NEEDED CHANGE

KART PRO VLA 2

Compressor Plug-in

ANALOG GIRL IN A DIGITAL WORLD! level, attack, and re-lease. The light up switches for VU meter
sources and the LED gain reduction meter might seem gim-
While plugins have been getting better in recent times and micky and take away from a vintage hardware unit image but
make you really question the need for hard-ware units, there they do the job pretty well. The compressor can be unlinked to
have also been some affordable hardware units in recent times
in an attempt to make it more accessible to the masses. The ART act as two mono compressors and in stereo mode, the same gain
reduction is ap-plied to both channels.
Pro VLA II compressor is a very good example. It is a Vactrol
based optical compressor. In initial tests, the compressor performed extremely well on
bass - creating a nice tight sound that sat well on the track. It
Why would you want one of these when you have dozens of up-to-date also performed quite well on vocals and had the transparent
emulations in the box? For starters, it's an excellent way for beginner smooth compression characteristics of hardware units, the soft
producers and mix engineers to get into the analog world.
knee really adding to this character.
It sounds quite natural and transparent and shows more character
when pushed quite hard. The warmth comes from the 12AT7 In conclusion, this is an excellent place to start with as far as
hardware compression goes. It could’ve used a mix knob for
vacuum tube used in the clean transformer-less signal path.
some parallel compression options. The transparency, unless
The construction of the unit looks pretty solid. It has a 2U pushed, may be seen as a bit of a downside for someone looking
chassis and two handsome VU meters up front, along with for a very character-rich hardware compressor. But for most
standard looking knobs for threshold, ratio, input level, output applications, it works quite well.

UNIVERSAL AUDIO ARROW

Compressor Plug-in

The 500-600$ range space is fast filling with a lot of interesting buttons for high pass filters, phantom power, pha-se flip, pad
entries in the audio interface depart-ment. We saw the recent and control inputs. The single Thunderbolt cable for power and
release of the Arturia Audiofuse which, at 600$, offered quite connectivity really completes the simple and minimal experience.
an impressive array of features with some extremely clean pre
amps, a ton of inputs and can neatly fit in the front po-cket of Although the interface offers a decent bit at the price range,
the one that will seal the deal for most people is the integration
your laptop bag.
of the UAD software/hardware combo. There are 14 UAD-2
UAD has just released their counterpart and the fact that it’s Plugins included with the unit and is powered by a UAD-2 Solo
bus powered is noteworthy as up until now UA’s most portable core DSP. This allows for tracking and mixing through the
interface, the Apollo Twin, required an external power supply. preamp and guitar amp emulations, which as we’ve seen before,
The UAD Arrow is a thunderbolt interface with two Unison are quite good.
preamps fed by two XLR inputs at the back with high class
24/192 converters. While some may prefer front XLR inputs On paper, the unit sounds like a fantastic buy for the producer
for accessability, the rear ports give it an overall cleaner look. looking for a sleek, elegant and compact interface. The solo core
There is a single 1/4” Hi-Z guitar input and a 1/4” headphone DSP and the consequential limits of the unit to run multiple
plugin instances along with the lack of more inputs may end
jack in the front. We see the familiar multifunction rotary
wheel to adjust the preamp and monitor levels. Again, like the up being the deal breaker for some. But for most intermedia-te
case of the XLR inputs, it puts form over convenience. There are users, it may be exactly what they’ve been looking for.
The Score Magazine 29
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