Undertone Audio, MixLand Team for UnFairchild 670M Plug-In

Encino, CA (September 16, 2024)—Recording pros have long loved the sound of the vintage Fairchild 670 tube compressor. A mainstay of many studios throughout the Sixties, Fairchilds are still renowned for their sound—and scarcity. With that in mind, some years ago, producer Eric Valentine’s Undertone Audio introduced its hardware recreation, the UnFairchild 670M mkII,and now it has teamed up with plug-in house MixLand to introduce a software emulation: The UTA-D UnFairchild 670M mkII V1.0.

Said to be “a painstaking recreation” of the Undertone Audio UnFairchild 670M mkII Vari-Mu Compressor, the collaboration took place over the course of six months. The features and controls for the UnFairchild 670M II plug-in are the same as the hardware, with some new additions in the form of an Output Level Control, Wet/Dry Mix control, and an Overall THD control. The Overall THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) control allows users to increase or decrease the amount of UnFairchild-style THD character.

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According to Valentine, capturing much of the hardware unit’s vibe came down to properly assessing how to make it a tad unpredictable: “Analog circuits, like the UnFairchild, behave more like living breathing organisms. Nothing they do is linear or predictable. Mathematical formulas and algorithms are by nature, predictable. It took a huge amount of effort and experimentation to inject the sensation of unpredictable analog circuitry into this plugin. As you adjust controls on this plug-in, you will feel all of the different personalities of the UnFairchild emerge and morph from one to another. The personality that shows up for 4 to 5 dB of compression is profoundly different from the personality that comes crushing in with 15 to 20 dB compression.”

Available today, the plug-in will run $249, but has an introductory price of $199. There is also a 14-day trial demo available.