Crane Song’s Phoenix tape emulation plugin has been a popular choice with audio professionals for many years. Since the passing of Crane Song’s Dave Hill the future of this plugin has been uncertain. As it has never been available as a natively compatible plugin on Apple Silicon this plugin has been a reason some people have stayed on Rosetta rather than give up this plugin.
Crane Song have announced a Beta of Phoenix II which is natively Apple Silicon compatible and runs in AU and VST as well as AAX.
About Phoenix II
Designer Dave Hill has crafted this software with the same attention to detail he used to create the electronics for ATR Service's much heralded "Aria" discrete tape recorders. His intimate knowledge of analog electronics, as well as decades of experience as a recording engineer has spawned a very useful, musical suite of plug-ins. The Phoenix II process not only incorporates the nonlinear saturation characteristics created by magnetic tape itself, but also includes the interrelation of an analog tape recorder's record/reproduce electronics and equalization curves. Phoenix II is a ground-up application derived from HEDD technology, and specifically engineered and optimized for Avid's AAX architecture.
Phoenix II has five different tape-analog characteristics, The type is selected with a switch for easy comparison between the types, and the brightness is also selected with a switch. Gold is the position where the color is approximately flat in frequency response, with Sapphire being a brighter, and Opal being a warmer tonality. A level control determines the amount of the Phoenix II process integrated into the audio signal, and an input trim determines "how hard you hit the tape." Because the DSP process is level dependent, the input level trim control has been improved and an output trim control has been added.
The input trim can also be used to prevent clipping in the rare cases where clipping may be a problem and bringing up the level of a track for an increased amount of color. This can be useful on material that is hitting close to or at digital zero and on material that has a low recorded level. When the input trim and output trim controls are at 0dB, (no change in gain) and no tape process is being added to the sound, the plug-in is bit accurate, meaning the output exactly matches the input.
The Phoenix II contains five separate flavours
Luminescent is the most neutral sounding process of the five.
Iridescent has a similar magnetic character, but with a fatter bottom and midrange. (This plug-in is the most similar to the tape knob on HEDD-192.)
Radiant is characterized by a more aggressive compression curve
Dark Essence is even more aggressive. (The effect is a color with a wider frequency range-when used on a vocal Dark Essence can reduce sibilance problems by increasing the apparent loudness of the rest of the signal.)
Luster starts more gently than the other four processes, but becomes as
aggressive as Dark Essence when the process is at full scale.
An upgrade from the TDM version to Phoenix II is $65 US retail.
If it is not the original owner one must buy a full license.
Send Crane Song an email for doing an upgrade, they will need your ilok id
Native Apple Silicon Support, AU and VST3 formats in addition to AAX!
No AAX DSP Support in this Beta. If needed, please download an older version from here.