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Universal Audio new plugin packs 3 legendary bits of analogue gear into a single channel strip.

Universal Audio has announced the release of a new plugin. The LA-6176 Signature Channel Strip brings together emulations of 3 of its most highly regarded pieces of analogue gear in a single plugin: the 610 tube preamp, 1176 FET compressor and LA-2A tube compressor.

UA’s 6176 channel strip is a hardware unit released in 2004 that combined the 610 Modular Amplifier preamp, introduced in the ’60s and used on records from The Beach Boys, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, with the classic 1176LN compressor. The company set out to recreate the 6176 in software for its 20th anniversary, but soon saw the potential to augment it with an LA-2A compressor.

“This is really a ‘what if we just…’ type of plug-in,” says Universal Audio CEO Bill Putnam Jr. “It started out as a 100-percent faithful emulation of our original 6176 Channel Strip in celebration of it’s 20th anniversary. But our team couldn’t help but add in the LA-2A circuitry that we couldn’t actually fit into our 2U channel strip in the physical world.”

UA says the LA-6176 enables you flip with ease between the 1176’s punchier, FET-based style of compression and the LA-2A’s smoother and more gentle sound, all the while benefitting from the 610 preamp’s characterful harmonics and overdrive. The plugin models the contemporary 610-B circuit, which offers more advanced EQ controls than the original.

The LA-6176 is available in both UAD Native and UAD-2 formats, so you won’t need any UA hardware to run it. If you do own an Apollo interface, however, you’ll be able to make use of UA’s Unison modelling technology to model the 610’s unique characteristics right at the input stage, recreating the mic input impedance, gain staging and circuit behaviour of the original hardware through your interface.

The LA-6176 Signature Channel Strip is priced at $299, but is available now for $99 until June 30 as part of UA’s half-yearly sale. Find out more on Universal Audio website.

Behringer has shared this image of a shipping pallet, stacked with boxes of their upcoming Syncussion SY-1 synthesizer, an unofficial copy of the Pearl Syncussion SY-1.

The company didn’t share any comment other than ‘Getting ready…”, but it appears that the Behringer Syncussion Sy-1 is now in production.

The original Syncussion, above, is a 2-channel analog drum synth, designed to be triggered by drum pads and used as part of a drum kit. Behringer’s copy is reformatted to their standard Eurorack form factor, and adds a MIDI input, but otherwise appears to be a close copy of the original.

A demo of an original Pearl Syncussion SY-1 in action, via Sound Provider:

Last week at Superbooth, Korg Berlin showed off a new prototype of its Acoustic Synthesis instrument, a “part melodic synth, part drum machine” that generates sound by electromagnetically stimulating tuned resonating tines.

While Acoustic Synthesis phase_8 is yet to be given a commercial release date, you can now recreate its ethereal, Kalimba-like sound in your DAW thanks to YouTuber David Hilowitz, who recorded the instrument and created a sample library that is available to download for free.

In the video embedded above, Hilowitz describes how he recorded the sound of one of Korg’s five prototypes, each of which is different in design, sampling the instrument’s eight notes and using pitch-shifting to turn this into a chromatic sampler instrument that’s playable using a conventional keyboard.

Hilowitz sampled both of the instrument’s playing modes, Hammer and Pad, and added some extra features and effects not available on the original prototype, such as beat repeat, delay and reverb. The library runs in the free Decent Sampler plugin.

Download David Hilowitz’s Acoustic Synthesis phase_8 sample library.