Short on cash? Looking for a bundle with other plug-ins than the regular EQs and compressors? Nomad Factory claim to make analog sounding plug-ins and here’s a cheap bundle with a couple of interesting effects. Let’s try it out.

Common for all these plug-ins is that they look very good, have big knobs and you can easily see where everything is. All in all, a good GUI. They are also equipped with mix knobs (aside from the ValveDriver that I think could really use one!), which I always enjoy seeing.

ValveDriver ADR-2S

I don’t know why, but my expectations on the ValveDriver wasn’t high even though it was the plug-in I was most eager to try out. Of course every plug-in of this type has to answer to McDSP Analog Channel AC1, so I start by launching ValveDriver on a vocal track, dial up a sound and find myself quite surprised that it doesn’t sound bad at all! Still skeptic, I bypass it, insert McDSP AC1 and thought to myself it will sound much better. Actually, it didn’t. It sounded different.

The ValveDriver is flexible because of the Grungelizer, a switch that let’s you choose between different colors, it’s also much less subtle than most of the competition, in fact, it’s very easy to get it to distort quite heavy and hard to make it subtle. It definitely has a sound of its own and I don’t see AC1 leaving my plug-in folder anytime soon. In fact, I found the ValveDriver more fun to use with some more FX-like distortion sound, like some seriously overdriven vocals and lo-fi guitars. I would almost go as far as saying it’s “hard” to make it subtle sounding, it actually colors the sound notably just passing through the unit with the valve knob turned to zero.

Tempo Delay 3D Model DL3D

I’m always glad to see new delays! And this one is actually pretty interesting. I fire up the tempo delay and is face to face with not one, but three delays. They can either be synced to tempo or you can write it in manually. Unfortunately it’s not possible to change the BPM of the individual delays, only all three at once. It is possible to change the note length of the separate delays, though, as well as assigning it as triplet or dotted notes. The individual delays can also be panned, turned on and off and of course have their levels changed. Besides this there’s also knobs for feedback, HP filter, LP filter and output. I found it specifically good as a slap delay “room creator”, I tend to use these types of room delays on vocals instead of reverbs and the BT Tempo Delay worked just fine for this. This is a plug-in that I feel is also useful for some creative FX, I mean, three delays and panners? Go figure. On the other hand, there are several good delays on the market so the competition is tough.

Vintage Oilcan Echo TLE-2S

Is it my birthday? Two delays in one package?! This is a completely different animal than the above mentioned tempo delay. The first setting you choose is between slap, delay and echo, you can colorize these with a year, 1964, 1977, 1989 and 1995, which I suppose emulates some hip gear. The other parameters you’re able to tweak are sustain, echo-delay and flutter. I was very happy to see that the delay knob worked just like it should, that is with all the weird sounds coming out of it when turning it during playback, just like the Digidesign Reel Tape Delay. One downer is that it isn’t possible to sync the tempo to the session, I sort of understand why since Nomad Factory has included a specific tempo delay in the package, but I would still like to see the option here.

BT Stereo Imager ST-2S

There’s not much to say about this plug-in, it only consists of a mono-stereo slider. And guess what, when dragging it against mono the sound becomes centered, and dragging against stereo widens the sound. Nothing fancy at all. I do think it’s really cool of Nomad Factory to include this in a cheap bundle because the only other wideners I had were actually in really expensive plug-ins.

BT Analog Phaser APH-2S

The phaser includes controls for rate, depth (along with a waveform shape chooser), stage settings, resonance, width, mix and color. I have never been a heavy user of phasers and thus my plug-in collection don’t include many of those to compare against the Blue Tubes one. I try it on a backing vocals submix in one of my sessions, and I actually find presets for this, but I end up not using any of them because I’m looking for something freakier. Anyway it works just fine and I think it’ll stay in the mix. That’s good enough for me. This is of course another creative FX type of plug-in.

BT Dual-Analog Chorus CH-2S

I’m not sure what to make out of choruses. On one hand I like them because I think they’re a cool type of effect, on the other hand I can never find any use for them. It’s not getting easier finding use for them when you realize there are in fact very few around in the RTAS format. With that said, it’s pretty nice to have a new one to try every now and then. As you’d expect from the name, it consists of two choruses, a stereo panner which can be synced and told how to behave with the use of a waveform button, and finally there are two knobs for high and low EQ. As I said, I hardly ever use choruses, I found the mix knob to be of great value in a plug-in like this, it almost eliminates the need for a send sometimes. The mix knob is such a great invention, why doesn’t every plug-in have one?

Conclusion

I like bundles like this. The market is flooded with EQs and compressors so it’s nice to se this type of package for a change. It has a kind of an old school feel to it, both in regards of the effects chosen and how they’re built. I actually came to like the ValveDriver, not that it will retire Analog Channel anytime soon, but it was good on some things. I also enjoyed the delays, not that they will retire Reel Tape Delay anytime soon, but it was two fresh delays to add to the collection. On the other hand, if I’m gonna sit and compare all these plug-ins to the rulers, then I should compare the price tags as well, in which it’s a no contest because the Blue Tubes Effect Pack comes at $289 or $49 if you already own the Blue Tubes Bundle! Nomad Factory unmistakably has “a sound”, it’s up to you to decide if you like it or not. Personally I find them cool sometimes for extreme settings, but my regular plug-ins are staying right where they are.

Nomad Factory

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Edit

I just got this from Nomad Factory:

We just want to let you know that the plug-ins doesn’t have any delays, the plug-ins are showing a wrong delay info on Pro Tools, so this bug has been corrected and a new version will be available in 10 days from our website showing a zero latency delay.

That’s good news. The background is this, I noticed Pro Tools showing between 10 and 32 ms delay caused by these plug-ins and complained about this in the article. As it was a bug in the meter and not actual delay I have edited out the parts in the article about it.