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moosersPublished on 03/12/11 at 13:15Crane Song's Phoenix Dark Essence is one of five plug-ins that comes in the Phoenix bundle of analog saturator plug-ins. Each of the five is of a different tone, but all of them more or less serve the same function. This is probably my favorite of the bunch or at least it's the one I use the most. I installed all of the Phoenix plug-ins at once as it's a simple step by step process that anyone should be able to complete easily. Learning how to use the plug-in isn't tough at all as it couldn't get much simpler. The plug-in has three modes - gold, sapphire, and opal, and a knob for setting how much analog tape saturation you'd like. That's literally everything there is to it, so I can't…Read moreCrane Song's Phoenix Dark Essence is one of five plug-ins that comes in the Phoenix bundle of analog saturator plug-ins. Each of the five is of a different tone, but all of them more or less serve the same function. This is probably my favorite of the bunch or at least it's the one I use the most. I installed all of the Phoenix plug-ins at once as it's a simple step by step process that anyone should be able to complete easily. Learning how to use the plug-in isn't tough at all as it couldn't get much simpler. The plug-in has three modes - gold, sapphire, and opal, and a knob for setting how much analog tape saturation you'd like. That's literally everything there is to it, so I can't imagine too many users having problems figuring this one out. All of the plug-ins in the bundle share pretty much the same make up, so once you know one, it's just matter of choosing which flavor you'd like. A manual shouldn't be necessary here...
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
I've currently got the Crane Song Phoenix Dark Essence plug-in and the full Phoenix bundle running on my Pro Tools system at home. This system has Pro Tools 9 running on a Mac Book Pro laptop with a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM, while I run Pro Tools 9 with a Digi 002R audio interface or as a stand alone application when I'm on the go. I've never had a problem running any of these plug-ins including Dark Essence, as I usually run these on a master fader anyway, so it's not like I'm running too many of them at a time.
OVERALL OPINION
The Crane Song Phoenix Dark Essence plug-in and the Phoenix bundle in general is a great one to have in any DAW. They're using for mixing and for using on a master bus for home mastering purposes. Dark Essence adds a certain presence and fullness to your sound and is definitely up there with the best analog tape saturators that I've used to date. The bundle as a whole is definitely worth considering for any DAW owner as it's not all that expensive for a bundle of this quality. If I were building up a new DAW, these would be some of the first that I added to the mix...See less00