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The vla 2a Black Friday deal is 67% off at $19 until Nov 22, 2026, on the VLA-2A Mark II, Black Rooster Audio's opto compressor plugin built around a late-1960s optoelectronic leveling amplifier.
The maker calls it the most authentic native emulation of that unit to date. It says the design took many hours of work, calculus and matching.
It is a software version of a vintage leveling amplifier, the opto-style compressor design from the late 1960s. Black Rooster Audio says it put its engineering skill into capturing the sound and feel of the analog unit as closely as possible.
The team likes it on drums. They add that it also works very well on bass and vocals.
The maker's advice is to adjust the compression carefully. Done that way, it helps signals stand out and still sit in the mix.
The plugin uses a realtime, component-based circuit simulation. The maker says every crucial part of the original is modelled:
Aliasing artifacts are attenuated by a low-latency, linear-phase Dolph-Chebyshev polyphase oversampling design. The oversampling rate adjusts itself to your session's sample rate, which saves CPU while keeping the sound as transparent as possible, according to the maker.
DSP operations are pipelined with the SSE2 instruction set. That keeps performance up despite the heavy computations.
The interface supports high pixel density on Windows and macOS, so it displays sharply on high-DPI and Retina screens. On Windows, your DAW's manual tells you whether it handles HighDPI.
On Mac, you need:
On PC, you need:
The VLA-2A Mark II is listed under compressor plugins, so it slots in as an insert on a drum bus, a bass channel or a vocal track.
Yes. The VLA-2A Mark II Black Friday deal is 67% off at $19 and runs until Nov 22, 2026. VLA-2A Mark II is an opto compressor plugin from Black Rooster Audio.
Yes. It works in VST, VST3, AU or AAX compatible hosts on Mac, and in VST, VST3 or AAX hosts on Windows. Mac hosts must be 64-bit, with Apple Silicon M1 and M2 supported.
Black Rooster Audio says its realtime circuit simulation covers the input and output transformers, the discrete sidechain and audio path networks, the filters and the T4B cell, all aimed at capturing the analog unit's sound and feel.
Mac needs macOS 10.9 or newer, an Intel Core or Apple Silicon M1/M2 processor and 1GB of RAM. PC needs Windows 7 or newer, an SSE2-compatible processor and 1GB of RAM. Both need a 1280x1024 display or more.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.