Eventide has announced that their new UltraChannel channel strip effect in VST/AU plugin formats for Windows and Mac is available for free download until July 8th. On the negative side, an iLok user account is required in order to activate the plugin. On the positive side, the iLok dongle is not a requirement.

UltraChannel™ is Eventide’s new 64-bit native channel strip plug-in for AU, VST, and AAX64 for Mac and PC featuring micro pitch functionality from our flagship H8000, stereo delays with variable feedback paths, plus two stages of compression, gating, and five bands of parametric EQ.

The plugin will remain available as a free download from Eventide until the 8th of July. After that, the regular price of $249 will become active. There was a bit of discussion on the forums on whether the plugin will also stop working after the deadline, but users who have successfully activated their free copy of UltraChannel are reporting that the license is labeled as “does not expire”.

Judging by the demo video embedded below and the product description on the official site, this free channel strip effect looks like a blast. Based on the pieces of code from various other Eventide products, it’s the ultimate toolbox for both tracking and mastering. Some of the features include a heavy duty compressor module based on the Omnipressor effect, a soft saturation module, a transformer emulation, a 5-band parametric equalizer, a noise gate, etc.

All in all, this could easily become my go-to tool in the mixing stage, by the looks of it. I’d love to see how much CPU it uses on my machine, though. But feature-wise, this thing is definitely a rare beast in the freebie world.

So, how do you download and activate your free UltraChannel plugin? First, you’ll need to download the iLok License Manager application (links provided on the download page linked below) and install it on your computer. Run the application and register for a free iLok account. Note that you don’t need a dongle in order to do this.

Once you’ve done that, fill out the form on the page linked below. You’ll need to enter your iLok account ID and a certain access code. I’m not sure where these codes can be generated, but here are two codes which I’ve found on KVR Audio so far:

057F6CE2

01B604BE

Apparently, these access codes are free for everyone to use. Back in the day, SoundToys were giving away several free plugins in a similar manner (here’s an example of that) and the access codes were used as coupons for a giveaway. It seems though that the codes don’t have such a purpose in this case. I’ll investigate a bit further on that matter, though.

Anyways, once you’ve submitted all the required info, you should receive an email containing your free UltraChannel user license and download links. I’ll add further steps to this article once I go through the activation process myself. In the meanwhile, please leave comments with your own experiences regarding this offer. Did it go smooth, or did you run into some trouble along the way?

Many thanks to BPB readers Daniel (take a look at his Bandcamp page) and Steve for spotting this and letting me know via email. Cheers for the support guys!

Video Demo

Check out the UltraChannel demo video:

Download

UltraChannel Native Channel Strip is available for free download via Eventide (32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU/AAX plugin format for Windows & Mac).