New
MEY LDC 500 V2
The Dutch console channel strip, rebuilt.
€24.95. Pay once.
253 downloads
A preamp with two voices and an iron output transformer, and an EQ rebuilt from the real schematic of a Philips LDC recording console, with its original stepped frequencies. Version 2 sounds like a channel you plugged in, not a curve you drew, and now it looks and feels like one too.
Get the highlights.
Take a closer look.
A channel you can touch.
A channel you can touch.
The real Philips circuit.
A needle, a Mix knob, 51 presets.
Built out of love for Dutch hardware.
The Philips LDC consoles.Hands on
A channel you can touch.
Version 0.2 is the LDC 500 as it would stand in your rack: a 19 inch unit, lit like real hardware, with knobs that stand proud of the panel and keys that sink when you press them and stay a little lower while they are on.
The knobs are tactile, the way a good desk is. The gains turn in half decibel steps under Moog style knobs, MIX in whole percents, and every knob carries its own scale, so you read a setting at a glance instead of guessing.
It sounds like hardware too. I recorded a stepped Moog pot, one click forward and one back, and a soft key going down and coming up, and the panel plays them as you work. Turn fast and you hear what a real knob does: the first two clicks, then the one where your hand stops. The clicks play on your computer, never on your track, and Surface clicks in the screen's menu switches them off.
Even the meter is honest: a VU needle with real ballistics, 300 ms to its reading and a touch of overshoot, behind glass that catches the studio light.
Preamp
Two voices.
Classic LDC, the original curve, or FB: a discrete feedback amplifier in the spirit of the API 2520, with feedback that is always working. Switch with the LDC / FB key.
Distortion grows with level, frequency and gain, the way it does in a real amplifier.
Fe
An iron output transformer.
The Fe key puts a transformer after the preamp, modelled after the Neve and Carnhill type. More colour at low frequencies and high levels, almost none at the top. It is tuned to the published specification of the Neve 1073N: at most 0.07% distortion from 50 Hz to 10 kHz at +20 dBu.
1:1 · 1:3
Two transformer ratios.
A key on the output switches between a 1:1 and a 1:3 output transformer. Same plug-in, a different feel to the drive.
EQ
The real Philips circuit.
The EQ is the circuit of the Philips LDC 0270/10 input module, solved from its schematic, with its original frequency steps: two small keys per band step through them, and the frequency stands in a window beside them.
Low: 57, 110, 200, 390 Hz. Mid: 480 Hz to 7.2 kHz in six steps. High: 1.4 to 11 kHz in six steps. Up to 15 dB of gain each, plus a high-pass from 20 to 300 Hz.
PRE
EQ before or after.
One key moves the EQ ahead of the preamp, so you can drive the colour with the EQ, or shape what the preamp gets. A SAT knob adds saturation after every band.
16x
No aliasing.
Every non-linear stage runs at sixteen times oversampling with linear-phase filters, so a hard-driven saturation stays clean at the top. The plug-in reports its delay to the host.
Around it
A needle, a Mix knob, 51 presets.
An analogue VU needle, a Mix knob for parallel blending, 51 factory presets on a screen in the panel itself, an update check that tells you when a new version is out, mono and stereo, and a standalone app for when you just want to run something through it.
Why this exists
Built out of love for Dutch hardware.
The Netherlands built proper recording consoles once. Philips did, and almost nobody outside a handful of studios and broadcast trucks ever touched one. I grew up admiring that: hardware built well, by people who cared how a channel sounded.
MEY LDC 500 is that admiration turned into a plug-in. Not a copy of one specific desk and not a museum piece: a preamp and an EQ built the way that module was built, so the sound survives even though the consoles mostly did not.
Where it comes from
The Philips LDC consoles.
Philips built its own recording consoles in the Netherlands from around 1970: the LDC 12, 15 and 25, for classical recording, broadcast trucks and studios. Engineers who worked on them describe a sound that was punchy and clean, spoken of alongside the Neve, API and Studer desks of the same years.
Each channel was built from modules you could pull and swap, first a preamp and three-band EQ. That module, the one every signal passed through before it reached a fader, is what this plug-in is modelled on.
Tech specs
- Preamp
- Drive −30 to +20 dB, output −30 to +6 dB, Mix 0 to 100%
- Preamp voices
- Classic LDC, or FB discrete feedback amplifier
- Iron
- Output transformer flux model, on or off, ratio 1:1 or 1:3
- High-pass
- 20 to 300 Hz
- EQ order
- After the preamp, or before it (PRE)
- Low band
- 57 · 110 · 200 · 390 Hz, ±15 dB
- Mid band
- 480 Hz · 960 Hz · 1.4 · 2.3 · 3.8 · 7.2 kHz, ±15 dB
- High band
- 1.4 · 2.2 · 3.5 · 5.0 · 7.2 · 11 kHz, ±15 dB
- SAT
- 0 to 12 dB, after every band
- Steps
- Gains in 0.5 dB steps, MIX in 1% steps
- Interface
- A 19 inch rack unit, with clicks recorded from real hardware, on or off
- Oversampling
- 16x on every non-linear stage
- Formats
- VST3, Audio Unit, Standalone · macOS, Windows · mono, stereo
Questions
What do I get for the trial?
The whole plug-in, for 7 days on each computer, with nothing switched off. The days start the first time you open it. After that it passes your audio through untouched until you add a licence.
What does €24.95 buy?
One licence key for two computers, macOS or Windows, in VST3, Audio Unit and the standalone app. There is no subscription and no dongle.
Does it need the internet?
To start the trial and to activate a computer, yes. After that it checks in about once a week while you are online, and keeps working offline for up to 45 days.
Can I move it to a new computer?
Yes. Deactivate the old one from the licence screen and the seat is free again.
I downloaded the free first version.
That build keeps working as it is. Version 2 is a new download with its own 7-day trial.
How do I pay, and when do I get the key?
You pay on Ko-fi. The key is emailed to you, usually within a minute, together with the download links. If it goes missing, you can have it sent again.
Can I get my money back?
The key is delivered immediately, and from that moment the right of withdrawal for digital content ends, as the refund policy explains. That is exactly why the trial exists: try everything first.
Try it free for 7 days.
Download, open it, and drive the preamp harder than feels reasonable.