New Music Gear Monday: PSP BinAmp Preamp Emulator Plugin

When I was young and playing in club bands, our most prized piece of gear was a Binson Echorec. It gave everything such a beautiful professional sheen, and I so wish that I still had it. A big part of the Echorec’s sound was its wonderful class A analog preamp, and that’s the sound that you’ll get with PSP’s new BinAmp Echorec 2 preamp emulator plugin.

BinAmp has the look of the original unit (see the graphic below) from the switches to controls and even the Magic Eye level meter, which now displays the amount of saturation. The controls are different from the original unit, as you would expect since it’s only emulating the preamp and not the delay, and they provide a wide range of character enhancement for almost any mix element.

First on the left is the HPF (high-pass filter) which goes from 5Hz to 250Hz. Then comes the Character control that changes the harmonics of the high frequencies. A Drive control adjusts the amount of saturation and Level controls the output.

Below the controls are three others that look like the screw adjustments found on the original hardware. The Rolloff control goes from 30kHz down to 6kHz to dial in that vintage frequency response. Variation is coupled with the Character control for subtle changes to the harmonics, and Blend control adjusts the amount of dry to saturated signal.

At the top are 4 switch controls that look like the original’s lit on-off controls. The first on the top left is a Power switch, which is a bypass control. Then comes a -20dB Pad control to give you more control over the overdrive on hot signals. On the top right you’ll find Polarity controls for both input and output, which is a bit unusual but can be very helpful in tailoring a heavily saturated sound.

The PSP BinAmp plugin is available for an introductory price of $49 (normally $99) until August 14th. There’s also a 30 day free trial period. It’s also available for both Mac and PC and for all plugin formats.

You can find out more here, or watch the video below.