We're truly fanatical about audio toys - both creating new ones and collecting old ones. SoundToys is dedicated to bringing color, character, and creativity to the world of digital audio. Then we've taken it further than the original hardware with the Devil-Loc Deluxe. So we've taken that concept and dropped it in the simple two control Devil-Loc.
He discovered that pushing the Level-Loc gave you gritty, dirty, unusual compression that made drums gigantic and nasty. However, the reason it became famous was not because it did a good job of leveling, it may have, but largely thanks to SoundToys user Tchad Blake and his desire to push, abuse, and do deliciously evil things to his tracks. The M62V upped the control a bit by adding an input level knob. It was super simple with only a switch for three "distance" settings based on how far from the mic you were. The concept was it would keep an even level (locked level) once it hit a certain input so you wouldn't get "fade outs or blasting". The Shure M62 Level-Loc was designed by Shure to be a leveling amplifier mostly for mics. Dark thundering drums, to driven lo-fi loops, and more, and the mix control saves all that tedious routing and lets you automate mix to keep the Devil from taking over the soul of your tracks. The addition of these controls opens up the sonic palette immensely. The Deluxe version adds a "Darkness" control for tone, switchable slow or fast release times and the ability to mix the original back in right on the front panel. To take things beyond the hardware that inspired it and give you even more creative flexibility, we've created a second plug-in, Devil-Loc Deluxe. It's a devil in disguise, and the devil's in the details, and the devil made us do it and all those other devil references. Drive it hard and you get straight hardware sounding break-up and drive.
Get crushing kick drums, to almost rhythmic level sweeps with the crazing sucking compression, to blitzed out blasting beat loops. Don't be fooled by it's simple front panel, this plug-in has a lot more cool sounds than you'd expect out of two knobs. Luckily with just two knobs, you can find the magic spot for your track fairly quickly and you'll be going for that sound more and more. Because the release time of the compression is effected by the input level (like the Level-Loc) it's a bit hard to predict exactly what will happen the first time you work with it. Devil-Loc captures the rawness of these old devices and packages it into an easy-to-use plug-in.Essentially a distorting compressor but so much more, it's really quite simple but also a bit supernatural. Because they featured an automatic release time that changed depending on the input level, as well as some particularly gnarly distortion characteristics, these boxes were capable of doing amazing and sometimes absolutely weird things to drums. Originally intended as a way to keep a presenter’s voice at a perfectly even level, clever recording engineers eventually liberated these relics from church lecterns and bingo halls and began using them for more nefarious purposes. Its inspiration comes from an old podium mic compressor called the Level-Loc.
Some of the best music production techniques are based on twisting and abusing old technology, and Devil-Loc comes straight out of that tradition. You can even try it on your mix bus-if you dare! You’ll find some amazing sweet spots where Devil-Loc shows its angelic side, adding a vintage halo to loops and drums. Push it to its limits to create extreme gating effects where loud hits crush the signal to silence and the output blooms into a fuzzy mess. Drop it on a drum kit or loop and listen to Devil-Loc inflate the room ambience, pumping excitement into an otherwise drab rhythm track. Simple, devious and often unpredictable the Soundtoys Devil-Loc 5 is a little plug-in that makes drums sound big.