Universal Audio FATSO™ Jr./Sr. Analog Tape Simulator & Compressor

The FATSO (Full Analog Tape Simulator and Opti- mizer) is designed to musically integrate frequencies and transients and increase the apparent volume of your source material in the same way classic analog equipment does. It achieves this through an ingenious design and a creative feature set, giving users the ability to impart the wonderfully warm and pleasing sonic characteristics of magnetic recording tape and class A transformer and tube circuits. The Input control gives the ability to dial in har- monic generation/distortion while “Tranny” and “Warmth” allow the user to dial in just the right amount of tape and tube tone. The FATSO also operates as a highly versatile compressor—useful for mixing and stereo buss compres- sion. From tame to trashed, the FATSO offers a wide palette of possibilities for adding character and cohesiveness to your DAW tracks.
The FATSO Sr. offers a “Tranny” saturation control, sidechain filtering, and deeper com- pression parameters including Threshold, Attack and Release. These special FATSO Sr. mods are only available with Universal Audio’s plug-in version of this unique studio tool.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

As has been my experience with all Universal Audio plug-ins, install and authorization after downloading your purchase is a walk in the park. And they all run rock solid on my MAC and Windows systems.
I use them with a UAD 2 duo and 2 UAD-1 on my PC and a UAD 2 Laptop solo on my Mac Book Pro.

OVERALL OPINION

The FATSO was essentially designed to integrate frequencies in a musical manner and provide some foolproof vintage sounding compression. Gener- ally, it is difficult to make the unit sound unnatural due to its vintage topology. FATSO provides four types of processing. Same holds true for the software version. They are Harmonic Geration and SoftClipper, High Frequency Saturation, Transformer and Tape Head Emulation, Empirical Labs style Classic Knee compressor.
I spent most of my time using this to add warmth to tracks that live in the digital domain with great success. Also amazing on guitars in front of the U-Audio Neve 1073 for a believable emulation of a real 1073.