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Waves Audio Lil Tube Plugin Review

Lil Tube is a free Tube Saturation plugin that you can get right now at www.waves.com. Lil Tube is the free version of their new plugin BBTubes that you can get along with their already-going-on Black Friday Deals. Lil Tubes is available for free for a limited time.

Waves Audio Lil Tube
3.5
Included in a bundle for $149

Waves Audio's Liltube is a versatile audio plugin designed to add warmth and character to your sound, it emulates the coveted harmonic richness of tube saturation. With its user-friendly interface, Liltube allows you to easily dial in the desired level of distortion and colouration, imparting a vintage tube-like vibe to your audio signals. Whether you're working on music production, mixing, or mastering, Liltube provides a convenient way to infuse your tracks with a touch of analog warmth and character, enhancing the overall sonic experience.

Pros:
  • It adds a desirable analog warmth and harmonic richness to audio signals.
  • It has a straightforward interface, making it easy for users to control and adjust parameters without a steep learning curve.
  • It can be applied across various stages of music production, from tracking and mixing to mastering, providing flexibility in its usage.
Cons:
  • Waves plugins, including Liltube, can be resource-intensive, potentially causing issues on less powerful computers.
  • Not Suitable for Every Genre
  • May come with a limited number of presets compared to other plugins
OS Compatibility: Win10, Win11, 64 bit. macOS Catalina 10.15, Big Sur 11, Monterey 12, Ventura 13, Sonoma 14
Plugin versions: VST, AU, AAX.

How to get Lil Tube for free?

Lil Tube is available for free right now on their website. All you have to do is go to waves.com and scroll down to find their Black Friday freebie. Then you have to enter your email and sign up to their website. You will be redirected to where Lil Tube will be added to your account and you can download and install it from the Waves Central application on your system.

You can also upgrade from Lil tube to BB Tubes which adds a lot of other controls to the already beautiful and natural-sounding Tube Saturation of Lil Tube for only $24 for a limited time.

What is Lil Tube?

Lil Tube is an easy to use two knob Tube Saturation Plugin. It provides an authentic and warm tube sound that ranges from subtle to aggressive as you go up the meter.

The main ‘drive’ knob in the centre controls the amount of saturation from the plugin, even when the drive knob is at a minimum, Lil Tube produces a small amount of harmonic distortion and the tube saturation is engaged. The ‘Out’ knob controls the output gain of the plugin.

The ‘Sensitivity’ dial controls the input gain with a three-position switch: Soft, Normal and High, indicated by the ‘drive’ LED on top which influences the saturation behavior. Lil Tube has an auto-gain feature that compensates for these adjustments, so the output gain remains the same.

Pros:

Easy to use Saturation plugin with an elegant and simple interface.

Adds life to a track by adding a subtle amount of harmonic distortion.

Can be used in different amounts to separate instruments in the mix. Great to use on layered vocal harmonies spread in the stereo field to separate them from each other.

Helps in mixing by making tracks more harmonically rich and sit comfortably in the mix.

Can create rich and fat instruments by using a generous amount of saturation.

Can also be used to get Tube Distortion/Amp tones by turning the drive all the way up.

Sounds great on all instruments.

Cons

❌ Doesn’t have a mix knob to use as a parallel.

❌ Doesn’t have oversampling

(Both are Included in BBTubes)

lil tubes black friday waves plugin

Lil Tube Sound Examples

Unprocessed

Processed

What is the Difference Between Lil Tube and BBTube?

Lil Tube is the Lite version of Waves new Tube Saturation plugin BBTubes. While Lil Tube comes with 2 dials and a beautiful tone, BBTubes picks up from there to give you a dual-stage Tube Saturator and the authentic classic tube sound.

BBTubes has two main knobs ‘Beauty’ and the ‘Beast’. Beauty controls the harmonic distortion, the same as Lil Tube, BBTubes gives you the Beast knob to dial in aggressive Saturation.

BBTubes contain 2 different tube types as well each representing a different colour and harmonic structure, along with other controls like Bass Relief, Transformer, Tone controls, wet/dry knob, and a TDH meter to help you shape your sound exactly as you want inside the plugin.

It also has up to 8x oversampling which helps get fantastic definition on your sound. Upgrading to BBTubes will be worth it considering the added features and control it provides, in addition to eliminating all our cons.

Finishing Up

Lil Tubes an amazing Tube Saturator that you can get for free right now and can be a great addition to your go-to plugins list. If you’re looking to up your saturation game, this is the plugin for you and the upgrade will be nothing but worth it.

Moreover, for a plugin designed to enhance the harmonic richness of your tracks, take a look at this review of the Techivation T-warmer.

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