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Customer Reviews

Thermionic Culture Vulture

Overall Rating

241-260 of 290 Results

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G. Piazza

March 29, 2015

Real tube dynamics

I spent a lot of time comparing it to Trash, Ozone Exciter, bx_saturator, Voxengo Varisaturator & Decapacitator. Each has its place, but only the CV has that dynamic tube response. On a mix with a few overload moments, only the CV (in Triode) smoothed them out instead of bringing them forward. True, the usable drive & bias ranges are kinda narrow for subtle applications, but the sweet spot has a 'hardware' sound that none of the others can achieve. Try the demo! This and the VSM blow away every other 'distortion' plugin I've worked with.

M. Penn

February 2, 2015

Soooo Awesome!!!

This is the Truth!! Very Happy with the New Culture Vulture, it definitely delivers that warmth/Grit/Distortion you need for bass, Drum , Guitars or Vocals etc.

Looking for a Distressor Next UA, "Hint" "Hint" ;-)

K. Schade

December 28, 2014

Great on synths

I never saw or used the original device but this is the first digital overdrive plugin I am happy to use in my mainly analog setup. Try this on a Moog bass, amazing.

M. Fair

December 14, 2014

Beast mode!

I love the Culture Vulture. Especially for producing EDM, it brings new life to synth sounds that were sounding a bit dull. Sometimes I'll pull up a preset and go through some synth patches with the CV enabled ... It feels like I just purchased a new synth when I do that. This thing is awesome. Yes, it's a bit power hungry, but worth every penny. I don't use it on every track, but I wish I could. LOL

D. Tarqua

December 10, 2014

Thermionic Culture Vulture Review by D.Tarqua

I bought the plugin as I was looking for a very special Guitar Sound that I could not get with the Amp simulations and it worked fantastic. I was looking for a overdriven distorted but highly sophisticated sound not a Heavy Metal sound. The Thermonic provided exactly the controls I needed to do this. In the meantime I use it not only on guitars but on a variety of instruments and even vocals to add spice or richness to the sounds. Just used it on a Hamond and that was just gorgeous to emphasize the Hammond Sound even more.
What I did notice tough is that I primarily use the P1 distortion sound as I actually don’t seem to like the others. I try them often but then always revert to the P1.
I love it :-)

G. Hadfield

December 1, 2014

Emperor's new clothes?

After hearing the online demos, and trying out a working demo briefly I made a snap judgement that we had an Emperor's new clothes device here. People were saying it was amazing, to-die-for, best distortion ever. I slapped it down and cranked it up and thought it sounded cheap and nasty and walked away. After seeing the hugely positive and hugely negative reviews coming in, I assumed it was a Marmite machine (you love it or you hate it). But I was tempted to try it out again. This time I used much more subtle settings with mix set very dry on electric piano and I was sold. The electric piano had more character and colour and more significantly it suddenly just sat in the mix like slipping into a comfortable sofa. I was sold.

P. Geiser

November 8, 2014

AMAZING

my absolute favorite plugin that i've gotten from Universal audio. super duper colorful and powerful. not a crazy amount of flexibility but still very useful and exciting

A. Booth

November 3, 2014

flexible and brilliant

Since getting this plug-in I've wanted to use it on pretty much everything (shame about the high DSP count). It's super flexible from really minimal distortion to massive amounts with great features on it like the mix and filter options. This has been sat on my master bus since I got in on all the projects I'm currently mixing and it's really important to the sound that I'm getting.

J. Schmidt-hambrock

October 15, 2014

Very inspiring!

Lots of pleasant surprises in the Vulture.
Did not have to fight it at all. Lots of sounds that I had not imagined - but ended up using.
Very responsive for bass-playing (my use #1) and in the mix for all kinds of things (use #2).
I am suddenly tempted to take a computer to my gigs. Never did that before.
Jochen

T. Marrison

October 14, 2014

Warmth and weight

A superior alternative to Decapitator - more depth in the bass and generally feels more lively. One of my goto plugs for every session

D. Furrer

October 11, 2014

great tool and toy!!!

I see people writing reviews whether it comes close to the original or not.
I have never been in the position to use the original.
This Plug In is in my opinion an amazing tool and a great toy. It brings glue to my drums like nothing else I have seen or used. For me personally a must have.
There is only one thing I am really hoping for they would somehow update on this plug in. It should have a function that makes the volume go down automatically when you boost the drive knob so the outcoming volume would stay the same.
But (luckily) different people have different opinions so try it in demo mode for yourself ;)

M. Bradburn

September 16, 2014

What's not to like?

Another gem in my UAD arsenal, has become the go to tool for that certain special something. I can't really see any down side, I'm not sure what other reviewers were expecting of course - for me this is way better than I thought it would be, thoroughly enjoyable. Best dirty digital I've ever heard:)

D. Marcus

September 9, 2014

Amazing

So cool to have this beast as a plugin. I love the sounds you can get with..from subtle to full on raging. As always UA hits out of the park with their detailed emulation of classic hardware pieces.

A. Ali

September 8, 2014

Great sound

It has a great sound, not entirely useful on everything but for things like Bass and thickening up Vocals it really shines.

I've found that you can hit the sweet spot for sounds rather early on and it's quite easy to go overboard and use too much distortion; but when you hit that sweet spot you know that you couldn't have gotten that sound elsewhere.

To summarise I really like this plugin, less is more and it doesn't work for all applications but it has great character.

A. Puro

September 5, 2014

great sound but has some kinks...

This plug sounds great but unfortunately as of right now for DP users it causes massive glitchy/stuttering sounds when run at a buffer size of 512. Running it at 256 or 1024 is fine however.

K. Dietz

August 26, 2014

Lots of Culture. Much Vulture.

Really liking this plugin. I haven't used the hardware version (would love to try it) but find that simply putting this plugin across a bus or track adds a new dimension sonically, with very little tweaking. Enhanced harmonics, fuller sound. I love this plugin on a drum bus, acoustic or electric guitar, bass…I need more DSP! There are a few different saturation plugins out there, this one is the best of them, to my ear.

A. Lawson

August 14, 2014

Distortionmlove

at first i thought it was a bit similar to the soundtoys decap, but as i played there was a much bigger pallette and depth to it.. love this thing on a single drum mic or the drum buss.. also getting some vox and bass love..

G. Pernet

August 14, 2014

Love it!

Had to sell the original unit 3 years ago.. At the time i only used it to beef up my kick and snare/clap.. the plug has the same low end shimmer(for lack of a better word) as the original unit.. Love it! Absolute no brainer if you're looking for additional ways to shape your sounds!

S. Fusco

August 11, 2014

Very similar to hardware

I had the thermionic hardware and at its best it would provide some subtle natural warmth at lower levels. It was never a box I would go to for extreme levels of distortion but that's not what this product is all about.

The plugin is about 90% of the hardware. Though I will say the range for the various settings is different between hardware and software. Like 5 on the drive for the software seems like 8 on the drive for the hardware

All in all, a solid effort for UAD. I wouldn't buy another hardware vulture as its value was marginal to me but as a 300 plug it might be worthwhile.

R. Ketchem

August 7, 2014

Not UAD's finest hour

From the silly promo video to the actual plug-in, this one is a disappointment. I've used the hardware for years and the plug-in manages to capture, maybe 40% of the magic. For $299, it's still a bargain, but I'm hoping for a sweeter version with future upgrades.

241-260 of 290 Results