fPre - fBox Audio

A preamp is the first thing a signal meets, and it is where a lot of the sound of a record gets decided. fPre gives you six of them in one plugin, each with its own gain stage and its own way of breaking up when you push it.

Five of them colour the signal at any gain setting, not only when you drive them hard. Leave the gain at zero and the sound has still been somewhere. Turn it up and the mode's own character arrives, in its own way and at its own pace. Clean is the deliberate exception, and that is exactly what it is for.

Every mode keeps its own settings, so you can try one and come back to find the other exactly as you left it.

Six Preamps, One Plugin

The mode is the instrument

British

The one you can hear

Thick and forward, and the only mode with an EQ built in. Turn the gain up and it stops being a level control: partway up it starts to compress and thicken, and past that it is a colour in its own right.

American

Attack survives

Fast, punchy and open, with headroom to spare. Its signature move is a Transformer tap that drives the output transformer much harder without touching your gain, so you can add weight after you have already found the attack you wanted.

Tube

Gets thicker, never harder

The saturation comes on gradually and never gets hard-edged. There is no point where it suddenly breaks up; it just gets thicker and more coloured as you go. A Hot Bias switch runs the valves hotter, and quiet passages open out and breathe rather than being squeezed.

Clean

The honesty check

Gain with nothing added, built to leave a sound exactly as it found it. Use it when something is already right, and use it to test the other five: if a sound is better through British than Clean, the colour is earning its place.

Germanium

Soft, woolly and unreliable

Saturates earlier and more gently than anything else here, with a warm colour and a natural squeeze that arrives on its own. The gain drifts slowly and never quite repeats. Real germanium transistors are famously inconsistent, and so are these.

Console

The sound of a whole desk

A mixing desk channel amp: cleaner than British, more characterful than Clean, and it holds together on anything. Put it across a lot of tracks and drive each one a little, and a mix starts to cohere in a way one plugin on one track never does.

fPre - British mode with its three-band EQ

The Gain Knob Is The Sound

There is no separate saturation control, and there does not need to be

On a real preamp you do not choose how much colour you want. You choose how hard to drive it, and the circuit decides the rest. fPre works the same way. Each of the coloured modes changes as the level through it rises, and every one of them changes differently.

Tube thickens smoothly with no breaking point to find. Germanium is already colouring while the others are still clean. American shifts where its harmonics sit as things get louder, which is why loud sources come through it bright and forward while quiet ones sound solid. British goes from weight, to compression, to an effect in its own right.

That makes the input trim a tone control as much as a level control. Drive it harder for more of the mode, and use the input and output link so the level stays put while you decide how much you want. If it goes too far, the mix control blends the driven sound back underneath your original.

Shared Controls

The same toolkit, whichever mode you are in

Input and Output Trim

Level in and level out, in half-dB steps. The input sets how hard the gain stage is hit, so it doubles as a drive control in every mode.

Trim Link

Ties the two together in opposite directions, so you can drive a mode harder for more colour without the level running away from you.

Mix

Keeps your original signal intact and blends the driven one in underneath it. Push a mode somewhere silly, then dial it back to taste.

Safety Ceiling

A hard-driven setting cannot blow up your monitors. It can still get loud, so watch the meters, but nothing here will catch you out.

Soft Bypass

Mutes the preamp character but leaves the trims and the unit's own noise floor in circuit, so the level does not jump as you switch back and forth. Use your host's bypass when you want a completely clean one.

Every parameter is automatable from your DAW, including the mode selector itself, and fPre runs anywhere the suite does: on a track in your DAW, in an insert slot in fBox Console or the standalone application, or in a slot in fBox Rack.

Your Unit

Every unit is different. Keep the one you like.

Serial No. 7C4A-19E8-B035-D6F1

Every instance is minted with its own serial number and its own character, the small manufacturing differences that make this unit sound like this unit and no other.

Push two fPres to the same level and one will glow where the other growls. The saturation starts at its own point in each, the transformers have their own weight down the bottom, the top softens at its own rate, and each has its own quiet noise underneath it all. Germanium is the wildest of the six, because real germanium transistors are famously inconsistent and so are these.

Every new instance can be a different unit, or it can be the one you have chosen to keep. The Unit button beside the serial is where you decide.

Saved units live in your Documents folder, a folder per product, so you can find them, back them up and copy them between machines.

A unit is the character. A patch card is the character plus everything you set on top of it. Save a patch card and it carries the unit it was made on as well as the settings, so loading one back gives you a choice: Recall Unit brings that machine back with it, character and all, while Apply Settings Only keeps the unit you are on now and takes just the knob positions.

You cannot choose a unit's character any more than you can choose the character of a real machine. But you can learn it, and you can keep the one you love.

At A Glance

Six Modes

British, American, Tube, Clean, Germanium and Console. Each a separate preamp with its own gain stage and its own controls, not a preset.

Independent Per Mode

Every mode remembers its own settings. Try another and come back to find the first exactly as you left it.

Colour At Any Gain

Five of the six do something at every setting, not just when driven. Clean is the deliberate exception, there to leave a sound alone and to measure the others against.

A Built-In EQ

British carries a three-band EQ with a high-pass filter, switched in and out as a whole so you can hear exactly what it is adding.

Switches That Matter

Impedance on British and Clean, a transformer tap on American, a hotter bias on Tube, extra warmth on Germanium, and an Iron switch in or out on Console.

Parallel Colour

A mix control on every mode, so you can drive one hard for the harmonics and blend it back under the original signal.

Your Own Unit

Serial-seeded character throughout the signal path. Roll a new one, save the ones you like, and pin your favourite so every instance opens as that unit.

Three Quality Tiers

Eco for tracking and dense sessions. Studio for mixing. Master for final mixes and mastering.

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The zip holds the plugin, a one-page start guide and the PDF manual. New to this, or not sure where a .vst3 goes? Read the install guide.

Also available in The Processors, The Full Outboard Suite and The Full Studio

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