These are Audio Unit and VST as standard, the latter wrapped into RTAS versions using a second installer. Accompanying the unit in the elegantly packaged box is software which installs the accompanying plugins onto your computer. The box is very light, and apart from the DC connector, the rear simply provides a pair of Firewire 400 connectors (which normally makes the PSU redundant). Despite the manual talking of squeezing the processing into a 1U rack, there is mostly air inside: this could easily have fitted into a rather smaller package, but the smart 19” format means that most studios can screw it into the bottom of a rack and impress clients. Existing owners can download the new versions free of charge.Duende is a Spanish word – “A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain.” But I’m going to try anyway… Duende comes as a 1U rackmount box which houses a board with 40-bit floating point DSP processing engine chips. The Duende Native Essentials bundle is available for the introductory price of £99 GBP/$169 USD/129 EUR until November 25th, 2014. X-Phase also a new release is designed to help you fix awkward phase issues with our high-precision frequency-specific phase control toolkit. X-Valvecomp and X-Saturator are both new plug-ins designed to inject some analogue style saturation into your digital DAW. X-Verb is an incredibly powerful and flexible processor which brings beautiful hardware standard reverb to your DAW. X-EQ and X-Comp are both mastering grade processors that deliver superb balance of precision and tonal character. Drumstrip and Vocalstrip are ‘task specific’ plug-ins which each gather together a set of carefully selected and lovingly crafted processing tools to get you straight to outstanding Drum and Vocal sounds quickly and easily. The legendary Stereo Bus Compressor plug-in gives you the classic SSL stereo master bus compressor that brings power and punch to your mix without compromising clarity. The EQ & Dynamics Channel plug-in provides an EQ & Dynamics processing solution with all the power, precision, flexibility and signature tone of a SSL 9K and later SSL console channel strip. The Duende Native range has grown to the current portfolio of 10 different beyond benchmark quality processing tools. SSL Duende Native plug-in collection delivers SSL’s renowned signature superior audio quality, sophistication and benchmark performance to inside-the-box DAW audio producers.

The continued compatibility with VST, AU and RTAS systems means that SSL plug-ins are available to almost all DAW users. The release of new AAX (Avid Audio eXtension) versions makes SSL’s Duende Native plug-ins compatible with any 32-bit or 64-bit system running Pro Tools®/Pro Tools HD® 11 software.

Review ssl duende channel strip