RELIC

RELIC is a free character plugin that puts tape, vinyl, VHS and radio behind a single AGE macro. The four characters are separate processes rather than one algorithm at four depths: six parameters move per character, each on its own curve, so AGE 40 on TAPE and AGE 40 on RADIO are genuinely different treatments. At AGE 0 the plugin sounds like bypass by design, so it can sit on a chain and cost nothing until you turn it up.

Around the machines sits the room. NOISE gives each character its own surface: tape hiss, vinyl surface and crackle, VHS hiss over the mains hum, radio static. It sits outside HIGH CUT on purpose, so darkening the tone never kills the air. REVERB is one knob and one chamber of our own: a dark space with a long, heavily damped tail, synthesised at your session's sample rate rather than loaded from a file; at zero it is exactly out of the path. RAIN layers a real rain recording, a seamless field loop, not synthesis. THUNDER rolls real thunder at random intervals, follows the RAIN level, and stays silent when RAIN is down. STOP is a tape-stop pad on the wet path, with three lengths. MIX at zero is bit-identical to your dry signal.