Avid Add Plate Reverb Impulse Responses For Pro Tools - Total Loyalty Rewards Now Worth Over $1600
We recently published an article listing $1400 worth of loyalty rewards that Avid is offering all their customers with a valid Pro Tools software upgrade plan or active subscription. Back in May 2019, they announced another loyalty reward in partnership with Groove3 worth $120 and now they are offering another loyalty reward worth over $100 in conjunction with Wave Arts and Impulse Record, which is a free library of plate reverb impulses to go with the free Convology XT convolution reverb plug-in that we recently featured as a Friday Free Plug-in.
What Is Convology XT?
Convology XT is a free convolution reverb, the result of a collaboration between Wave Arts and Impulse Record. Convology XT comes with 70 vintage impulse responses, a sampling of the 2,965 impulse responses in the Convology XT Libraries. You can buy additional impulse responses to extend the library in Convology XT. In this loyalty reward Avid is giving away one of these additional libraries - Plates.
What Is In The Plates Impulse Response Library?
There are 17 different Plates across 185 Files. These plates have been sampled in 7 Different Countries including: Australia, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and USA.
In addition there are 8 German 140s that include Mono, Mono Tube, Valve, Transistor and ST models.
Many pieces of gear listed have been used on major recording artists, albums and Grammy productions.
Here is a full list of the plates sampled for this library…
Aud (Audicon “The Plate II”) Memphis, TN
Brick – Chicago, IL
EPlate I (ECOPLATETM – trademark of Studio Technologies, Inc) Chicago, IL
Eplate II – Appleton, WI
Eplate III – Sweden
German 140 Mono – Nashville, TN
German 140 Mono Tube – Nashville, TN
German 140 Valve – Slovenia
German 140 ST – Cleveland, OH
German 140 ST – Australia
German 140 ST – Portland, OR
German 140 T – Los Angeles, CA
German 140 T – Finland
German 240 (Gold Foil) Los Angeles, CA
German 240 (Gold Foil) San Francisco, CA
Lawson – Nashville, TN
Stock (Stocktronics) Finland.
In case some of the titles are not known to you or a little cryptic then here is some more background…
Aud - (Audicon) – middle of the road – somewhat bright, similar in overall size to their West German plate competition, with a steel plate thickness a little under the 1/64 of an inch used by the Germans, yielding a brighter sound.
Brick – some variations with models, but the 4’ X 4’ plate was typical. For being half the size of the 140, sounds quite good. The Brick is not as warm, but is very useful when wanting a rich plate sound and to bring out a particular sound such as a snare.
Eplates - (ECOPLATESTM trademark of Studio Technologies, Inc) – tend to be brighter and a little more metallic sounding. Useful to bringing certain production elements out in the mix when you need it to cut through. These units were a little smaller than the German 140 plates.
German 140s – For many, the 140s are viewed as king of the hill for a number of reasons. They were the first and came to market in the late 1950s. They tend to be a little warmer, tend to replicate, as they were originally designed, the sound of a concert hall and with limited EQing can for the most part, more readily replicate a dark, bright or a warm sounding room, etc. The need to scoop low end EQ might be useful when applying to certain instruments and voices, to avoid the bass multiplier effect. There are beautiful sounding files in every 140 model sampled – try them all along with very cool hybrid impulses that really are a solid edition to anyone’s convolution library!
Lawson – tends to be brighter and a bump in the lower mids tends to warm them up. This unit was designed and built by Gene Lawson who continues to make microphones today at his shop in Nashville, TN. His microphones are well regarded and his tenure in the business is remarkable.
Stocktronics - manufactured in Sweden. Only a little over 250 of these units made in their entirety and are very rare. Impulse Record was lucky to get these impulse response files recorded from Finland The original owner/designer Lars Liljeryd, talks about the Stocktronics plate and made these comments on the manufacturing process. “The specially manufactured stainless steel used in the Stocktronics 4000 was totally unique with it’s 0.3 mm thickness and extremely low “pile-height”. Thus the steel sheets were 2-D stretched in a stretching bench at the steel manufacturer and thus became very flat, before cutting it to size. This two-dimensional stretching process also cold-forged the steel so it became even harder, thus producing proportionally longer reverberation times at higher frequencies than any steel quality used by the competition. Therefore it had a very special sounding reverb, liked by many and disliked by some, as it sounded a bit synthetic. It however had a very high resonant density so it could cope extremely well with high frequency impulsive sounds and still sounded smooth.”
German 240 – darker sounding. Weighing 148 lbs with dimensions of 1’ X 2’ X 2’. Some say better on shorter settings and for sound sources like drums. Originally designed as a way to make the original 140 (4’ X 8’) in a smaller and lighter box. It really was a technological feat for its time. Both versions of the 240s sampled, tend to be darker in tone and sound as most do, when searching online with user comments. They use a gold foil plate and are a hybrid between the original large 140 plate and early analog to digital rack mount and smaller floor units, although the 240 is totally analog. The thickness of the gold foil plate is 18 microns (very thin like aluminum foil – note that average human hair thickness is between 40 – 50 microns)
What Do They Sound Like?
This video from Impulse Record using a solo piano recording to demonstrate the different plate impulse responses in this library…
How To Get This Loyalty Reward From Avid, Wave Arts and Impulse Record
Go to your Avid Master Account. The new loyalty reward should be listed there, near the bottom of your Products list. However, if it isn’t in the list, check for a message at the top of your Products lists advising that there were some unclaimed loyalty rewards. Clicking on that list should give you the updated list which will include the Impulse Record/Wave Arts reward.
Copy the serial number and click on the link and that will take you to a special page on the Impulse Record site. The follow the instructions on that page…
Please choose the download links below that correspond to either your Windows or Mac device and download both the Convology XT Plugin and the Plates Reverb library.
You should have already received a Convology Plates serial from Avid, this looks like IR-CLPLT-XXXXX-XXXXX, where X are hex digits (0-9, A-F). Your serial will unlock both the Convology XT plug-in and the Plates Library.
Step 1: Find your operating system, Mac or Windows, below. Click both the Convology XT plug-in link and the Plates Library link and download both.
Step 2: Run both installers and accept default options. The Plates installer gives you the option to install on an external drive if desired.
Step 3: Launch Pro Tools and open an instance of Convology XT, found under “Impulse Record” manufacturer or “Reverb” category. When the plug-in is first opened it will popup a warning that it has not been registered. Click “Register” and then enter your serial, name, and email address, taking care to enter your email address correctly. You can also register later by selecting the Register option in the setting menu (gear icon).
Need Further Help?
For help with Convology XT, please visit their Getting Started videos
You may also click the gear icon at the top of the Convology XT plugin and click on “Open User Manual” for more help inside the plugin.
Most registering issues are caused by replacing a 0 (zero) for an O and copying the serial number and pasting it with an unintentional space on the front or back end. Please try typing the serial number in manually and make sure that you are inputting the correct characters, before contacting Support for any registration problems.