BR108: Analogue Voices from a 1980s British Console, as a Supporter Plugin
BR108 is out. It gives you analogue voices from a 1980s British 24-channel console, measured channel by channel with my own capture process, and it is the first plugin I have made that is not free. It is a supporter plugin: a full seven-day trial for anyone, then activation for people on the Plugged In tier on Patreon or Ko-fi. Download the trial here.
Where the voices come from
Earlier this year I used the same technique I built Box of Bass with to profile a 1980s British 24-channel console at unity: identical pink noise through every channel, captured and compared. Twenty channels came back as unique, viable results. Each one is a VOICE in BR108, with its own measured colour, its own drive character and its own place on the desk. They are named for what they do and sorted into matched pairs: WEIGHT, WARM, BIG, CLEAN, BRIGHT, TIDY, SOFT, LEAN, SMOOTH, and two OUTLIERs for when you want the desk at its strangest.
What is on the strip
- COLOUR is that channel's personality, from flat to four times what was measured.
- DRIVE is the channel's saturation, biased by how dirty it really got.
- WARMTH is the shared desk colour on top.
- The console EQ: LOW, MID and HIGH with switched frequencies, plus HPF and LPF.
- A printed-scale fader and a VU meter per side. On a stereo track you get LEFT and RIGHT strips with LINK and SWAP; on a mono track you get one.
- Thirty-four factory presets, all volume matched, for drums, guitars, keys, vocals, bass and the bus, plus community presets loaded from inside the plugin. Every dial takes a typed value.
Hear it on drums
No talking. Kick, snare and the drum bus, each one bypassed first, then through the desk.
Watch the drums demo on YouTube.
How the trial and the unlock work
Every download is a full seven-day trial: no account, no dongle, nothing held back. After that it goes quiet until you activate it. Activation is by email and nothing else. Click the padlock in the header, type the email you support with, hit SEND CODES, and three activation codes land in that inbox, one per machine. Paste one into ACTIVATE. That machine stays unlocked while your support is active, with a fourteen-day grace period if it cannot reach the server. No clock on the build: updates land on the plugin page and your activation carries over.
The two-minute unlock tutorial is on YouTube.
Formats
AU, VST3 and AAX on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon, notarized), VST3 and AAX on Windows (signed), VST3 on Linux. The plugin asks before it counts anonymous usage, with a clearly labelled opt-out in the SYS panel; details in the privacy policy.
Why this one is not free
Box of Bass, Picking Fingers and Focus are free and will stay free. BR108 is the first plugin that pays for the time it took, and the way it pays is the Plugged In tier: a fiver a month, and every supporter plugin I make lands there first. Here is what supporting actually means, in numbers. You'll hear Box Of Rules plugins on Box Of Rules songs.