UJAM’s Retrocraft puts tape, vinyl, lo-fi and speaker emulation into a single plugin

UJAM has released Retrocraft, a multi-effect plugin that consolidates the kind of processing chain producers typically build across several tools into a single environment. Following the company’s vocal processor Voxcraft, Retrocraft is designed for adding vintage character, saturation and lo-fi texture to both instruments and vocals.

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The plugin’s character engine covers analog-inspired amp colouration, vintage playback emulation, speaker modelling, instability and ambience processing. Six effect modules sit alongside the core engine: LoFi, Modulation, Instability, Delay, Reverb and Chop. Each stage can be combined and adjusted independently, covering ground from subtle tape warmth and vinyl texture through to megaphone and telephone speaker effects, degraded radio sounds and heavier experimental treatments.

“We’re big fans of the many character-processing tools available today, but we felt there was room for a more integrated solution that combines these types of effects with important additions like modulation and ambience processing,” said Peter Gorges, co-founder of UJAM. “Instead of tediously building effect chains, Retrocraft lets you start with a complex effect combination you like and easily tweak it to make it your own. The element of surprise and fresh ideas really stands out here.”

Retrocraft ships with 100 production-ready presets for instruments and vocals, plus 56 basic presets that demonstrate individual effect algorithms. A built-in Surprise function generates random effect combinations as starting points for new sounds.

UJAM was co-founded by Hans Zimmer and Pharrell Williams, with the development team behind it drawing from former Steinberg and Digidesign engineers responsible for tools including Virtual Guitarist, Hypersonic, Xpand and Transfuser.

Retrocraft supports VST2, VST3, AU2 and AAX formats on both macOS and Windows, and is available here.