What? A plugin preamp? Sounds strange… and it is kind of is, since preamplification has nothing to do with what we want to get out of an emulation plugin of a preamp. What we are after is that oh-so-sweet saturation and warm distortion that helps us mask and destroy the high quality, clean vocal or synth track, or any track really. In this digital day and age, almost everything sounds better with a bit of saturation on it. 

Enter the Neve 1073, one of the most iconic preamps ever designed. Now what we have in plugin form is basically a distortion knob with a pre-EQ for shaping the input of the distortion. Today I will look at three versions: Arturia Pre 1973, Ik multimedia EQ 73, and Waves VEQ4. The last one is an 81 emulation, more on that later.

Arturia Pre 1973 

This one by-far has the warmest distortion of the bunch. Also, it is a bit more dynamic than the others, it responds nicely if you ride your vocal track into it, keep the verses natural and push it to saturate at the choruses, very nice indeed! With the Arturia Pre73 you also have a continuous frequency selection available, not always a good thing but does make it more versatile and you can zero in on the sweet spots.

Ik multimedia EQ 73

The IK Multimedia EQ 73 is a brighter version of the Arturia Pre73. It can get harsh at times and it is more compressed on the top end that has its uses but most of the time the warmer Arturia Pre73 works better. The frequency selectors are fixed to specific frequencies here like the original hardware, which makes it easier and quicker to work with but since you cannot precisely catch the sweet spots then you might need to have some other plugin work harder later in the chain.

Waves VEQ4

This one is an 81 emulation, but since I own it then I will throw it in because why not; In the plugin world the 73 and 81 differ in function aspect but are quite similar sound-wise. This one shines in totally different areas than the previous two. Since you do not have an input overdrive ability then there really is no distortion, but I do find that adding it later in the chain with the analog button “in” adds kind of a magic saturation blanket over the track, especially noticeable with vocals. Another amazing use for the Waves V-EQ4 is to add “air”, that topmost shine. Keep the high-frequency band in bell mode and add 2-3 dB at 15k, beautiful.

Conclusion

For the Neve preamp sound, get Arturia 🙂