John McBride [Tape Op #97], owner of Blackbird Studio in Nashville, woke up from a nightmare one night thinking his studio had burned to the ground. Although his studio contains countless pieces of priceless gear, his first thought was, “is the Neve in Studio A, okay?” Fortunately, it was only a nightmare, but the scare motivated him to sample every aspect of the analog board so that if (I shudder to think) the studio should burn down, he would have a digital recreation of it. This Neve 8078 console has quite the history; it was custom built for the L.A. Motown studio, then owned and used by Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, from whom John bought in 2002. It has been through extensive restorations and modifications, and now KIT Plugins has done a wonderful job modeling the tone and mojo of a channel strip that you can now use in plug-in form!
The BB (Blackbird) N105 V2 plug-in GUI (which is resizable) includes precisely what you might expect: a four-band EQ, high and low-pass filter, mic preamp (emulation), and a big virtual fader. To utilize the preamp gain you’ll need to switch from line to mic impedance. The saturation modeling from pushing the preamp is excellent. Modest levels offer mild thickening, but once you get the knob up to about nine o’clock it’s full-on gnarly crunch. Call me crazy, but I think the preamp model, when cranked, sounds like a pushed Thermionic Culture Vulture [Tape Op #45]! Note, that unlike the Blackbird Studio’s real 8087, the BB N105 V2 offers continuous gain functionality for more precise control. They’ve also added a nifty Auto-gain function that will attenuate the output gain as you turn up the preamp. In mic mode, the plug-in loads up with saturation turned on – meaning you’re getting a taste of the preamp color. You can turn this off, but it does add a subtle weight and warmth to the signal. The saturation has no affect in line mode. When I loaded up the BB N105 V2 across all the drum tracks in a mix, there was a noticeable taming of high frequencies and a bit more low mid and midrange clarity. The EQ section is lovely – frequency selections and functionality are exactly what you’d find on a Neve 1081 EQ. Plus, with the BB N105 V2, I can dig into the knobs a bit more than with other EQ plug-ins; it doesn’t get harsh when you boost frequencies with a heavy hand. Conversely, drastically cutting frequencies doesn’t take all the life out of a track. Variable oversampling (4x, 8x, and 16x) allows the user to minimize CPU-intensive processing or maximize definition.
I’ve been using this BB N105 V2 for about six months, and it is now one of my go-to plug-ins for drums and vocals on individual tracks and buses. The 100+ “custom pro” presets are fantastic! Overall, this plug-in is realistic and straightforward, proving the power of a channel strip with an excellent preamp and EQ section. Do you really need more than that? Okay, fine – maybe some compression.
KIT Plugins has modeled every component of the BB N105 V2 channel strip plug-in from Blackbird Studio’s Neve 8078 through John McBride’s favorite A/D converters – including the ANALOG HUM (which can be level-adjusted or disabled). This plug-in definitely sounds deeper and feels more tactile than many other channel strip emulations I’ve used in the past. Plus, it’s a lot less expensive than other plug-ins of this quality! I’m anticipating (and have high hopes for) more KIT Plugin emulations of the immaculately maintained gear at Blackbird Studio!
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