Plugin colossus Waves’ latest creation offers thermionic vibes and more in a unique dual-flavour audio plugin. With its two large enigmatic controls front-and-centre plus shiny black GUI, we take it for a spin in our first look video.
Analogue Inspirations
Be they real or emulated, the enduring appeal analogue euphonics seems to be the gift that keeps on giving for developer and engineer alike. Whether in the form of tape, transformers, valves (tubes), or even low-rent transistor fizz, engineers seem addicted to the density brought to audio as its peaks are folded over by intent or otherwise.
With early valve-powered studio monsters gradually morphing into solid-state designs around the mid 20th century, the sound of tubes in studio gear is more readily associated with commercial compressors and equalisers made up until around the middle to late 1960s. That said, many of these beloved designs weren’t about to be given up by their many fans just because of technological advances.
When it comes to valve-infused goodness, the engineer isn’t short on choice when it comes to audio plugin emulations of classic comps and EQs, however original software designs offering valve distortion as their sole function are far fewer and further between.
Waves Magma BB Tubes
Despite a striking two-knobs-plus-meter look that tips its hat to one famous valve opto-compressor, Magma BB Tubes is purely a valve colouration plugin with expanded flavours and functions available. Providing two main types of saturation heaven, transformer tone and valve type on the second stage can also be switched to taste by the user. Tonal emphasis/de-emphasis is also provided for.
Sensitivity Can be used to drive the tube engine more or less.
Bass Relief Attenuates the amount of bass fed into the tube engine, with a fixed turnover at 350 Hz.
Transformer Introduces additional subtle harmonic complexity.
Beauty Adds tube saturation (mostly even harmonic).
Beast Adds a distinctive saturation colour to the signal (mostly odd harmonics). Like the Beauty saturator, it can also produce gentle harmonic distortion.
Type A / B Selects the tube type for the Beast section, each type representing a different harmonic structure.
Tone Pre / Post Allows a shelving boost at 10kHz either in front of the tube engine, or after it for subtle (or not so subtle) pre or post emphasis.
Mix For creative wet and dry balancing.
Watch in the video as we deploy Magma BB across a clean mix to impart some valve flavoured glow across tracks and the entire mix. We warm up drums, bass, electric piano, and vocals, before using it to impart some subtle transformer tones with some subtle HF pre-emphasis and de-emphasis for authentic analogue mojo across the entire mix.
Waves On Magma BB Tubes:
Huge-sounding tube saturation which makes any vocal or instrument jump out of the speakers. From delicate to aggressive analog brilliance, BB Tubes makes your mixes sound expensive and brings your music to life. It simply must be heard to be believed.
Beauty is perfect for subtle harmonic saturation, where you just want to make a sound blossom before it breaks up. You’ll hear an instant roundness, fatness and harmonic glow with this knob, and an unmistakably huge low-mid.
Beast gives you that immediate in-your-face boldness, attitude and aggression, all the way to crunch distortion. Even when fully broken up, the sound feels tight and controlled, without collapsing into muddiness. Here you can select between two different tube types.
Beauty cascades into Beast, so you can blend, tune and tweak them for an enormous range of saturation sounds on any part, style or genre you’re working with.
Once you start using BB Tubes on your drums, vocals, guitars, bass, synths, mixbus and absolutely everything, it’s hard to go back. Incredible tones are simple to dial in without overthinking, and parts will simply feel “finished” in the mix far quicker than before. BB Tubes will also give you incredibly LOUD mixes. The soft clipping of the tubes brings down transient peak levels, while dramatically increasing perceived loudness. You’ll get a much louder mix before it starts digital clipping.
An original-design plugin from the Waves MAGMA series.
Magma BB Tubes price will be $149.99, however during Cyber Monday only it can be had for $24.99.