Plugin Boutique is offering the XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color character plugin for $40 (down from $99) until March 29th.
The RC-20 Retro Color is envisioned as a real trip down memory lane regarding audio effects and production methods. Warming saturation, wow and flutter that creates organic movement, noise, and hiss for that sonic patina and more.
It works on Windows and macOS and comes in VST, AU, and AAX formats.
RC-20 Retro Color is a toolbox that can fit on separate tracks or on buses.
If you have stale loops that need some more action, instruments that need more grit, or artifacts and pads that need glitched-out reverbs and digital degradation familiar to the age of new consumer electronics and musical gear, RC-20 tries to cover it all.
With 6 separate modules housed in an interface with additional macro controls, the plugin offers many sound design options within one plugin. Subtle and authentic mixing tasks or outlandish audio destruction are both within reach.
1) The noise module has several built-in sounds that can be further modified by a tone control, an envelope follower, flux control, and ducking. Vinyl hiss, anyone?
2) Next up, the wobble and flutter (and the amount of one and/or the other) can be dialed in with a slider. Each element has its own rate control, a stereo switch, and a mix control. As well as knobs for flux and overall depth.
3) The distortion module is even more basic in operation, but lets you select between many different distortion and saturation algorithms, ranging from gentle tape warmth to angry tube fuzz. The focus slider applies the effect in a frequency-dependent manner, which opens up even more possibilities.
4) Some might recoil at this rather Proustian moment, but artifacts made by the degrader and bitcrusher module are now considered antique. Sample degradation, aliasing, and bit reduction are dialed in on a sliding scale between rate and bits, with the option of making the processing smoother and frequency-dependent.
5) Reverb. Pretty much self-explanatory, but a nice combination with the other modules nonetheless. Control pre-delay and decay to create your desired sense of space, together with a focus slider and flux control for more depth, width, and atmosphere.
6) Lastly, we have the magnetic module that infuses your track with the patina of wear and tear. Slide between “wear” and “flutter” while dialing in rate and dropouts. Watch the visual feedback of how your processing affects the overall envelope in real-time.
You can scale all these effects at the same time with the “magnitude” slider in the upper right corner. This is great both for minute adjustments, more dramatic automation in a mix context like an intro or outro, or for really adventurous sound design purposes.
At the bottom part of the plugin, there are additional controls for input and output gain, a filter, tone control, and a width knob.
All in all, RC-20 Retro Color seems like a powerhouse with various use cases. The relatively simple interface of the individual modules makes it more of an “ears first” kind of plugin, which is always nice. Especially considering the fact that you probably already have 100+plugins with how many knobs?
Sometimes you just want something quick and useful.
This article contains affiliate links, which means BPB may earn a commission if you purchase through those links at no extra cost to you.
Check out the deal: RC-20 Retro Color (60% Off until March 29th @ Plugin Boutique – $40)
Deal of the day 🔥: Get BABY Audio Parallel Aggressor for only $5! (92% OFF)
More:
Last Updated on March 16, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
