What's Next for Slate Digital

esterday we finally released the FG-116 BLUE Series FET Compressors and we are so thrilled about the amazing reception! So many of you have said that these have already become your favorite Slate VMR modules yet! On behalf of the entire team, thank you so much! We put a lot of work into those Blues and it means a lot to us that you guys are loving them!
So now that we’ve released the BLUES, I wanted to give you some sneak peeks at what we have in store!   
First and foremost I wanted to reveal the FG-SWISS, which is an exact replica of one of the most famous hardware compressors in the industry known for being a “Swiss Army Knife”. This compressor is like eight compressors in one! It is so versatile and can even sound like a vintage optical compressor!
To say it has been difficult to replicate this compressor’s many sounds is quite the understatement! But Fabrice and our dev team have meticulously recreated its exact tone on every setting, and have included its precise nonlinear behaviors which help make it so musical! You’ll be using this guy in the summer, so stay tuned! You’re going to love it!!
 Everyone always asks me “So why can’t I do the All Buttons In trick on your FG-116s?”. As many of you already know, the All Buttons trick on the classic FET compressors puts the compressor into a whacky state of extreme over compression that can sound super insane on things like drum room mics. I’ve always enjoyed the sound, but felt that it could be sooo much more useful with a few key mods. And so that’s what we’ve done with the Monster Extreme Dynamic Processor.
The Monster can sound like the classic All Buttons, but for those of you who wished you could tame a bit of the top end (which can make cymbals pretty harsh depending on the track), we added a High Frequency side chain into the detector, so you can make the over-the-top effect super slick and smooth in the top end! It really sounds great! Then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could get the insane compression tone but have a bit more transient definition? So we added a button called PUNCH which does just that! Next, we added a Hi Pass side chain filter which will make the kick drum in your room mics sound so massive you’ll have to duck and cover! And finally, we have a parallel mix knob so you can easily blend this explosive tone with the dry signal to make it much more versatile and useful! The MONSTER will be available quite soon, and we expect it to go to beta in about two weeks.
Oh… and it’s going to be FREE. For everybody. Who loves me??? :)
 My friend Jay Baumgardner started collecting vintage delays and was raving about how cool the tones are and how much more creative he could get in his mixes when using them. Well, Jay is one of the best audio engineers in the world and certainly knows what he’s doing, so I figured I’d investigate. Fast forward a few weeks and my studio was filled with vintage delays from old Echoplexes and Memory Man to classic 80’s units. I was shocked about how beautifully unique each delay was, and how much character I could add to tracks using the right pairing of vintage delay. It was also so much fun!
So we teamed up with our friends at D16 and made the ultimate vintage delay modeled plugin called RePeater! RePeater models over a dozen vintage, modern, and tape delays! We recreated the real tone of early digital delays including the exact characteristics made in part by their unique low bit depth, sample rate, frequency response, and of course… distortion! There are so many incredible preset delay sounds that just switching through them will get your creative juices flowing. We even have a preset for a 1940’s tape deck that sounds good at 100% wet as a straight up insert effect! We also have classic widening effects that sound fantastic on stereo guitars or as a vocal fattener! From Levee breaks style drum echo to the most rich and thick vocal delays, you’re going to love this thing! And the GUI is so easy to use, because you have complete control of both delay lines without having to go to a sub menu. This one is also due out this summer!!