AbbeyRoad Brilliance Pack User manual
Brilliance Pack
Version 1.0 Plug-Ins for TDM and Native
User’s Guide
www.abbeyroadplugins.com
Copyright
Copyright 2008 EMI (IP) Limited
All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
EMI and ABBEY ROAD are trademarks of EMI (IP) Limited.
REDD, RS127 and RS135 are trademarks of EMI (IP) Limited.
THIS SOFTWARE CONTAINS SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPED BY AND
PROPRIETARY TO SOFTUBE AB OF SWEDEN AND IS PROTECTED BY PATENT
SE25332 AND PENDING PATENTS US2004-0258250, EP1492081, JP2004-183976
Abbey Road Studios
Web site: http://www.abbeyroadplugins.com
Credits
Product Development: Abbey Road Studios & Softube AB
GUI and Programming: Softube AB
Documentation: Abbey Road Studios
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Table of Contents
1 — Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
2 — Installation and Authorization ……………….....………………………………………… 7
3 — Using The Brilliance Pack ……………….....…………………………………………….. 8
RS127 Rack ....……………………………………………………………………………………... 9
RS127 Box ………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
RS135 ………….……………………………………………………………………………………11
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1 — Introduction
Welcome to a little Abbey Road brilliance.
Throughout the ‘60s there were a number of small boxes dotted around Abbey Road, which
were simply known as ‘Brilliance’ or ‘Presence’ boxes. In this era, engineers were looking
for ways of adding presence to their recordings, especially in popular music. Enter the
Brilliance boxes: these simple passive equalizers were portable versions of the grey
RS127s that were rack-mounted into the studio control room patchbays. They were
designed to give Abbey Road recording engineers additional frequencies that were not
found on the EMI REDD studio mixing desks of the time.
Meet Lester
Lester Smith is a technical engineer at Abbey Road and, amongst other things, is the
custodian of our vintage equipment and microphone collection.
In recent years, while working on various Beatles and John Lennon-related mix projects,
Lester introduced me to these little boxes. My assistants Mirek Stiles and Sam O’Kell had
observed that, in various ‘60s setup sheets, the prevailing EQ was marked as “RS127”. This
equalizer was the 127th item made in-house by EMI for the Recording Sector. Keen to try
these, Lester blew 40 years of dust from some of the boxes and wired them into our
patchbay via the old ‘Siemens’ connectors and presto – instant zing! The large cut and
boost control made it very easy to hear an immediate presence. Put simply – they’re
brilliant!
The Sixties were an adventurous period in our history. Rule books were put aside and
considerable experimentation by engineers helped shape ways and means of producing
sounds not heard before. Following this spirit of experimentation, our latest plug-in suite
provides today’s engineer and musician with a bundle of little boxes straight from this era.
The green and grey RS127s have identical circuits and controls. The grey has a chrome
rack handle that made it convenient to plug into the control room patch-bays. There were
usually two of these in each room, but due to their popularity additional EQ was often
needed, and so stand-alone boxes were made to achieve this. These were painted green.
Because of their portability, they were often used throughout the studio complex; not just in
the studios themselves but also in the mastering, transfer and post-production rooms.
The RS127 is well documented in the highly recommended “Recording The Beatles” book
(Kevin Ryan & Brian Kehew, Curvebender Publishing, 2006) which also refers to the
change in line level and EMI standard impedance that has taken place since the early
Sixties. By happy accident, when comparing the green and grey units, we heard a dramatic
difference when one of them was passed through an EMI interfacing transformer. The
transformer “effect” exaggerated the EQ curves.
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And so, in the spirit of the ‘60s, we have included this “not so precise” effect by providing
two RS127 plug-ins: the grey rack version and the green standalone unit with the
transformer effect. I have seen old setups where engineers used two RS127s in series for
heavy EQ treatment, and I can highly recommend using these EQs on guitars, keyboards
and vocals. If you find that +/-10 dB is not enough, do what they did back then – use two of
them!
The RS135
The RS127 was primarily made to supplement the 5 kHz REDD desk EQ, and proved to be
immensely useful and popular. However, there was still a need to boost frequencies
between 5 kHz and 10 kHz.
EMI 8 kHz boost boxes were widely used but little was know about them. Only recently,
when putting this project together, Lester removed the 8 kHz label (incidentally, made with a
Dymo prototype) and found on the reverse that these boxes were in fact originally RS135s.
Our researchers have shown that these boxes were designed for a 16.4 kHz boost, but
modifications made at the time choked this frequency by half – enabling engineers to boost
signals at 8 kHz. We have decided to add this to our ‘Brilliance’ suite, thus completing the
range of presence EQs that were significantly used at Abbey Road in the ‘60s.
Peter Cobbin, Director of Engineering, Abbey Road Studios
April 2008
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The Brilliance Pack brings these classic EQs to modern audio workstations, providing
authentic emulations of the hardware units.
The pack consists of three plug-in modules:
RS127 Rack
The RS127 Rack plug-in is a recreation of the original Brilliance Control rack modules which
were installed in the studio control rooms.
RS127 Box
The RS127 Box plug-in recreates the standalone Brilliance Control and includes the
exaggerated EQ curves caused when it is used with an EMI interfacing transformer.
RS135
The RS135 plug-in recreates the 8 kHz boost boxes, which were originally designed as 16.4
kHz boost units but later modified by Abbey Road engineers to work at 8 kHz.
TDM and Native Versions
The Brilliance Pack is provided in TDM, RTAS, Audio Unit and VST formats. The plug-ins
are compatible with all popular audio applications for Mac and Windows.
System Requirements
TDM version (Pro Tools HD)
•Pro Tools HD 7.0 or higher
•Computer system meeting requirements for Pro Tools HD 7.0
•Mac OS X 10.4 (or higher) or Windows XP
•iLok USB Smart Key and ilok.com account
Native versions (RTAS/AU/VST)
•RTAS, AU or VST compatible host application
•Mac: Intel or PowerPC Processor, Windows: PIII or higher
•Mac OS X 10.4 (or higher), Windows XP
•iLok USB Smart Key and iLok.com account.
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2 — Installation and Authorization
Installing the Brilliance Pack involves the following steps:
1. Downloading and installing the software on your system
2. Authorizing your iLok USB Smart Key
Installation
To Install the Brilliance Pack:
1. Download the appropriate installer for your operating system from
www.abbeyroadplugins.com/downloads.aspx
2. Once downloading has completed, double-click the downloaded file to unpack the
installer.
3. Double-click the installer and follow the instructions on-screen. The plug-ins will be
installed in the appropriate folders on your system.
Authorizing
Authorizing at www.ilok.com
1. Make sure you have installed the plug-ins as outlined in the ‘Installation’ section
above.
2. Insert your iLok USB Key into an available USB port on your computer and log in to
your iLok account at www.ilok.com.
3. When you are logged in, click the ‘You have licenses’ link. It will display new licenses
that have been delivered to your account.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the ‘Synchronize’ button. You will then be
able to transfer the Brilliance Pack license from your iLok.com account to the iLok
Smart Key, thus authorizing it for the plug-ins.
Customer Support
submit a question in the Support area of our website at www.abbeyroadplugins.com.
The latest plug-in versions, product news and answers to common questions (FAQs) are
also available from the website.
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3 — Using the Brilliance Pack
Using the Brilliance Pack in a project involves inserting one of the plug-ins on a track, then
adjusting the parameters as needed.
To insert the plug-ins on a track:
1. Select an insert point on the track you wish to use a plug-in on.
2. Choose ‘RS127 Box’, ‘RS127 Rack’ or ‘RS135’ from the insert selector menu.
3. Adjust the settings as required. See the following sections.
The plug-ins support mono, stereo, and multichannel operation (multi-mono in Pro Tools for
stereo and multichannel tracks) and support sample rates up to 192 kHz.
Adjusting Plug-In Controls
The plug-in controls can be adjusted in the following ways:
• Click and drag up/to the right to increase a control setting, or drag down/to the left to
decrease.
• By clicking on any of the label markings around the control knob to go instantly to a
setting.
• Using any supported external control surface.
To reset a control to its default setting:
• Option-click (on Mac OS X) or Alt-click (on Windows) the desired control.
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RS127 Rack
The RS127 Rack plug-in recreates the original Brilliance Control. It boosts with a broad or
‘blunt’ bell-curve response and gives a ‘medium blunt’ bell-curve on the cut settings.
FREQUENCY kC/S.
This control sets the centre frequency at which the plug-in will boost or cut in kilocycles per
second - (kHz). The available settings are 2.7, 3.5 and 10 kc/s (kHz). The default setting is
3.5.
Gain - dBs.
This control sets the amount of boost or cut which takes placed at the selected frequency in
decibels. It can be set to +/- 10 dB in 2 dB steps. The default setting is 0.
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RS127 Box
The ‘RS127 Box’ plug-in recreates the standalone RS127 unit along with effects caused by
interaction between components in the RS127 and an interfacing transformer.
kC/S
As on the RS127 Rack plug-in, this sets the centre frequency at which the plug-in will boost
or cut in kilocycles per second (kHz). As on the RS127 Rack, the available settings are 2.7,
3.5 and 10 kc/s (kHz), but the interfacing transformer causes the centre frequencies to
change and this effect has been replicated in the RS127 Box plug-in. The actual centre
frequencies are 2.9 kHz, 4.2 kHz and 11.5 kHz.
Gain - dB
This control sets the amount of boost or cut which takes placed at the selected frequency in
decibels. It can be set to +/- 10 dB in 2 dB steps. The default setting is 0.
The ‘transformer effects’ can be heard clearly at the higher boost settings, at which the plug-
in gives a sharper ‘Q’ or bandwidth. At these settings, there is also significantly more boost
than given by the same settings on the RS127 Rack plug-in.
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RS135
The RS135 plug-in provides an accurate model of the EMI 8 kHz boxes. It has a single
control, which sets the amount of boost, and provides the same ‘medium sharp’ bell-shape
characteristic as the original boxes.
The Gain control sets the amount of boost in decibels. It provides up to 10 dB of boost in 2
dB steps. The default setting is 0.
General Plug-In Operation
All three plug-ins support standard plug-in features, such as preset files, control surface
support and automation.
Please refer to your software documentation if you are unfamiliar with any of the following:
• Navigating plug-in windows
• Plug-in automation
• Using presets
• Bypassing
• Using clip indicators
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