FATSO™ Jr. / Sr. Tape Sim. & Compressor
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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.Now You Can
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
FATSO Jr./Sr. Tape Sim. & Compressor plug-in
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
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.
“The Fatso is our secret weapon for warming up abrasive soft synths.”
– The Glitch Mob
“The FATSO is a 'must own' UAD plug-in. I love it on the kick and bass tracks. It's also amazing in the master buss chain.”
– Ivan Barias (Musiq Soulchild, Jill Scott, Estelle)
“The UAD FATSO really brings back the bottom-end warmth to a vocal that's lost its way.”
– Dean Coleman
“When you need something to really punch but still have warmth, the UAD FATSO is my weapon of choice.”
– Richard Devine
“The UAD FATSO is my favorite tool for warming up guitars and bringing out harmonic content.”
– Billy Bush (Garbage)Customer Reviews
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!
Read More. 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...
Read MoreF. WIOROWSKI
January 24, 2021
Lot of character
If you want to add character this is the one. One of my fave uad
Read MoreR. 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...
Read More -
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
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Customer Reviews
FATSO™ Jr./Sr. Tape Sim. & Compressor
L. Leonard
Good for bass and kick!!
It is so good for bass and kick!!
R. Schüchel
Very good sounding!
Good distorted compression!
L. Martella
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
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
Lot of character
If you want to add character this is the one. One of my fave uad
R. Walsh
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
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
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
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
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
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 anymoreT. Qumok
Perfect for guitar busses
I AB’ed this thing against a lot of comps, this one won them all.
Love it.E. Fossum
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
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
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
Amazing
Works great on bass, drums and vocal. Worth the money!
E. Lefebvre
Wow!!!
Not easy to set but once done, it's extremely powerful! Everything get fat. I wish I'll use the hardware gear someday...
M. Morgenroth
The FATSO is worth every penny. Rap Vocal cheat code!
I bought the Fatso Jr/Sr on sale a week ago and let me tell ya, I am a believer. After a few hours of getting familiar with the sound and controls, I knew I had purchased something special. I started by using it on my drum buss, and to fatten up some VST synths. But once I tried it within my vocal chain I was honestly astonished. This thing adds a dimension, color, and depth to vocals that I have never heard from any other plug-in, UAD or other. The warmth button along with the transformer circuit allow for the most musical de-essing that I have ever heard in the digital domain. If you are like me, you prefer to use some form of tape saturation to tame harsh sibilance. Once you use the Fatso for this task you simply won't be able to use anything else. You do not lose ANY high end, it is as I mentioned earlier quite astonishing. The UAD Fatso is going to be a mainstay in my vocal chain (mostly rap/hip hop) for the time being until I can afford the hardware unit from ELI. Very happy with my purchase. Thanks UAD!
E. Grebeznieks
Еxcellently!
the long-awaited purchase of this plugin was justified, I have not heard any analogues that can replace this plugin. I love him
S. Shaw
Wonderful for parallel bus
Compression plus tape mojo. The Sr version even has control over compression parameters. Really great one-box-rules-all for parallel processing.
