Dreamwell

A free tube channel

Glow

Warm tube saturation and tone that is hard to make sound bad.

Free. macOS AU and VST3, coming soon.

Glow's panel. Four groups of round knobs: Drive (Input, with a Line and Mic switch), Tone (Bass, Treble), Dream (a large Gloom knob, its arc running from Bloom to Gloom, and Slam) and Out (Mix, Output, Hiss). Below them a VU meter and a Slam gain-reduction bar. Presets along the top, and a Random button.

The real panel, with the Twilight preset.

What it does

Glow is saturation and tone, nothing else. A transformer and two tube stages, oversampled 4x, with a few knobs that each do one clear thing.

  • Input changes colour, not loudness

    Turn Input up and the tube works harder, from near clean to thick. Glow levels it back, so you hear the colour change, not a volume jump.

  • Gloom

    One knob for the character of the saturation, from warm and open to dense and dark. Loudness stays steady as you turn it.

  • Slam

    A compressor that pushes the second tube. Turn it up for a squeezed, driven sound. At 0 it does nothing at all.

  • Bass and Treble

    Two shelves, at 100 Hz and 7 kHz, up to 12 dB either way.

  • Hard to make sound bad

    Every knob position is meant to be usable, and the output never goes past 0 dBFS. Six presets, and a Random button that stays musical.

  • No reverb, no tail

    No reverb and no modulation. When the sound stops, Glow stops.

One knob from Bloom to Gloom

Gloom moves the saturation between two characters. Every point in between is usable.

Bloom

Warm, even harmonics and an open top.

Gloom

Harder, odd harmonics and a soft top.

Specs

Price
Free
Formats
AU and VST3 for macOS. Coming soon
Channels
Mono or stereo in, stereo out
Controls
Input, Line / Mic, Bass, Treble, Gloom, Slam, Mix, Output, Hiss
Latency
A few samples, reported to your DAW

Hear first

Subscribers get an email the day Glow is out.

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