Unfiltered Audio's Needlepoint is now available on iOS as a Standalone app or AUv3 plugin!
Unfiltered Audio raises the bar (and lowers the tonearm) with Needlepoint: a revolution in vinyl simulation. Continuing the retro themes of their smashed-up hit lo-fi-af, Needlepoint presents a full platter of advanced physical modeling to dive deep into the warm, fuzzy sound of turntable noises and artifacts beloved by many. Of course, since this is an Unfiltered Audio plugin, you can push the needle far past realism and dive into some seriously warped sounds.
While many vinyl plugins are content to use looping samples of noise, Needlepoint uses physical modeling to achieve its incredible sound. Needlepoint synthesizes all sorts and sizes of detritus and distress on a record: hair, dust mites, scratches, warping, etc. These are not randomly modeled, but rather accurately distributed onto a rotating, algorithmic platter. Changing the speed of the record can greatly change the nature of Needlepoint's impact on your sound. While you may be used to vinyl RPMs like 33 1/3, 45, and 78, have you ever wondered what it would sound like to tempo sync a turntable to your DAW? Now you can!
Beyond noise, ambience, and tone, Needlepoint includes other effects to fully etch out your vibe. A single knob compressor (inspired by lo-fi-af's PRESS knob with six additional algorithms) can be added before or after the signal chain. This compressor can emulate algorithms from famous hardware samplers associated with vinyl, or even mimic the sound of analog distortion introduced by the vinyl pressing process. A BROKEN mode emulates a broken record a broken record a broken record a broken... Where were we? Oh right, a BROKEN mode acts as an unpredictable looper by jumping the grooves on your recent audio. You can automate the mode's toggle to create all sorts of cut-up and glitchy phrases.
No vinyl plugin would be complete without a SPINDOWN button that creates that classic vinyl stop (and start!) sound. Here you can control the rate of the spindown to better fit the effect into your mixes. Finally, at the end of the processing chain, Needlepoint features a granular pitch shifter to help you achieve that chopped up vibe without needing to manually change the speed of your tracks.
Despite all of these features, Needlepoint is incredibly easy to use. With a beautiful interface and an extensive set of presets, Needlepoint will help you itch that nostalgic scratch that your tracks need.
As an AUv3 plugin, Needlepoint has been tested to work perfectly with Garageband, Drambo, AUM, Cubasis, Beatmaker, Nanostudio, apeMatrix, Loopy Pro, and more! Additionally, with its clear layout and smart resizing, Needlepoint can be used on tablets and phones with ease.
(Note for Drambo users: Drambo does not yet have automatic Plugin Delay Compensation for managing plugins with latency. As a result, tracks with Needlepoint will not line up properly with other tracks. An upcoming patch for Drambo will add this feature in.)
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User Rating
5 out of 5
3 ratings
in United Kingdom
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Reviews
Used this scratchy/dusty Fx for 5 mins, it’s hilariously detailed wear & tear.
This did tickle me, because the idea of a bunch of analysts/programmers sat around a table wondering how best to undo the last 40 years of progress into pristine audio signal propagation through a signal chain, does that to me. I generally was pretty sniffy about the whole business of contaminating a 44.1kHz 24-bit digital signal, with glitchy scratchiness but I have come around a bit.
I was brought up on Hovis bread and then they sliced it…it was a shock at first. Mum previously let the wolf divide it for us. So a lot of my time has been spent trying desperately NOT to bounce a track anywhere, because of the degradation implicit in doing so (on a 4-track cassette, that’s 1.5mm width of magnetic tape per track). Now with pristine being the norm, I have begun to look at the likes of MixBox CS’s single offering for vinyl-sounding crackles, and I quite liked that on a track with trumpet on. It kind of fitted.
So this has a lot more adjustment and the amount of dust can be set, and the speed of the rotating vinyl being slowed down, and as the only comparison I have is MixBox’s I would just say this has a lot more variation. So let’s say that this app can be used as a much wider effect, than the other one I tried, which had a perfectly brilliant but focused effect range.
I have no great revelations to offer, but I can confirm the Audio Unit seems to work fine in GarageBand on my Apple iPad Pro M1, and it’s five stars, even though they may find areas to improve, it’s pretty amazing at what it does. I have no complaints or criticisms at all, but would merely point out the menu system for choosing your flavour of sound degradation, is a four-layer deep pathway. This will NOT matter, once you know your way around, but it slows you down when you literally just want to rattle through the offerings - but in fairness, there’s an up/down (right-left actually) arrow setup, so probably this might permit exactly the bullet-time tour I initially wanted.
Really good, funny how something old is something new. Tip: it tends to be the case, these Fx are ‘always on’ so it just needs a bit of automation of track gain, once you are happy with the sound itself, to introduce the sound effect, and tail it off. Then, when I set the cursor/vertical play trigger-line to the left margin, the sound goes quiet for convenience.
