Phoenix II

Designed to emulate the unique properties of a magnetic tape machine

The Phoenix II process not only incorporates the nonlinear saturation characteristics created by magnetic tape itself, but also includes the interrelation of an analog tape recorder's record/reproduce electronics and equalization curves. Phoenix II has five different tape-analog characteristics. The type is selected with a switch for easy comparison between the types and the brightness is also selected with a switch. Gold is the position where the color is approximately flat in frequency response, with Sapphire being brighter, and Opal being a warmer tonality. A level control determines the amount of Phoenix II that is integrated into the audio signal and an input trim determines "how hard you hit the tape." Because the DSP process is level dependent the input level trim control has been improved and an output trim control has been added.

The input trim can also be used to prevent clipping in the rare cases where clipping may be a problem and bringing up the level of a track for an increased amount of color. This can be useful on material that is hitting close to or at digital zero and on material that has a low recorded level. When the input trim and output trim controls are at 0 dB, (no change in gain) and no tape process is being added to the sound, the plugin is bit accurate, meaning the output exactly matches the input.

Phoenix II runs both NATIVE and DSP on Avid’s Pro Tools 10 AAX format. Phoenix II uses 32-bit floating point math and has a lower noise floor than the original release.