Korneff Audio has released a new plugin that promises to deliver "huge-sounding" guitars, enhancing the stereo space of your mixes while creating a warm, characterful low end.
The Wow Thing is a plugin emulation of a piece of kit of the same name favoured by producer Randy Staub and used on many records he worked on, including Metallica's Black Album.
The original Wow Thing was a consumer audio product from SRS Labs that used a patented spatialisation process to convert conventional stereo recordings into a "wider-than-normal panoramic stereo audio image". The additional stereo width, along with added bass, was intended to make smaller, budget speaker systems sound more impressive.
The story (as told to Ultimate Guitar) goes that Randy stumbled on the processor by accident when he noticed that a mix being played through his laptop speakers seemed unusually wide. On investigation, he discovered that the music was being run through a piece of software called the Wow Factor from SRS Labs.
"The higher you pushed the slider, the wider the sound got. It really is just a phasing program that makes stuff sound wider, to the point that it may sound outside your speakers," Randy told Sound on Sound. "So I went to their web site and bought this small hardware box that cost 20 bucks, and I found that it sounds great on guitars."
Korneff Audio's plugin emulates the unique processing offered by The Wow Thing to achieve similar results in your DAW. Dialling in its spatial effect is as easy as turning up the WOW knob, while the TrueBass control will enhance the low-end of a signal with depth and rumble.
Further controls allow you to choose between two WOW algorithms, one from the original box and another from the SRS Megawide rackmount unit, and adjust the frequency of the TrueBass processing.
The Wow Thing's RRP is $19.99, but it's currently available for only $9.99.
