Fuse Audio Labs has announced the release of the VCL-4, an audio effect plugin that offers a faithful emulation of the silver face revision of “the” op amp based successor of the classic late 60s opto leveler.

VCL-4 provides you with unintrusive to extreme program dependent and musical opto compression. The switchable ratio option makes for a flexible solution for a wide range of source material.

During the modeling process we rebuilt the entire original circuit on strip board, however replacing the original opto-cells that were made up of an LED and an LDR with suitable Vactrols.

Every part of the circuit including the receiver stage, the side-chain and Vactrol LED driver circuit, the Vactrol itself as well as the push-pull driver stage and the output transformer has been accurately modeled.

VCL-4 is available for Windows and Mac (32/64-bit VST/VST3/AU/AAX), at an intro price of $39 USD until January 31st, 2018 (regular $59 USD).

More information: Fuse Audio Labs