Shattered Glass Audio releases SGA1566 MkII - Tube Preamp Plug-in
by SGA   14th February 2015

This (MkII) has to be one the best, if not THE best tube plugins (IMO)

THANKS SGA !

took the freebie for a brief spin tonight.. not shabby at all when driven

price may be well worth it if its much of an audible jump in quality...will have to give the demo a spin

edit- I see now the freebie *is* the demo, although that doesn't change much.. methinks I'm sold

I was hoping to demo this but Cubase 8 64 bit (under wwWin7) crashes when it tries to scan the plugin. Bummer

Please, make sure your Windows 7 is fully updated. Although 1566 does not use any non-system dlls it requires certain versions of system dlls. You can read more about it in this thread at kvr Shattered Glass Audio releases SGA1566 - free, circuit simulation powered preamp plug-in | KVR Audio Forum
One user noted that he needed to update .NET in addition to essential updates.

I would buy it without hesitation if it had a mix knob

Wet/Dry mix knob?

yep. integral part of my workflow. Love the free version (although oversampling ****ing with high's a lot for some reason), would love to get this one.

Doesn't dry/wet knob do the same as mixing between two separate channels with "dry" and "wet" signals directly in your DAW? SGA1566 MkII accurately reports the latency to the DAW.

SGA1566 has ~3 dB rolloff at ~15 kHz when oversampled. SGA1566 MkII has an additional type of oversampling that has a flat frequency response to 20 kHz.

Yes. Dry/wet knobs make it a lot easier to track the overall gain of the mixed signals (since theyre in the same channel), and allows me to mix the two signals in-series for the plugins that have it (stopping the stupid amount of parallel buses I'd have to use if nothing had a dry/wet)
Awesome

With my complete lack of knowledge of programming, I'd say it should be very easy to implement

Point taken.

We got asked questions about enhancements and the performance boost in SGA1566 MkII. Below is the summary of enhancements and the performance comparison between SGA1566 and SGA1566 MkII

Briefly, enhancements are:
- substantial performance improvements
- Added MID CPU mode. You can save up to ~30% of the CPU utilization when compared to the HIGH CPU mode. Although MID CPU mode is strictly speaking less accurate than the HIGH CPU mode most of the time you won't be able to hear the difference.
- EQ can be taken out of the signal path completely so it does not affect the phase
- Additional oversampling filter. The additional filter has much sharper cutoff and preserves more of the frequencies higher than 15kHz.
- 8x oversampling that you can use for the final rendering. Good if you crank up SGA1566 MkII to the max. with a hot signal full of mid and treble frequencies.

You can read more about all the features and differences between CPU modes and oversampling filters in the user manual for SGA1566 MkII.

Here are some % CPU utilization numbers for SGA1566 MkII and SGA1566 as measured on 2.6 GHz quad i7 ivy bridge macbook pro running windows 7 64 bit.
Both plug-ins were the only plug-in running at the time. Signal was stereo white noise fed through the line in port on the macbook pro. Processing was stereo realtime. All controls other than OVERSAMPLING and CPU all were left at default with the exception of EQ POSITION on SGA1566 MkII which was set to POST to match the default EQ POSITION for SGA1566.

Numbers in the two tables are percent CPU utilization of one "thread" as a function of the CPU Mode and Oversampling

SGA1566 MkII


the MID CPU mode uses about 20-25% less CPU than the HIGH CPU mode (i.e. low CPU mode ~ 0.75 * HIGH)

SGA1566

SGA1566 MkII HIGH CPU mode uses about 15-25% less CPU than the HIGH CPU mode with SGA1566. The performance improvement for the LOW CPU mode is even greater.

There have been indications that older CPUs, such as Core2, see even greater performance boost.

Been using the demo for a few days, love it! So, all that stuff on the charts basically boils down to, the Mk II sounds better?

I'm buying it anyway, great plugin!!

this is a great plugin I have to say...one of the most authentic emulations Ive heard...

Yeah my favourite plugin of 2014 along with The Drop.

Mix knob would be great and also a render option for oversampling so i don't have to switch os on the plugin every time i need to export.

So happy you guys dig SGA1566 MkII. We also greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions for features you'd like to see.

its great...

Id love to see a mix/blend knob - for mastering it would be useful...I tried to use it on a full track last night and it was too much...I put it in bluecat patchworks at 50% mix and it was a useful sweetener...

Also would love a gentle mid bell on the eq-then it would be a great channel tone control...

AAX maybe?

I know you guys also have a nice guitar amp plug (Ace) which I've tried and liked, would love to use your stuff on PT.

Cheers

I'll second the AAX request. would be nice

You have 3 means to control how "hard" the signal hits the processor : pre-eq ; 1st tube stage ("input") ; 2 tube stage ("Gain").

I found that if it was too much, dialing this controls to taste, helps one control the tone very easily.

SGA

Having checked the freq responses of 1566 and 1566mkII (I am an owner), there is quite a difference on the plots. given these plots, 1566 doesn't seem to really be a direct "DEMO" of MkII (MkII is also more efficient with the CPU)...

@ Diego_C and Gee
AAX version of SGA1566 MkII is definitely in the works.
1566 is, feature wise, a subset of 1566 MkII. To get the same frequency response you'd need to set the oversampling type on MkII to B (i.e. Leave it at default), and set the EQ on MkII to the same position as on 1566. To the best of my knowledge we didn't change the Baxandall EQ or the simulated preamp circuit between SGA1566 and SGA1566 MkII.

The efficiency improvements came from algorithmic and computational improvements that should not have affected EQ curves.

Please, PM me with the screenshots of the EQ curves and 1566 and 1566 MkII's settings. I'll be happy to take a look at it.

Great news! What about the little amp, any plans to port it?

We have plans to support AAX for all of our plug-ins.

Sweet, great to hear that!

If you can model other preamp with the same quality, i would love a software version of a Siemens V72 !

We have plans for other preamps, tube and solid state. V72 should find its place there.

cool...

Oh... OK.

Maybe I got the wrong impression because the extra OS and CPU options...

Also

AMS Neve 1073LB
API 3124+
SSL XLogic VHD preamp
Prism Sound Maselec MMA-4XR
GP Electronics PML 200E
ART Pro MPA II

Would you like some coffee as well?