![]() The brilliantly conceived sequencers make designing elaborate patterns and sweeps fast, fun and as microscopic a process as you want it to be, and plentiful randomisation systems provide at-a-click inspiration, should you need it.Īs the name suggests, Looperator is geared up first and foremost for the glamourising of loops, but there’s no end to the unique one-shot FX and ear candy you can get by feeding pads, vocals, guitars, synth lines or anything else into it, whether you apply it in real time, or render its output for import into a sampler or direct placement on an audio track.Īn ear candy staple in dance and pop music, risers are used to transition between sections of a track (from the verse into the chorus, or the chorus into the drop, say) for those epic ‘hands in the air’ moments, and AIR’s eponymous plugin puts everything you need to build them – and more besides – in a single virtual instrument. ![]() Sugar Bytes’ spectacular device utterly transforms any audio signal sent its way using five step sequenced effects – Envelope, Filter, Loop and two multi-effects modules (each offering a choice of Delay, Reverb, Distortion, Phaser, Vinyl, Reverb, etc) – and a real-time slicer. There are copious viable plugin effects on the market for turning existing sounds into compelling ear candy, but Looperator is surely one of the best. Powered by a 7GB multisample bank, this one enables 15 vintage game console and home computer sound chips to be mixed and matched across up to four mixed layers, and features arpeggiation and sequencing, onboard effects and more. If the relatively involved workflow and unashamedly geeky GUI styling of Plogue’s synths seem like overkill for incidental FX creation, Impact Soundworks’ Super Audio Cart Kontakt Player library makes for a perfectly streamlined alternative. Plogue’s Chipsounds, for example, accurately models an extensive array of classic 8-bit sound chips, as used by Nintendo, Atari et al in their earliest machines, and including the legendary SID chip from the Commodore 64 while their Chipsynth MD resurrects (and improves on) the FM-based Yamaha YM2612 found in the 16-bit Sega Mega Drive. ![]() The gritty, overtly digital tones of retro games consoles and computers have long been an ear candy go-to in contemporary music production, and today you can get them via some superb software emulation instruments. And if the idea of a technical middle ground somewhere between sample libraries and synths appeals, Ujam’s Usynth range serves up a wealth of adaptable and very high-quality prefab sounds. ![]() Perhaps the last word in power synths, Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2 is ridiculously well equipped for this sort of thing, but there are plenty of equally qualified alternatives at much lower price points to check out too, including Xfer Records Serum, Synapse Audio Dune 3 and Native Instruments Massive X. Although analogue emulations (Minimoogs, etc) can be highly effective if you know how to appropriately wrangle their elemental sine, square, triangle and saw waveforms, we’d recommend going for a wavetable- or sample-based synth in preference if you can, as their raw oscillators constitute far more interesting and empowering starting points.īeyond that, you want your FX synth to include lots of modulation options (LFOs and multi-stage envelopes, most importantly), and, ideally, a healthy rack of onboard effects. The rich palette of endlessly malleable tonal colours provided by any high-end synthesiser makes fine source material for dazzling ear candy and FX.
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