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  • Overview
  • Features
  • Customer Reviews
  • 4.8/5
    (453)

Regular Price: $299.00

$39.00

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4.8/5
(453)

Get the rich sound of magnetic tape, class A transformers, and tube circuits.

Able to warmly burnish frequencies and transients, or crush them with thick saturation, the FATSO Jr./Sr. Tape Sim. & Compressor plug-in for UAD-2 hardware and Apollo interfaces exhaustively emulates the iconic, industry standard Empirical Labs hardware.

Used by legendary engineers Ed Cherney, Al Schmitt, and Brendan O'Brien, the FATSO can also increase the apparent volume of your source material. The FATSO plug-in is officially endorsed and scrutinized for accuracy by its designer, Dave Derr.

Inject your tracks and mixes with the warm, musical qualities of magnetic tape, tubes, and class A transformers

Lightly color, or destroy, drums, vocals, and more with tube and tape saturation

Harness “plug-in only” Tranny Saturation, Sidechain Filtering, and Stereo/Mono controls

Dial-in a wealth of analog textures with Warmth and Spank controls

Powered Plug-In Overview
Powered Plug-In Overview

Powered Plug-In Overview

FATSO Jr./Sr. Tape Sim. & Compressor plug-in

Go From Tame — to Trashed

Go From Tame — to Trashed

The FATSO plug-in offers a wide palette of possibilities for adding fat analog character and cohesiveness to your DAW tracks. It’s also a creative tool, able to add varying degrees of saturation — from subtle to severe — on any source. The FATSO's Input control lets you dial in shades of harmonic generation and distortion, while the Tranny and Warmth features provide varying amounts of of tape and tube tone.

Plug-In Only Features

Plug-In Only Features

The FATSO plug-in’s versatility is greatly expanded with the addition of Dave Derr's custom mods. The FATSO Sr. offers a “Tranny” saturation control, Sidechain Filtering and deeper compression parameters including Threshold, Attack and Release. These special FATSO Sr. mods are only available with the UAD Powered Plug-In version of this essential studio tool.

Key Features

Recreates the warm, musical qualities of magnetic recording tape, tubes, and class A transformers

Licensed and endorsed by Empirical Labs, created by Universal Audio

Clipping, Warmth, Tranny, and Compression Select allow for a wide variety of analog tonal shaping possibilities

Additional UAD plug-in exclusive, FATSO Sr., provides original concept developed by Empirical Labs’ Dave Derr

FATSO Sr. features include Tranny Saturation, Sidechain Filtering plus Threshold, Attack, and Release

Stereo or Mono operation with independent Left/Right controls

Customer Reviews

FATSO™ Jr./Sr. Tape Sim. & Compressor

Overall Rating

4.8/5
(453)

E. Wells

May 4, 2021

Very Flexible Way To Get A FATSO

With the price of a Fatso why not try the plugin?
You'll be glad you did.
Love what it can do on a drum bus or even a master bus, flexible routing allows you to take off a little in multiple places or thrash hard in on place to fit what you are after.

Happy with this purchase for sure.

i. hill

May 2, 2021

Every track

I have a jr on almost every track. This plug makes anything sound “better”!!!!

L. Micha

April 19, 2021

Great Tool

I use it mainly for parallel bus processing, great for giving some warmth to vocals

M. Altieri

April 14, 2021

Fantastic!

Simply Fantastic !!!

L. Leonard

March 29, 2021

Good for bass and kick!!

It is so good for bass and kick!!

R. Schüchel

March 29, 2021

Very good sounding!

Good distorted compression!

L. Martella

March 22, 2021

Great compressor

Great compressor,
I use it on the voice and a little bit on the whole. It is a plug in to buy absolutely.
essential!

. Adams

March 15, 2021

Buy this

Seriously. Just buy it. It sounds amazing on just about anything. I've been using it on a parallel drum bus (a'la Andrew Scheps) and on my 2mix as well and it really adds that weight we're all looking for. If I had more DSP available I'd probably be using it a lot more. Watch out for that Warmth circuit though, you keep pushing the button because man it feels good but suddenly it's wayyy too much.

F. WIOROWSKI

January 24, 2021

Lot of character

If you want to add character this is the one. One of my fave uad

R. Walsh

January 16, 2021

Bass, Kick and Drum Buss

I do not claim to be the worlds greatest but I get closer to it with the Fatso. Its a Distressor that mated with a 2 inch tape machine. It is difficult to describe exactly what it does but it does it well. A semi steep learning curve is involved but once mastered it is the go to on the kick, bass and drum buss. Works well on snare, toms, guitar and horn sections also. But it is on the bass and kick it shines.

B. Sound

January 14, 2021

Great but...

Awesome! One of the best plugin I've purchased from UAD.
But GUI is ridiculously tiny. Hope UAD makes revision soon.

C. Velandia

January 11, 2021

Awesome!

I have been using the Distressor almost on a daily basis for the longest time and was always curious about this plugin. I'll start off by saying that the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars, is that the GUI can be a pain in the butt. It's a tiny plugin and in my big screens, I have to get close to the screen to see the parameters. That being said, the plugin sounds amazing. Beautiful rich sound.

b. zucchetti

January 9, 2021

Excellent as the original hardware and everything of UAudio !

Where is the difference with Hardware ?? Woww ! ... Must to have !
A great big portable studio in my Mac !
By the time and waiting the right promotion i will buy everything of UAudio!

J. Geary

January 9, 2021

This dinosaur holds up

Crazy to think this guy is 11+ years old and still kills it. Incredible for taking the digital tops off of sounds and tucking a mix together. Id love to see UA throw this guy in the legacy bin and put a new rev out. im sure for the dsp this eats they could get much closer to the unit these days. At very least an update with a mix knob and headroom controls would be appreciated

A. Nabavi

December 8, 2020

I'm an ADDICT !!!

Not much time that I've had bought this Amazing plugin, but you can consider me as an Addict :))
Nothing can do what it Does to a Parallel Drum buss. believe me... It's Awesome
Cant live without it anymore

T. Qumok

December 5, 2020

Perfect for guitar busses

I AB’ed this thing against a lot of comps, this one won them all.
Love it.

E. Fossum

December 1, 2020

Still my go to secret weapon

I'd be lying if I said this plug was not a driving factor in me finally upgrading to my Apollo. This has long been my go to for really driving out the dynamics on my drums and synths. If I need something to sharply cut through everything in a mix, when I need that wow factor I go for the Fatso.

A. Richardson

November 30, 2020

The FATSO

At first I had to play around with it.. but after I figure some things out.. I threw it on my drums

N. Joy

November 12, 2020

Very cool!

I have several wonderful saturation plugins from different companies, this one really has its own flavour, really sounds great on low end stuff like bass and kick, but I have loved it on vocals in some places.
Makes things more up front, I found it’s best to use sparingly, a little goes a long way! Fantastic stuff, I would like to get my hands on the hardware.

R. Leon Junquera

October 5, 2020

Amazing

Works great on bass, drums and vocal. Worth the money!