Crane Song Phoenix II Analog Tape Emulation Plug-In (Pro Tools AAX) Crane Song

Phoenix II is an update of Crane Song’s suite of TDM plug-ins designed to emulate the unique properties of a magnetic tape machine. Phoenix II runs both NATIVE and DSP on Avid’s PT 10 AAX format. Phoenix II uses 32 bit floating point math and has a lower noise floor than the original release.

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 PT 10 architecture.

The Phoenix II contains five separate flavors:

• 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 asaggressive as Dark Essence when the process is at full scale.