Soundtoys has made Devil-Loc, a distortion plugin for macOS and Windows, available until December 19 as the final freebie in the company’s 12 Days of Soundtoys promotion.
This is the sixth and last plugin in the giveaway, following earlier freebies like Little Plate and Little MicroShift. While Little MicroShift is still my personal favorite of the bunch, Devil-Loc is still a worthwhile tool (and a completely different kind of beast), especially if you’re into aggressive sound shaping.
Devil-Loc is a character distortion and compression effect inspired by the old Shure Level-Loc hardware units that engineers famously abused on drum recordings. You can check out the original in the video below.
And just like the hardware that inspired it, Devil-Loc keeps things brutally simple on the front end. You get just two controls: Crush, which drives the compression and pumping behavior, and Crunch, which adds output gain and distortion.
Now, unless you really want something like the Shure Level-Loc in your setup, this isn’t a must-have plugin. There’s no mix knob, no EQ, no tone shaping, and no modulation.
But to me, that’s kind of the point. Devil-Loc is designed to do one thing extremely well: wreck your signal in a musically satisfying way.
When cranked, you’ll get a super-smashed sound with heavy pumping and tons of saturation. Back things off, and there are quite a few sweet spots where Devil-Loc adds a vintage edge without completely flattening the dynamics.
So there’s quite a bit of variety even with only those two controls, and the effect can absolutely be subtle—just not for very long before temptation for more distortion kicks in.
In terms of practical application, where Devil-Loc really shines for me is on drums, especially in parallel. Drop it on a send channel, crush the living daylights out of the signal, and blend it back in with the dry drums.
You get that destroyed character layered underneath, adding grit without ruining the source’s transients. It’s a great way to give drums some attitude while keeping the mix under control.
But that’s just me loving crunchy drums. Here’s proof it also works on vocals.
Devil-Loc isn’t sold individually under normal circumstances and is usually included as part of the Soundtoys 5 bundle or Devil-Loc Deluxe. That makes this free offer especially valuable.
Devil-Loc is available for free until December 19 and runs on macOS 10.15 or later and Windows 10 or later. Supported plugin formats include AU, VST2, VST3, and AAX (64-bit only).
Download: Devil-Loc (FREE until December 19th)
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Last Updated on December 18, 2025 by Tomislav Zlatic.
