Type A
Vintage Enhancer
The Secret Weapon
Type A is a plugin inspired by the famous Dolby® A Trick technique. The original unit was designed to be a noise reduction system for tape recording (encode stage) and playback (decode stage).
Type A emulates the encode stage, which was often misused as an enhancer, dynamically increasing the top end of a signal without introducing artifacts or altering the harmonic content. The results are similar to a dynamic EQ which adds presence and air to any track in a natural way.
Type A is available for MAC, PC, and LINUX (VST, VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP, 64-bit only), and also as AUv3 and Standalone on the App Store.
Additional Features
You can show/hide the drop-down panel by clicking on the arrow icon in the bottom left corner of the interface.
You’ll get access to:
- Volume for each band
- Compressor Attack and Release
- Noise volume
- VU-Meter source selector
How does it work?
To limit the amount of noise generated by tape recording, early noise reduction systems used what’s called a multi-band compander (compressor/expander).
The unit dynamically emphasises the high frequencies during the encoding stage (recording to tape), so that during the decoding stage (playback from tape) the signal is attenuated, along with the typical tape noise.
Type A emulates the encoding stage only.
The input signal is split into 4 bands (with the highest bands overlapping), dynamically compressed and then summed back with the dry signal.
The amount of compression on each band is inversely proportional to the volume of the band. Quieter sounds get brighter while louder sounds remain almost unchanged. This adds brightness and air without generating any new harmonic content or distortion, resulting in a more pleasant and natural enhancer compared to a typical exciter.
Noise reduction or Enhancer?
Introduced in 1966 with the Dolby A301 first, and then in 1970 with the Dolby 361 (with the CAT 22 card, in photos), the A-Type noise reduction was quickly misused and modded by engineers to enhance their recordings by using the encoding stage only. The most common mod consists in disabling the two lower bands so that only the high-frequency portion of the signal is compressed, giving even more air to vocals. This technique was labeled with many names like the Vocal Trick, Stretch Mod, Vocal Stressor, and even the “John Lennon mod”.
Read more about the Dolby Trick.
Type A Demo
Try Type A for free with some limitations: silence for 3 seconds every 45 seconds, saving disabled.
If you like it, you can purchase a license and then authorize the demo version.
macOS
Requires macOS 10.13 or higher
AU, VST2, VST3, AAX, CLAP (64bit only)
Windows
Requires Windows 7 or higher
VST2, VST3, AAX, CLAP (64bit only)
Linux
Requires Ubuntu 20.04 or newer
VST2, VST3, CLAP (64bit only)
Specifications
- Vintage Enhancer
- Multi-band Compressor with 4 Bands
- Adjustable Unit Noise
- Oversample up to 16x
- Multi-language support (beta)
- Resizable Window
- Preset system with randomizer
System Requirements
Windows 7 – 11
2GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM
VST2, VST3, AAX, CLAP (64-bit)
macOS 10.13 – macOS 13
2GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM
VST2, VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP (64-bit)
Universal 2 Binary
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
2GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM
VST2, VST3, CLAP (64-bit)
Copy Protection
To activate your plugin you can choose between Online and Offline authorization.
Create an account, log in through the plugin to activate, or download your license file for offline activation.
Activation
1 license up to 3 computers
No iLok
We don’t like dongles
No Internet
No connection required to activate
Type A is not affiliated with, sponsored, nor endorsed by Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
Changelog
2024/08/08: v1.3.2
- Added: Graphics Controls (Brightness and Contrast)
- Added: macOS 14 Sonoma support
- Improved: Oversampling added to Soft Clip
- Improved: CPU and memory usage
2023/11/19: v1.3.1
- Added: Option to enable/disable the compressors stereo link
- Added: CLAP plugin format
- Added: macOS 12 Monterey support
- Added: Linux VST2, VST3, CLAP plugin formats
- Added: Windows 11 support
- Added: AAX Silicon Support
- Fixed: VU Meter “input” mode behavior
- Fixed: Compatibility with macOS 10.11 and 10.12
2022/02/12: v1.3
- Improved: New Retina/HiDPI GUI
- Improved: GUI size and loading time
- Added: Support for multi-language (beta)
2021/03/16: v1.2.2
- Fixed: Pro Tools crashes when simultaneously loading several instances
- Fixed: Activation not saving the license file correctly on some hosts (Windows)
2021/01/12: v1.2.1
- Added: macOS 11 Big Sur support (Universal 2 Binary)
- Added: Light and Dark UI mode
- Added: Option to enable Accelerated GUI
- Fixed: Logic Pro random crash when loading a saved project
2020/08/06: v1.2
- Added: macOS 10.15 Catalina support
- Added: Parameter Lock
- Added: Edit Value option for Knobs
- Added: Notification System
- Added: Internal support for left-hand mouse users
- Improved: Compressor initialising on host reset
- Fixed: Oversample random crashes
- Fixed: VST3 UI issue on Windows with scaling over 100%
- Fixed: Parameter locks not recalling properly when loading saved projects
2019/01/09: v1.1
- Added: Online Authorization Form
- Improved: Oversampler
- Improved: Noise profile
- Improved: Support for Retina/HiDPI displays
- Improved: Dropdown panel stays open/closed as selected by the user
- Fixed: Wavelab/Cubase random rendering bug
- Fixed: MAC with High Sierra (APFS) presets scrambled
- Fixed: Bypass noise in Pro Tools