Mellowmuse Vintage Series Bundle Review

Mellowmuse Vintage Bundle
EQ, Compressor and Saturation Software

Tube, valve, transistor, analogue tape, Neve — all of these buzzwords are emulated by Mellowmuse’s Vintage Bundle.

Music producers want software that sounds like the expensive analogue hardware available in high-grade studios, and the Vintage Bundle by Mellowmuse attempts to realise their dreams in a very affordable package. Inside the Vintage Series Bundle are the CP2V compressor, the EQ2V equaliser and the SATV saturator, analogue-modelled software, which, on paper, add up to a solid bunch of dynamics processors.

Graphics

Keep your VU meters clean

The three plug-ins in the Vintage Bundle have continuity in their designs and their dark-blue GUIs are harmonious when loaded together. The detail is strong and the plug-ins genuinely have a texture and temperature about them — they look like they have cold stainless-steel faceplates. The VU meters are the real eye candy, their convex, shiny plastic looks as if you could reach out and touch it. We love the design of the Vintage Series Bundle, it enhances the software in the same way a great cover does for a book.

Ease of Use

The Vintage Series Bundle is emphatically easy to use. The Vintage Compressor has a compression knob and an output knob plus two slow/fast switches for adjusting attack and release times. The Vintage Saturator has a drive and an output knob. The Vintage Equaliser has three boost/cut knobs, an output knob and a filter knob. Aside from the EQ (which requires a basic knowledge of music technology to use) the compressor and saturator could be operated by absolute beginners.

What Does It Do?

The CP2V Vintage Compressor is an automated compressor in that you can only add more or less compression to a signal by turning the knob left and right. The further to the right you turn it the higher the ratio and lower the threshold automatically becomes. The output knob is there to compensate for the gain reduction. The attack and release switches only have two settings each — fast and slow. Mellowmuse states that the CP2V Vintage Compressor…

…captures the smoothness and harmonic richness of analogue circuits.

This claim comes into play upon using the compressor’s output knob; the higher you turn it up the more saturation is added to the compressed signal.

Ironically, music producers often overlook the core functions of super-analogue gear such as compressors and EQs — they just want the gooey crunch that comes from driving a signal through them, and this is what the SATV Vintage Saturation is all about. The Vintage Saturator emulates talked-about types of analogue distortion: tube, transistor, transformer and tape. Using this plug-in is as simple as turning up the drive knob to increase distortion, then attenuating via the output knob.

The EQ2V Vintage Equaliser is a software emulation of one of the most revered hardware equalisers of all time (known as the Neve 1073) that was recently brought back to life by AMS Neve to Rupert Neve’s original specifications. This three-band shelving equaliser with sweepable high-pass filter adds second- and third-order harmonics as you boost the EQs and/or output (adding warmth and colour), plus features an additional SofTran (Transient Softener) button designed to “tame percussive transients” that wasn’t on the original unit.

Vintage Series Bundle in Action

CP2V Vintage Compressor

The Vintage Compressor is similar to the LA-2A emulation by Universal Audio. But unlike the LA-2A, this is a compressor, not a limiter, and it has attack/release controls.

Firstly, the saturation modelling is nice — it’s one of the better analogue emulations we’ve heard and it does share characteristics with the real thing.

The simplicity of this compressor makes it a great tool for vocals when you simply don’t have the energy to sit there for hours working out precise settings analogous to your source material. Sometimes, having full control of a compressor can give creative producers a little too much food for thought, and the forced limitations of the CP2V will encourage them to re-record vocals and get better takes rather than try to make miracles with the ultimate compressor setting.

EQ2V Vintage Equaliser

Those experienced with analogue gear will find themselves reaching for this as a substitute should the real thing not be available. The second and third-order harmonics the emulation adds are certainly audible when you start driving the controls.

We can’t think of another software equaliser with similar character, so if it’s colour and warmth you want, you should have a listen to this baby.

The EQ2V is a fun tool for injecting audio with character and getting it to stick out in the mix. Even with settings nullified it still adds presence to source material. We’re particularly impressed with the high-frequency boosts as these tend not to bring out so much harshness in vocal sibilance when you drive them. This makes the EQ2V particularly sweet when trying to get vocals to stand out without having to multi-band compress or de-ess. Don’t be afraid to use this expressive equaliser on any type of audio though — try using it on drums, for example, to give them some serious punch in the low mids.

The soft saturation switch is a doozy on the EQ2V. It seems to apply an envelope to source material with a slow attack time, intended to make percussion less harsh. But this makes the EQ2V the ideal partner for the CP2V. On the CP2V, processing vocals with a big compression setting (even with slow release and short attack) will leave very small but aggressive transients on stressed syllables. Using the EQ2V SofTran here will further help to eliminate the transients

The EQ2V is a great tool to throw onto unruly elements in the mix to calm them down and add some colour.

SATV Vintage Saturation

Vintage Saturation

Vintage Saturation is the part of the Vintage Bundle that most people will head for right away. We all know how words like “valve”, “vacuum tube”, “transistor” and “analogue tape” make music producers’ mouths water, and as such they are thrown into lazy press releases the world over to woo potential customers. Considering there are very few plug-ins out there offering such a thing in dedicated form, the thought of an all-in-one magic box of distortion is exciting.

The distortions in SATV are reminiscent of their real-life counterparts, especially transistor, but they aren’t a substitute. Pushing the drive to maximum on any of the distortion types won’t create iron-lunged monsters, which shows that this plug-in is not designed for obliteration, rather subtle nuance. We find the tube setting dulls a sound a little more than a real tube would, and that analogue tape creates much more sharper and dynamic result than a Studer. As such we don’t head for the SATV nearly as much as the EQ2V and CP2V — it’s hit and miss.

Criticisms

It’s difficult to criticise the Vintage Series Bundle, because there really is nothing inherently wrong with it. The EQ2V isn’t a surgical tool — it doesn’t have frequency graphs or illustrated EQ curves, but we appreciate that Mellowmuse is simply trying to replicate the 1073 in software form. Also, when we load the EQ2V, for a brief moment the dials are sometimes hollow and look like black circles before the graphics load, but that’s about it.

Final Thoughts

Which distortion will you pick?

The 64-bit Vintage Series Bundle is good value for money. While the CP2V will never take precedence over a traditional compressor with full attack, release, ratio and threshold controls, and the same goes for EQ2V and a parametric 5-band EQ, these two plug-ins should be your trusty back up. When your bread-and-butter dynamics tools aren’t doing the trick and you need a different approach, the Vintage Series Bundle is an excellent place to start.

If you aren’t in the mood to get technical and just want to splurge ideas, the CP2V is just what you need. It enables you to bypass a lot of tweaking and quickly get your source material integrated within a mix. The EQ2V is most useful for its SofTran tool (which really helps to tame vocals) and its high-frequency boosting without sharpness (which is a reliable weapon to have in your sonic armoury).

We lose count of the amount of plug-ins we have on our Hard Drives that we never use. The Vintage Series Bundle we do use, and we use it regularly.

QUALITY: (8.0/10)