DIAL is Thenatan's radio-signal designer. Six blocks share one path: a seven-station tuner, four radio models, interference, reception, tone, and speaker rattle. Park the needle and the source comes through. Drift off-station and the hiss swells. Hold SEARCH and the dial hops the band. AM folds the signal into narrow mono. FM keeps it wide.
Warm Tube, Transistor, Shortwave, and Cheap Speaker each change the voicing, the band, the drive, and the skin. Noise, Crackle, and Morse are the interference. Drift, Dropout, and Blend are the reception. Saturation is level-matched. Low Cut and High Cut trim the band. Rattle is two detuned wobbles, with the grille moving on screen. Bypass on a block stops that block's processing. Thenatan ships 64 presets in eight categories, from Clean Broadcast to FX & Transitions.
List price is $50. Plugin Boutique has it for $10, 80% off, until 19 November 2026, and the Thenatan store has it for $9.50 until the same date. It pairs with Thenatan's new VYBZ 2 lofi multi-effect. Activation is a serial. There is no iLok and no AAX build. Latency is zero. The store lists one 61.0 MB file.
The chain is for a part that should arrive through a receiver. A beat on a late-night AM station, a vocal through a small speaker, or a transition that drops the signal on purpose. It will not clean a recording, and it will not sit quietly as tape warmth on every bus. Saturation is in the path, and it is level-matched, but the dial is the control you came for. For general vintage colour with new tape, preamp and 4-track cassette distortion types, look at XLN RC-20 Retro Color v2 instead.
Use Super VHS when you want six one-knob VHS modules and an AAX build. Best Service lists Super VHS at $69. Use RC-20 Retro Color when you want a general vintage haze from one Magnitude control, without a station to tune. The longer breakdown is the DIAL first look.