Viii. c, Onclusion, Making – Slate Digital RC-Tube User Manual
Page 11: Rc-‐tube
11
Slate Digital RC-‐Tube
VIII.
C
ONCLUSION
MAKING
THE
RC-‐TUBE
By Steven Slate
The VCC RC-‐Tube is an emulation modeled after a classic RCA Broadcast Tube Console
i
,
the BC-‐6B. The BC-‐6B was a stereo console with 9 faders and 22 inputs.
It was very challenging to model this console, because first we had to find one that
worked. While I scoured the country trying to find someone with a working model,
Fabrice started to build some algorithms based on the schematic. But in order to truly
recreate the sound of this classic tube console, we'd need to run our specialized test
files through it to thoroughly analyze it.
After a long search that lasted a month, suddenly within one week, I found two people
who owned a BC-‐6B, and one person who had a BC-‐3 which was a similar design with
less inputs and 8 faders. So that was the good news. We were able to have some test
files run through the units. All seemed good. But, then we got the results. As we
somewhat expected, all three consoles had very different responses. This could have
been due to many factors. These consoles are 50 years old, and over time had been
recapped, retubed, and probably modded in some way or another. Therefore, they
didn't
share
the
exact
frequency
response
or
harmonic
structures.
However,
we
were
able
to
build
an
algorithm
that
was
based
on
all
three
units.
From the very first algorithm that I was sent, I knew this would be a special model. First
and foremost, it is by far the most obvious and least subtle desk. Its thick, rich, fat, and
warm, with a smooth and silky top end. Kind of what you'd think a classic tube circuit
would sound like. What was also interesting, is that the tube mixbuss wouldn't hard clip
like a solid state console. In order to hard clip the mixbuss, you'd have to add an extra
24db of gain! So this thing had tons of headroom before it got nasty sounding.
After doing some mixes with the tube model, I was extremely pleased. Although the
desk model was fairly colored, I could still add the emulations to an already mixed song,
and it would somehow just make it better sounding. Even on mixes that already had
another VCC model sounded cool when adding the RC-‐Tube.
Then a week or so later, I was mastering a friend's band that was recorded and mixed
digitally. It lacked a bit of vibe and sounded a tad sterile. Tossing it through some analog
outboard compressors helped, but it still needed some extra character. I tossed the
beta version of the VCC RC-‐Tube mixbuss plugin on the master and gave it a bit of drive.
Suddenly the song got deeper, fatter, and had this amazing analog vibe.