Opal fully recreates the exquisite Oram Sonics Hi-Def 55 EQ, which was faithfully sampled to replicate what is possibly the most advanced system ever designed by John Oram. Opal incorporates all the magic that Oram Sonics offers with its impressive machines, whether mixing or mastering, while simultaneously giving you more flexibility than ever before.

The Hi-Def 55 is made in England, and is built to extremely high standards. It is characterized by an extremely musical sound, made possible by an intelligently designed set of features: 8 bands of overlapping adjustment per channel, the unique combining of shelf and bell curves, a “detail” function, and much more.

The Opal collection includes two plugins. One is the standard version of the Hi-Def 55, as originally designed by John Oram. The second one provides extended functionality by adding a preamp input trim, mid/side, pan, and spread controls, as well as an independent channel output control.

John Oram is a legendary name in the electronic musical industry, whose designs have been nominated for 23 Technical Excellence & Creativity Awards. His creative talents as a musician, producer, touring drummer, mixing and technical engineer have lead him to work with some of the most important bands and audio companies from the early 60s onward, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Vox and Trident Audio.

As part of the Vox team he was the designer of the Wah-Wah, The Fuzz Box and Continental Organ, leading to the circuitry design for the VOX AC50 and the Super Beatle amplifiers.

John Oram joined Trident Audio Developments in 1972, where he worked as a designer for 14 years. It was during this time that he created some of the industry’s best-known classic desks, such as the Trident Series 80/80B/80C console.

Under the umbrella of his namesake brands, Oram Professional Audio and Oram Consultancy, he was responsible for the design of world-class film screening rooms, as well as equipment for a laundry list of Oscar-winning productions, including Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, Pearl Harbor, Titanic, and others.

In 2008 Oram was nominated for a Technical Grammy Award, and legendary recording producer and engineer Al Schmitt had this to say: "John is one of the best design engineers in the business. A big part of my sound on my records, I attribute to John.”