Mixland VIRELIA

Mixland is a boutique plugin developer that’s the brainchild of Grammy Award-winning mixer Jesse Ray Ernster and product designer Eddie Lucciola. In addition to their own plugins, the team has been behind other plugin products, including the popular UnFairchild compressor. Lucciola also partners his coding expertise with Purafied Audio and Kiive Audio, which you might recognize from the characteristic top menu bar on VIRELIA.

The VIRELIA plugin is a combination of a mastering-grade equalizer and a PWM (pulse width modulation) compressor. These were inspired by two cherished vacuum tube units manufactured by D. W. Fearn. The originals are separate hardware units, which Mixland has combined into a single plugin. While the controls and character are inspired by the original, Mixland has added in their own touches.

The user interface layout

The VIRELIA interface features the EQ section at the top and compressor below. However, the processing order can be swapped: DYN->EQ or EQ->DYN. The faceplate is teal instead of the iconic red of the original hardware. Presumably that’s to set its unique nature apart from the original hardware or from any other Fearn emulations on the market. Like many vintage emulations it has its share of faux wear, which in my opinion is unnecessary. The UI features Full and Half scale modes. In Full, you see both sections. In Half, it’s either the EQ or the compressor section and you can toggle between them.

The top menu bar includes presets, global input and output levels, oversampling, and the THD (total harmonic distortion) percentage. The one negative I have with the UI is that there are several small controls for filtering, compression curve, EQ in and out levels, and others that look like tiny adjustment screws. While they react smoothly with the mouse, they are harder to see and really should have been designed to better stand out.

VIRELIA is treated as if it’s two pieces of hardware – what Mixland calls their dual-engine framework. This allows the plugin to have separate THD (distortion/saturation) in the EQ and the compressor sections. The global THD control on the top bar is a combination of the two and ranges from 0% to 200%. At 100% the THD reflects the modeled hardware.

The equalizer section

The EQ section uses a Pultec-style layout with low and high boost and attenuation controls. However, unlike other EQs inspired by that specific design, the boost and attenuation controls can be at the same or different frequencies. The smooth, unstepped controls can also be linked, so that as you adjust boost or attenuation the other linked control changes accordingly. The high end section includes a bandwidth (Q) control for either a broader or a more surgical boost. 

Unlike its hardware inspiration, the EQ’s midrange control offers both boost and attenuation. The original only cuts the mid frequencies. Finally, VIRELIA includes low and high-pass filtering. As an equalizer, the EQ section is designed to shape the sound in broad strokes. It’s there to color your mix, not to perform surgery to fix issues.

The compressor section 

The compressor uses a pulse width modulation (PWM) gain control circuit. The design objective is for ultra-clean, ultra-fast response. According to Mixland, “PWM compression offers transparent dynamics handling with extremely low distortion and a character that can shift from refined to aggressive depending on how it’s driven.”

They’ve included controls for the curve of the compression slope and a blend-able control between FeedForward and Feedback compression modes. FeedForward is considered to sound more modern, while Feedback adds vintage character. There’s also a blend control between Peak and RMS detection. This lets you shape how the compressor’s detection works. The Threshold and compressor Output level controls can be link as a form of gain compensation. In testing the compressor, I found that you can drive it hard without hitting digital distortion – just more drive, grit, and saturation. That stays true to the objective of emulating the character of tubes.

In the mix

Mixland doesn’t specifically market VIRELIA as a channel strip, but it can be used that way. The processor impact is light enough that you can add it to every track. In fact, Jessie Ray Ernster has a YouTube video demonstrating exactly that. The advantage to working that way is you are replicating a console workflow. If you were mixing on a classic SSL or Neve desk, you would be using the same EQ and possibly the same compression on each channel, which adds to the “glue” of the mix. By inserting the same channel strip plugin onto every track in your DAW, you are effectively doing the same thing.

To test this out, I went through my own test mix in Logic Pro, using only the VIRELIA plugin. I applied it to all of the individual tracks, my instrument stems/buses, and the mix bus. Other than reverbs/delays and amp simulations, all EQ and compression went through VIRELIA. That’s just like mixing on a console. This approach is an analog-style of mixing, complete with analog character. With integrated filtering, saturation, EQ, and compression, VIRELIA really does function like a channel strip and delivers great results.

Mixland VIRELIA installs in all of the common plugin formats and is compatible with macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Windows. Activation uses a standard code for licensing, no iLok required. If you want a cult classic with analog mojo, VIRELIA definitely fits the bill.

©2026 Oliver Peters

Restore Old Pics with Photoshop’s AI

There’s plenty to hate about generative artificial intelligence – from internet slop and AI plagiarism to the potential of job loss. However, genAI can also be a useful and effective tool. Adobe has been leaning hard into various forms of AI across its applications. For example. I’ve used Photoshop’s genAI fill to extend the edges of vertical photos to fill a 16:9 frame. I’ve used Premiere Pro’s extend function to lengthen the duration of a background plate. And I routinely use Adobe Podcast to clean up dialogue tracks.

In the latest version of its Firefly AI platform, Adobe has added partner models to the company’s own Firefly models. These additions greatly enhance the functionality of genAI within Photoshop. For example, the Firefly model is great at creating fantasy art, but not very good with photorealism. A very useful impact of this addition of third-party models that hasn’t received a lot of buzz is the restoration of old photos. Forget the slop, like parody images. Instead, take old historical images, family photos, and more and improve the quality. In a single prompt, you can remove scratches and dust, repair creases and tears, remove color casts, enhance colors, and even colorize old black & white stills.

Currently, the Gemini 3 (Nano Banana Pro) model is the best for real-life images. Simply open an image in Photoshop, unlock the layer, and Select All. In the pop-up tool bar, select the Gemini 3 partner model and type in the prompt. I’ve found that simple prompts work well. For example, enter “Repair, restore, and remove color cast” to clean up a black & white photo. If it’s a color photo, add “and enhance color” to the prompt, especially when the photo is faded or discolored. If you want to colorize a black & white image, add “and colorize” to the prompt. (Click any image in this post to see an enlarged view in a separate tab.)

Naturally, when you colorize a black & white photo, the image does tend to take on that typical uncanny, colorized look. Skin is a lot smoother than would be natural. Sometimes Photoshop’s AI gets heavy-handed with saturation and contrast. However, you can easily mitigate that with a few adjustment layers. Nevertheless, when you are talking about photos and occasionally illustrations that are well over a century old in some cases, the trade-off in order to bring the images to life can be worth it.

GenerativeAI uses up credits that are part of your account. The standard Adobe Creative Cloud account includes unlimited standard credits and 4,000 premium credits per month. Generative fill functions are considered standard. Using genAI with partner models to repair and restore images consumes premium credits.

I was using Photoshop to restore old family photos that were originally scanned at a high resolution. For my project, 70-100 photos would chew through the monthly allotment. It’s not cut and dried, though. Image complexity affects the computational time, which is how credits are calculated. You may have to make multiple attempts for the same image, because the results can be unpredictable (more on that below). If you need more credits, then you can upgrade your plan, buy more credits, or simply wait until the next month when new credits are automatically added to your account.

When I say that Gemini 3 is the best for now, here’s an example using the Adobe Firefly model. This is a 35mm slide (original scan on the left) that I took in 1977. It’s taken from the Empire State Building looking towards the tip of Manhattan and showing the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The Firefly render is a total hallucination that has no semblance to the original image whatsoever.

Here’s that photo again using the same prompt with Gemini 3, which is mostly close to the original image. As I said, using genAI often requires multiple attempts to get it right. You can’t prompt it to modify the generated result. You simply have to do it again. It took nine tries before I got to this image, which looked reasonably free of hallucinations. To compare, the header image at the top of this post also used Gemini 3. In that version, AI has made the photo more sunny and added more (non-existent) buildings to the right of the towers.

AI also has no contextual understanding of the real world. It’s simply going from the images used to train it. In all of my AI versions of this NYC skyline shot, the broadcast antenna was added to the North Tower. In reality that was an addition constructed in 1979, two years after I took the photo. I can only presume that most images on the internet of the Word Trade Center towers have been taken after 1979 and, therefore, show this antenna. Hence, that’s what Gemini 3 is using for reference.

Here’s another example of how AI can potentially alter your original image. This is a black & white photo of a German WWII bomber. Look closely and you’ll see that the colorized image added a camouflage paint job to the aircraft and some sort of leather vest to the aviators.

Images are altered in more subtle ways. Typically, sharpness and resolution are lower than in the original source image. Usually it’s not too bad, but it’s definitely not perfect by any means. People are often slightly squeezed or stretched and expressions are mildly altered. If the photo shows a full-length shot of a person, but the feet were cropped, then the AI will often squash the image vertically and generate feet on that person. The AI will hallucinate in other ways, by adding or removing objects randomly, such as adding railings, trees in the background, removing elements within the image, and so on.

Clothing is a real gamble when you are working with a black & white photo. Of course, you probably don’t know what the colors were anyway. Occasionally the AI will change a solid color dress to one with a pattern. Or embellish upon a pattern that was there. All you can do is render a new version (new Photoshop layer) and hope for the best.

Sometimes in a portrait the person might have been directed to look off to the side and not directly into the camera. Yet the AI will opt to “fix” this and change the position of the eyes, as in this example.

In spite of these issues, you often end up with very impressive results. Here’s a photo taken around 1900 of a volunteer lifeboat rescue crew in a small town on the Baltic. The faces in the original image that was scanned aren’t totally clear, so the AI has had to do some guesswork. This version isn’t too bad and is less cartoonish than other passes I made. Just don’t be too exacting about the accuracy of faces with this type of source image. The clearer your starting image, the better.

Likewise, this image came out nice. It’s from the 1960s looking across the Rhine River towards the town of St. Goarshausen (Germany) and Burg Katz (Cat Castle) on the hill. Note the amount of dust that was embedded over time into the 35mm slide, as well as its faded color. Generally, the old Kodachrome stocks (negatives and prints or transparencies) have held up the best over time, especially when stored in darkness. Ektrachrome stocks and other film brands haven’t held up as well.

And then there are results that are quite impressive. This image of my grandmother in her later years in her living room was originally very underexposed. Even my attempts to clean this up in Lightroom were not as good as what the AI was able to achieve. If you work as a colorist, you can assume that eventually this sort of AI processing will touch your work in the future.

In spite of the flaws with genAI images, some of these restorations truly bring life to an image. The colorized photos often look more contemporary and make you realize these people had a real life. For instance, this image of my grandfather along the coast with a shipwreck in the background.

This is a portrait of my grandmother from the 1920s. Formal portraits were a fad of that era, regardless of social class. Of course, since I’ve only ever seen this in black & white, I have no idea whether or not the clothing color is accurate. It also took two passes at this before I felt the skin tones were acceptable. Nevertheless, if you are willing to play around a bit, then using Photoshop’s genAI capabilities can yield very impressive results.

All of my sources started from high-resolution scans. The AI rendering typically took under a minute for each. So we aren’t talking about arduous render times. Since I’m working in Photoshop, the resolution and size is the same as the original image layer. You can also do similar work directly with Gemini, however the image size and credit guidelines will likely be different than working within Photoshop.

©2026 Oliver Peters

Lewitt Space Replicator

I’ve been a fan of Lewitt Audio’s microphones since I first heard them in live use and on recorded tracks. In fact, their myLEWITT mixing contest reinvigorated my interest in mixing music – if only for a hobby. The by-product for me has been a deeper dive into various plugins. So I was especially interested when Lewitt released their first software product, the Space Replicator plugin.

Mixing on headphones is a necessity these days. Maybe you are working in a room with co-workers, just want to avoid disturbing the neighbors, or are a freelance editor or mixer that moves between different studios with diverse monitor systems. A decent pair of headphones provides a consistent monitoring environment. But do your headphone mixes translate to speakers or various client-listening devices and spaces? Headphones are very direct with each channel going into the left and right ear. The stereo channels blend in an actual studio, living room, or car. Your left ear hears some of the right channel and the right ear hears some of the left. Add in room reflections and the result is a spatial mix that we perceive as the stereo image.

Headphone compensation

There are various headphone compensation plugins on the market that all seek to correct inconsistencies in a headphone’s frequency response profile. Lewitt’s Space Replicator is the newest of these and comes in two versions – Essential and Standard. As one would expect, the latter includes more features. The first step is proper headphone correction/compensation. Space Replicator includes over 800 different profiles in both versions. If you are using any of the common studio headphones, odds are there’s a proper profile for it. Simply select the brand and model from the pulldown menu.

Since headphones rarely reproduce a flat response curve, one correction method is to use or create a custom EQ setting based on the Harman curve. In fact, you can create your own preset in a parametric digital EQ to fit your headphone model. This gets you in the ballpark. However, in Lewitt’s case, they are using a more sophisticated method to properly model these headphone profiles instead of simple EQ curves.

The second aspect of Space Replicator is a personal binaural profile, which is part of the Standard version. This is used to determine how you personally perceive wideness in the stereo image. Lewitt creates this by having you listen (on headphones) to a series of music tests on their website and picking your preference in each of 10 tests. This one had me a bit confused, because each test uses the same track. I would have expected a different selection in each test. those are all differently processed files of the same music. According to Lewitt, when I asked about this, “There are subtle differences in the binaural profile (HRTF), and the questions help us to identify the perfect binaural profile. Some may be played more than once, it is a tournament style process to find the ideal one.” At the end it adds a personalized binaural profile to your settings. You can create one or more profiles to choose from or simply use the default.

Virtual spaces

The main section of Space Replicator simulates various virtual environments. The point of virtual spaces is to enable translation checks of your mix in different locations and with different audio monitoring systems. The Standard version features more of these, including five professional mixing/mastering studios, five generic personal spaces (living room, car, etc), two live venues (clubs), and five consumer headphone emulations.

There are various methods by which rooms can be measured and sound profiles created. According to Lewitt, “The perception of sound depends on the room, the speaker system, and the listener. Traditional solutions neglect that the direction of sound waves is a property of the room and the speaker system. Whereas their perception is a property of your head-related transfer function, your individual binaural profile. To solve this, Lewitt invented a process to capture real acoustic spaces and turn them into virtual acoustic spaces with extremely high resolution. They contain the direction of arrival of sound waves over time.”

The Standard version includes some interesting selections. In addition to their own studios and the Vienna Synchron stages, Lewitt also modeled professional mix engineer Wytse Gerichhausen’s White Sea Studio control room with its custom-designed speaker set-up. I follow his YouTube channel, so I was curious as to how the room sounded. While good, I preferred the other studio spaces, particularly Lewitt’s own Studio A (pictured at the top). Another interesting choice is that of a nuclear power plant control room. Other plugins also offer a car space as a virtual environment – the proverbial car test of a mix. Space Replicator expands upon that by giving you various positions within the vehicle, such as driver, passenger, back seat, etc.

Using it in your mix

Space Replicator should always be the last insert on your master bus after any other processing. There’s a setting to automatically bypass it when you render/bounce out your mix. That way you won’t forget to disable it when exporting. When you engage the Safe Headroom feature, the input level drops 12dB to avoid distortion on loud mixes or blasting your ears.

Don’t forget that this plugin applies to video editors, as well. I ran it in Premiere Pro, in addition to Logic Pro, and both applications handled it well. It’s a good way on video projects to make sure that your dialogue cuts through in various listening environments.

You can certainly mix with it engaged when wearing headphones. Depending on the setting you select in Space Replicator, the biggest difference you’ll notice is how mono elements change. For example, a dominant lead vocal or voice-over (usually mono-mic’ed) sounds close and “in your head” when listening on headphones without any compensation or spatial correction. With Space Replicator engaged, those elements take on a more three-dimensional character, as you’d expect from speakers in a room. And, of course, you’ll also pick up the color of that space (and the virtual speakers within it), such as more defined bass frequencies.

Some users might not feel that’s realistic, because you aren’t really working in that physical room with those actual monitors. So, the Standard version also includes a Transparent simulation, which provides a frequency response designed for mixing without a specific spatial simulation. According to Lewitt, “It is the result of an extensive, expert-panel listening study that included audiophiles, musicians, audio engineers, and producers.” You can work in the Transparent simulation and then bounce over to any of the others to see if your mix translates to various environments. Alternatively you can simply disable the virtual spaces section (top right button) and only use the headphone and binaural profiles.

Lewitt has done a nice job with Space Replicator. It’s an easy installation. No iLok is required, but you do have to stay logged into the plugin. However, you don’t have to be constantly connected to the internet to use it. Just a once-a-month connection is fine. The license includes all of the available headphone profiles from Lewitt. One addition I’d love to see is a mix slider to dial in the percentage of the headphone profile that’s being applied. According to Lewitt, modification of the headphone profile is already planned to be implemented in a future update.

I’ll leave you with this tip. When you use any of the various virtual space/headphone compensation products, whether from Lewitt or anyone else, settle on one space as your default mixing room. Ideally that should sound natural and somewhat similar to actual playback systems that you trust. Take the time to learn how those mixes translate best across various real world playback systems. Then use the other virtual spaces in the product to check the compatibility of your mixes going forward. Given how many editors work from home in less-than-optimal editing spaces, a tool like this is worth considering. If headphone mixing is how you like to work, then Lewitt Audio’s Space Replicator is a very useful tool to provide confidence and consistency for your mixes.

©2026 Oliver Peters

FxFactory Studio Tools

The ecosystem surrounding Apple’s Final Cut Pro is arguably larger than for any of the other NLE applications, especially on macOS. Along with various companion applications and utilities from Apple and third-party developers, there’s also a wide selection of effects and design templates specifically made for FCP.

Leading the pack is FxFactory from Noise Industries. Using the FxFactory application, you can purchase, install, and manage effects plugins for not only Final Cut Pro, but also other NLEs and DAWs. However, many of the partner-developers on the FxFactory platform have designed effects that are optimized for FCP and Apple Motion. One of these prolific developers is PremiumVFX. They have designed various product bundles geared around specific styles, based on FCP’s Motion template architecture. This means that most effects can be applied and modified without the need to add or edit keyframes.

Last April I reviewed the Documentary Tools bundle from PremiumVFX. That is a curated set of titles and effects designed to be artistically useful when editing projects with a documentary visual style. Just before the end of 2025 they released their new Studio Tools bundle. It’s a similar approach, but with different effects and graphic styles. The bundle includes 20 animated titles, 8 additional title tools, 10 effects, 10 transitions, and 10 LUTs for color treatments. Most are designed to add an effect to your footage, but some use drop box elements to allow you to layer one image over another. Each animation builds in and out, which can be enabled/disabled as needed.

Studio Tools is meant to be used across a wider range of projects than the Documentary Tools bundle. Title animations include diverse elements, such a current weather graphic, a stacked to-do list, title reveals, time/distance graphs, and more. Naturally, each can be greatly modified, including colors, fonts, sizes, spacing, etc. In some cases, titles are designed to blur the background, which is built into the same effect. No need to build up several effects for this look. That makes it easy to manage, but also consistently repeatable.

Studio Tools provides you with a creative starter pack or just an overall enhancement for your projects. These elements can really add polish. The only thing I’m not wild about in these bundles are the LUTs. My fear is that editors will simply apply a LUT instead of doing proper color correction. These are meant as spice. Maybe you want something bluer or sepia. Simply add the LUT to your existing correction to enhance it. Each LUT effect is more than just a LUT. The effects include controls for sharpness, contrast, grain, a vignette with modifiers, and an overall mix slider.

In December, Noise Industries also announced that FxFactory filters, generators, and transitions are now fully compatible with Resolve and Resolve Studio on the Mac. This requires an update to Resolve 20 or higher (downloaded from the Blackmagic Design website, not the macOS App Store) and FxFactory 9 or higher. So now, many of the great FxFactory tools from development partners like Hawaiki, Sheffield, SugarFx, and others are available in the various Resolve pages.

Before I wrap it up, FxFactory also launched a new free effect by oMotion called Deep Pan. This is a simulated parallax effect that can be applied to stills and video. It works in Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and DaVinci Resolve. Set a few control points and the plugin does the rest. A and B control points determine the displacement and a zoom control for how much zoom. There are more adjustments, but better to check out the tutorial than try to explain it in this blog post.

If you are looking for new tools to keep from getting stale, FxFactory is a great place to start, whether you use Final Cut Pro or one of the other creative editing applications.

©2026 Oliver Peters

Treat Your Mix with EQ

EQ Goodies from Kiive, KIT, Safari, Sonimus

Santa didn’t bring you everything on the list? Or you simply want to treat yourself for the end of the year? Here are some last-minute audio plugin suggestions while the holiday deals last.

Audio enthusiasts talk about the sound of certain consoles – how an API differs from an SSL or from a Neve and so on. In reality, other than harmonics, frequency roll-offs, and the internal electronics (tubes vs solid state), different brands of consoles all sound pretty much the same. The real differences are in the equalization circuits – EQ – that are built into the channel strips. Some change the sound character the minute they are engaged and others add impact only when you start to make adjustments.

Modern plug-in developers try to integrate the sonic qualities of the vintage, analog hardware that they are emulating or are inspired by. So if vintage plugins strike your fancy, then here are five tools that you might want to treat yourself with.

Kiive Audio VX-Q

Kiive Audio offers a range of plugins that often fall outside of the normal developer’s repertoire. One example is Kiive’s partnership with AudioScape Engineering to model some of their unique hardware. The newest Kiive Audio product is the VX-Q EQ. It’s marketed as having the character of a “rare British EQ”, but that’s not an SSL or a Neve. Apparently it’s inspired by Vortexion, a UK manufacturer from the 60s and 70s, primarily known for PA amps, mixers, and open reel tape recorders. The visual appearance of the VX-Q interface follows Kiive’s current design trend that started with their XBus compressor and the KStrip channel strip.

At first glance, the VX-Q looks like a basic 4-band EQ. There’s a high and low shelf with selectable frequency ranges. These can be switched from shelf to bell modes. The two midrange bell controls default to a broad bell with proportional-Q character. These can be switched to a Hi-Q mode to narrow the Q curve.

What really sets the VX-Q apart is the Advanced Control center section. This is a harmonics section to control THD, odd and/or even harmonics, and the type of transformers being emulated for the THD characteristics. There are five transformer settings: D (default/cleanest), 2 (dual stage for thicker THD), K (emulates Kye121 transformers), S (emulates St. Ives transformers), and Z (emulates Trident A-Range circuits). Lastly there’s a Vari control to produce subtle differences between channels, which would be characteristic of actual hardware.

The VX-Q works in stereo or mid/side modes and left/mid and right/side can be linked or unlinked. The top section includes the usual Kiive Audio controls for presets, oversampling, global in/out levels and GUI sizing. The VX-Q provides the sonic sculpting power of a 4-band EQ with comprehensive control over colorful harmonics.

Safari Pedals Falcon Air EQ

The software engineers at Safari Pedals take what has to be the most out-of-the-box design approach of any plugin developer. Most of their effects products look like guitar pedals with animal graphics and names. Don’t let the whimsy fool you. These plugins deliver the quality you need for pro mixes. The latest is the Falcon Air EQ, which is a combination of a high-frequency exciter and a de-esser. While those two functions might sound mutually exclusive, they aren’t.

Falcon Air EQ features a straight-forward interface that’s easily resized simply by dragging the lower right corner. The controls include input/output levels (with Auto-gain), Air Gain, Air Drive, Frequency, and the De-esser Amount. The Air Gain boosts or attenuates audio at the frequency you select. Boosting will enhance those frequencies, effectively brightening the sound or adding “airiness”. Air Drive adds saturation to the highs. The De-esser will smooth harshness in high frequencies. Although it might sound counter-intuitive, the result of boosting the high-end (Air Gain) and then increasing the De-esser Amount yields good results and a smoother sound.

A graph in the top section displays the curve created by the Air Gain control. To the right of the curve, there’s an additional VU read-out to indicate the reduction from the De-esser control. The top bar incudes presets, oversampling, and a blend control to mix between the incoming and the processed signal.

Falcon Air EQ can be inserted on any channel or bus  –  wherever it makes the most sense to apply it. For example, add it to a vocal bus and boost Air Gain to brighten a singer’s delivery. Add it to a drum bus and increase the De-esser Amount to get rid of harshness caused by bright cymbals or the high hat.

For video editors, mixing often involves making sure dialogue and/or voice-overs cut through the mix. Safari Pedals’ Falcon Air EQ could quickly become your “secret weapon”. It’s a great addition to any video editor’s audio toolkit.

KIT Plugins BB N105 EQ

I’ve touched on KIT Plugins’ Blackbird Collection in past reviews. These plugins are modeled after specific vintage gear owned by John McBride at Blackbird Studio in Nashville. They don’t hit the market until they pass muster with McBride. The collection includes three channel strips that emulate channels in his Neve and API consoles. I especially like the BB N73 channel strip, which is based on the Neve 1073 channel strips in one of his consoles.

In this review I’m looking at KIT’s other Neve EQ plugin, the BB N105. This is modeled after the Neve 8078 console in Blackbird Studio A. KIT claims this is the only plugin of its kind, because Blackbird’s 8078 console has been highly modified. I had been using the KIT BB N73 and their API strips, because these include a compressor based on the mix bus compressor in those consoles. The N105 does not integrate a compressor. It’s only the preamp section and EQ. However, that’s not necessarily a negative, because you don’t really need to engage a compressor on each and every track.

The BB N105 features a 4-band EQ along with an Analog Hum circuit. The Hum settings add analog-style electronic hiss. It’s optional and I typically leave that off. There are frequency-selectable high and low shelves. The two midrange controls are frequency-selectable bells. The high shelf can be switched to a peaking filter. Both midrange bells can be switched into a Hi-Q mode for a narrower curve.

The top bar includes presets, Auto-gain, oversampling, and the ability to switch the controls to continuous instead of stepped adjustments. There’s a fader for the output level and you can change the color on the fader knob. The GUI size can be changed by selecting the size in the options menu or by dragging the lower right corner of the plugin’s interface.

If you compare the two KIT Neve emulations, the N73 works in broader strokes, whereas the N105 is more precise. You can get surgical with it if need be. Generally speaking, if you feel like you really need to sculpt the sound, the N105 is the better tool. The impact on your DAW is fairly light, so there’s no penalty in placing either the N73 or the N105 on every track in your session. As with any vintage emulation, you can argue that the stock parametric EQ that comes with your DAW will do just as good of a job. However, these analog-style tools are often faster to use with less experimentation required.

Sonimus StonEQ 4K

Sonimus is one of the only plugin developers that creates console emulations in addition to effects plugins. These impart saturation characteristics (based on the console being emulated), gain staging, and the ability to group the console plugins into a mixing panel. To date, these include A-Console (API style), N-Console (Neve style), Satson (SSL style) and T-Console (UA, tube style). Of course, Sonimus also offers their share of vintage EQ emulations that can be paired with these console plugins, mixed and matched, or simply used independently, like any other audio effect.

Along with Neve, emulations of the channel strips from Solid State Logic (SSL) consoles are some of the most prolific audio plugins on the market. This is particularly true of different variations of the SSL 4000 and later the SSL 9000 consoles.

The Sonimus StonEQ 4K is a plugin inspired by the EQ section of an SSL 4000 channel. It’s a standalone EQ; but, this module is also integrated into the Satson CS – Sonimus’ more complete take on an SSL 4000 channel strip. There are four bands with selectable frequency ranges, plus high and low-pass filters. High and low EQ bands can be switched between shelf and bell modes. This is rounded off with a drive control to increase saturation to taste.

According to Sonimus, the StonEQ 4K has its own character and is not intended to be a faithful emulation of the original SSL EQs. For example, there are so-called Black and Brown versions of the SSL 4000E. If you adjust the Q (i.e. width of the bell) control to a narrower Q (0-49%), then you get something more surgical. At 50% or higher, it sounds more musical. The travel of the knob is actually in the opposite direction of most other Q controls, but to me seems to be more intuitive. The tightest Q value (full counterclockwise on the knob – 0%) yields one of the tighter curves of the various analog-style emulations that I have tested.

Overall, it’s a nice EQ and doesn’t impact system performance. However, it’s also one of Sonimus’ older plugins. There’s no oversampling setting nor any way to resize the GUI. Such features were added later to the Satson CS channel strip. Nevertheless, it’s an effective, high-quality EQ plugin.

Kiive Audio S-Quick Strip

To round things off, there’s the Kiive Audio S-Quick Strip (channel strip). This module comes across as a simplified version of an SSL channel strip. It features a simple 2-band shelf or bell EQ, basic compressor with side chain, transient shaper, saturation and auto-gain. That’s a lot built into a compact package. You can resize the GUI and it includes oversampling; however, the order of processing is fixed.

S-Quick Strip might seem deceptively simple, but it’s a useful tool not only for mixers, but also video editors trying to enhance their audio mixes. The quality is good and it’s quick to dial in settings. Filter and EQ frequencies are fixed as are the compressor’s attack, release, and ratio. To provide feedback, there’s an onscreen graph to show you how your EQ and filter adjustments are impacting the signal.

The Kiive Audio S-Quick Strip a great little channel strip that packs a punch. However, if you’d rather go for a more sophisticated version, then Kiive’s KStrip channel strip would be the plugin to use. This is a combo channel strip inspired by SSL, Neve, and API.

©2025 Oliver Peters