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THE BASICS - ABOUT LITTLE RADIATOR
Little Radiator — Version 5
Warmth: it’s the elusive and hard to quantify character that we’re all
striving for in modern, digital productions. Little Radiator was designed
for this very task, turning up the HEAT on your mixes, utilizing one of
the warmest preamps we know of: the Altec 1566A Amplifier*.
Introduced in the early 1960s, the 1566A was a three-stage mic preamp
and power supply, in a single-space rack unit, all behind an unmistakable
and very green faceplate. By today’s standards, the sound of the Altec
is colored and gritty, with a generous amount of old-fashioned hardware
noise. After all, these devices were primarily meant to supply PA
systems and could be found in churches, school auditoriums, and roller
rinks all across the United States.
Eventually, aficionados of the analog sound began seeking out vintage
1566A units as inexpensive sources for a real-life tube front-end. The
comparatively warm and punchy sound of the 1566A would become
a sleeper classic for injecting that nebulous concept of “warmth”
we mentioned earlier into setups based on an increasing amount of
burgeoning digital technology.
Little Radiator brings that same heat-generating character of the 1566A
to your digital setup. In addition to being a faithful recreation of the
saturation and harmonic properties of the original hardware (based
on multiple 1566A units at Soundtoys HQ), Little Radiator offers a mix
control for easy parallel processing as well as a selectable Bias, altering
the saturation characteristics of the plug-in.
Crank up Little Radiator and feel the heat!
*
The Altec 1566A and associated trademarks are property of Altec Lansing LLC / Altec,
Inc. and are in no way associated or affiliated with Soundtoys. All mention and references
in this manual are merely to provide historical reference to products analyzed during the
development of Little Radiator.
