Soundevice Digital Plamen

Created by Soundevice Digital and marketed under the United Plugins umbrella, Plamen is a five‑band saturator, in which each band can be processed using one of five different saturation algorithms. In my own studio, I tend to use subtle multiband saturation mainly when mastering — something I’ve done since before plug‑ins took over the world! — but with Plamen there’s enough scope for adding considerable character to individual tracks too. All the common Mac and Windows plug‑in formats are supported, including AAX, and authorisation is via a personal licence key file that allows you to run the plug‑in on more than one machine.

The resizable GUI is very straightforward, with a dynamic spectral display showing what is being processed within each frequency band. It looks nice enough, though it’s worth noting that ‘selectable’ text is dark purple on a darker purple background, changing to a light blue when selected — I found the purple on purple a bit hard to read on a smaller screen, and would have appreciated the option to make this a little more visible.

Because adding saturation affects the level of the signals being processed, the plug‑in has a set of master controls that include input gain, with a range of ‑24 to +24 dB. There’s also a wet/dry mix control for setting up parallel distortion, and those after a vintage tape vibe can also add a subtle amount of simulated tape wow. An output gain control is available to compensate for any overall level changes caused by the processing. By...