What is Sly-Fi?
Sly Fi is one person: me, UBK. I'm an artist, gear designer, and analog freak. I've modded most of the gear I own so it sounds a little darker, warmer; sometimes I also add functions that are more useful to me as an engineer.

Emulations never excited the designer in me, and my other company (Kush Audio) enjoys a reputation for cutting edge, original products.

But a close friend, who respects my approach with Kush, suggested that people would probably dig my "enhanced" versions of the classics as much as I do.

So that's what Sly Fi is: darker, warmer emulations of my favorite modded gear.

I have been developing these tools for 2 years, they are finally ready!

Sly-Fi plugins are models of analog gear that has been heavily modded and bent to sound and/or behave darker, warmer, and (usually with the twist of a knob) dirtier. Emulating heavily colored gear makes for some heavily colored plugins.

I’ve done 100% of the modeling, which allows me to obsess over aspects of the sound and, in particular, the transient tonality, to a degree that is probably unhealthy. These plugins have a very special sound.

You can’t get these emulations anywhere else, because the gear they emulate is one-of-a-kind. Nefarious! But so good!




Deflector: There seem to be two types of mix engineers: those who own a pair of the original units this plug is modeled after, and those who want to. I own the hardware, and I tweaked its distortions to make them fuzzier, because I like grime. I added a 250Hz sidechain HPF option which leaves all bass frequencies uncompressed, as well as a 6kHz sidechain push to smooth out harsh, aggressive stuff.Some compressors press sounds down, this one pushes them forward. It's in almost every million dollar studio, now it can be in yours.





Axis: There's a reason this eq has endured 45 years of musical fashion & trends: it does all the right things to sound. But even a classic can be improved, especially with the power of today's DAW. On my hardware I replaced the 2520 op-amps with Scott Lieber 'Red Dots', and added a Saturation knob to overdrive them. That knob generates a very creamy, lush distortion, I'll often use the Sat on its own, no EQ'ing. It's fat! Stepped/fixed controls sometimes get in my way, so I added a UBK mode where all freq and gain knobs sweep freely; I love being able to point this magical eq in between the factory frequencies. Last, I put both the classic 'A' and modern 'B' EQ models on the UBK switch, so you can choose whichever mode works best for each track. Oh, the 'A' model now has an extra mid-band... because it deserved one.





Kaya: There's only one Kaya... literally. S. Husky Hoskulds made it by taking an old Ampex tube tape deck and hardwiring the preamp directly to the tape head. He calls his unit 'Pa', a minimal box with swampy distortion and a very heavy bottom.I started with Pa's dirt, then added controls to make it more flexible. An assymetric Treble control can rebalance the sound towards the top, or tilt it down into murky darkness. An Abuse knob does exactly what you'd expect it to do. Blend allows you to tuck in the overall effect for subtler applications.What I love about Kaya is it never harshes out, it's always warm even when it's gone nuclear. A one-trick pony, but what a trick it is.

Each plugin is $99 or less, (Deflector = $99, Axis = $79, Kaya = $99) or grab a bundle for an even better deal. AU & VST now, AAX coming in the fall.

iLok 2 required



More INFO: Sly-Fly Digital

 

Last edited: Aug 10, 2015

As fan of UBK plugins, these should be massive for sure. I've dl the demos … miam !

 

They look great,lets try how they sound.i bet they are top notch.