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The Dom user interface

Introduction

The Dom is in the house, and it is unmistakable.

The Dom is a frankly brutal distortion, overdrive and amplifier plugin. It is not here to sit quietly in the corner and gently handle all your audio bits with the greatest care; it is here to rock & roll.


This video showcases The Dom's raw power as a distortion into a clean amp. Music composed and performed by Dominic Mcsweeney.


Although The Dom is most definitely not modelled after any existing hardware distortion or overdrive pedal or amp in particular (because that's simply not how we (rock &) roll here at Shameless Plugs headquarters), we most definitely expect it to be the first distortion, overdrive and amplifier plugin that future hardware units will be modelled after.

Use cases

Because of its simplicity, and because of Shameless Plugs' philosophy to keep the Paradox of Choice at bay by offering exactly the right number of controls, dialling in the right sound is almost child's play.

The Dom will successfully fulfil the role of an overdrive, pushing whatever comes after it into saturation; or a distortion in its own right in front of e.g. a cleaner amp; or even as a complete replacement for an amplifier.

The high cut filter can be sufficient to shape the sound by cutting out unwanted fizziness that necessarily comes from any type of distortion, before sending it to e.g. a reverb, or you can use a speaker cabinet simulator or impulse response loader with your favourite speaker cabinet impulse response, to shape the sound. The choice is yours.

No one or no thing but your impeccable taste should dictate what kinds of sounds you can apply The Dom to, but typical sources include of course the electric guitar (which will find its natural habitat in The Dom), the Hammond organ, the bass guitar (typically applied in parallel, mixing in with the bass guitar's natural timbre), lead synthesizer parts, etc.
And vocals can be processed in full, in order to create a telephone effect, or bullhorn effect.


This video showcases The Dom's versatility: for the lead and rhythm guitars, The Dom is used as an amp, going directly into a speaker cabinet simulator; for the Hammond organ, The Dom is used as a gentle overdrive-type effect; and for the bass, The Dom provides a slightly overdriven "edge", mixed in with the direct signal.
Music composed and performed by Matthijs Hebly.


But The Dom can also act more subtly, as an exciter, by applying a radical low cut (up into the kHz range), adjusting the drive to create some mild saturation upto fairly heavy distortion, and mixing some of this in with the dry signal. This works well on e.g. vocals, brass, strings, and anything else that needs a little extra shine and presence in order to stand out better in the mix.

Yet another use case is applying The Dom in combination with our Tilde~Q:
The Dom itself broadly has an inherent EQ curve with a +3.0dB/octave upward slope, so combining it with a Tilde~Q set to slope downwards by -3.0dB/octave will result in a frequency curve that is almost (but not entirely) flat. If we put the Tilde~Q after The Dom, its saturation will be made more mellow, whereas putting Tilde~Q before it will accentuate The Dom's more crunchier side.
We can now apply this combination of The Dom ⇒ Tilde~Q as a kind of tape saturation; this sounds just as good on individual sources as it does on entire mixes. Depending on the setting of the low cut control of The Dom, there will even be a slight low frequency bump, as is typical in tape devices.
To compensate the gain, set the output control such that the drive and output values add up to at least +3.0dB; higher drive values with more saturation will typically require a more radical compensation.


The Dom as tape saturator

Comparison to similar plugins

On the surface, The Dom might seem similar to many other distortion– / saturation–type plugins.

However, quite a lot goes on under the hood, to make it as versatile as possible, while maintaining a remarkable ease of use, by offering only the controls needed, no more, no less.

The drive section employs a sophisticated, gentle, asymmetrical waveshaper that generates and emphasises pleasant even–order harmonics, very similar to what happens in the best Class A tube amplifiers.

Carefully crafted, intricate filter sections, both before and after the drive section, maximize the plugin's versatility.

In this video, I use The Dom for a relatively cleaner, more subtle tone, reminiscent of Santana.
I use The Dom as an amp, going straight into a Mikko speaker cabinet simulator.
A LoudMax instance is used as a simple compressor pedal, before The Dom.
Music composed and performed by Matthijs Hebly.


What's included

Both this free version, as well as the future paid version, offer:

User interface

The friendly user interface offers very detailed, fine-grained control.
While using the mouse, the Ctrl and Shift keys allow for very small adjustments.
Alternatively, precise values can be entered in the edit boxes.
The user interface as a whole is resizable, using the size grip in the bottom-right corner.

Future paid version

Apart from the four main controls that the free version offers, the paid version will offer additional controls for phase, mix, and bypass, and will offer control over the internal EQ slope, as well as a mid scoop, to enable the creation of tones revered in the heavy metal genre.
It might include a speaker cabinet simulator as well.

The paid version will also feature optional oversampling in order to prevent aliasing.

Recommended

Other recommended plugins:

Download

The Dom is currently available for Windows, 64 bit.

Please make sure to read and agree to the EULA before downloading.

Version history

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