Press kit

A free dual-channel VCA compressor, limiter, and gate modeled from bench measurements of a real Alesis 3630 (unofficial).

The ThirtySix is a dual-channel VCA compressor, limiter, and gate modeled on the Alesis 3630, one of the cheap black boxes that filled home-studio racks a generation ago and ended up on a lot of records anyway. It isn’t a clean compressor and isn’t trying to be. The point is the pump, the knee, and the two-stage attack.

Ratio calibration, threshold law, knee, the two-stage attack, release curves, sidechain frequency weighting, and the output noise floor were each measured from a real unit and checked back against it with real program material.

• Two channels: independent, stereo-linked, or Serial (A into B) for two stages in one insert
• RMS or Peak detection, hard or soft knee, full threshold, ratio, attack, release, and output controls
• A downward gate on each channel with its own threshold and rate
• Independent external sidechain inputs for the compressor and the gate
• A modeled output noise floor you can dial in or leave at zero
• Sessions remember the model version they were mixed with, so future updates never change a finished mix

Free chorus, flange, delay, gated reverb, and rotary, measured from a real original Alesis NanoVerb (unofficial) and modeled warts and all.

The NanoFlux is the non-reverb side of the original Alesis NanoVerb (unofficial): five programs measured from a real unit, from sweep rates and delay times to filters, gate lengths, rotor patterns, and the Mix pot’s own curve, then checked by ear against the hardware, side by side, on real material. Like the hardware, each program has one Adjust knob.

• Chorus: true stereo, with the two sides sweeping at different speeds
• Flange: a feedback comb that freezes into a fixed metallic tone at the bottom of the knob
• Delay: up to 1.27 seconds in the unit’s own 10 ms steps, or Tempo Sync with fourteen note values, dotted and triplet included
• Non-Linear: the 1980s gated-reverb snare, from a 145 ms to a 620 ms gate
• Rotary: a two-speed rotating speaker with the hardware’s quick spin-up and slow coast-down

Turning Adjust all the way up unlocks Custom Rate and Depth beyond the front panel’s range.

Pawn Shop mode is the same box after a hard life: crackly pots, a slightly hot right side, drifting sweeps, a tired rotary motor, and delay-time jumps that splat when you move Adjust. It adds a Clock Mod knob modeled on the most popular real NanoVerb circuit bend, which slows the unit’s clock so everything stretches out darker and hissier.

Zero latency, factory presets included.

A free convolution room emulator you play by dragging a microphone around a measured space.

The Room convolves your signal with a bank of measured room impulse responses instead of an algorithmic reverb, and you play it by dragging a microphone around a top-down view of the space. Pre-delay, tone, and level all follow the mic position, the way they do in a real room. The nearest measured response is crossfaded in as the mic moves, and Mic X and Mic Y are automatable, so you can sweep the mic through the room from your DAW.

The measured rooms include a small treated room, a stone great hall, a domed octagon, a classroom, and a shoebox with progressively more reflective surfaces.

A mic selector picks one of twelve microphone models, from vintage broadcast dynamics to modern large-diaphragm condensers, each with its own voicing over the measured room. You can also import your own .mic profile, made with the free Room Mic Capture app.

A free plugin that reduces kick, snare, and tom bleed in your drum overheads, the mirror image of a de-bleed tool.

The Overhead(s) reduces kick, snare, and tom bleed in your overhead mics, giving you more control over the shells in your mix. It’s the mirror image of a de-bleed tool that strips overhead spill from the close mics. Because the cymbals share the same broadband, transient territory, it works on the drum hits themselves rather than with a static EQ cut, and Cymbal Protect keeps the cymbals’ brightness untouched.

• Blind engine: needs no reference. A linear-phase STFT ducks shell-hit energy and tapers back above a tunable Cymbal Protect crossover.
• Reference engine: feed in the kick, snare, and tom close mics, and an adaptive filter learns each spill path and subtracts it.
• Run either engine alone or both in series, with delta monitoring to hear exactly what was removed.

Fixed latency of about 85 ms, reported to the host for delay compensation.