Recording - August 2017 - 48

Plug-In Outlet
Output Movement
By Mike Metlay

Output has made a big name for itself delivering
fascinating virtual instruments based on the Native
Instruments Kontakt sample platform. Movement is
Output's first plug-in, and it shows the same sort of
fascinating innovation in a multieffects processor.
Movement is described as a "rhythm processor." It's
designed to add a variety of rhythmic elements to any
audio content, synchronized to the tempo of your DAW.
That simple explanation doesn't do justice to the wide
variety of sonic tools available to the user, ranging from
the subtle to the completely mind-bending.

The source of Movement

Once you've installed Movement, it's available as a
conventional plug-in for the DAW of your choice. It presents
you with a unified interface to get started, with several subpages for its many functions. Movement is very clearly laid
out; you can figure out almost everything on your own in only
a few minutes, at least for the purposes of getting started.
Have a look at the screenshots and follow along.
Audio signal flow in Movement starts with the signal being
split and routed to two separate Engines. After processing,
the two Engines' outputs are summed together, along with
any dry signal from the wet/dry balance control at the top
of the screen.
Each Engine is a multieffects processor with up to four FX
slots. Each of these slots can hold one of six basic effects:
Delay, Filter, EQ, Reverb, Distortion, and Compressor. The
engine also has overall controls for Volume and Pan, plus a
stereo level meter and power button. You'll note that these little
buttons are everywhere in Movement; as you're building up
complex patches, it can be easy to get lost, so you can quickly
mute or bypass subsections to hear what everything's doing.
Here's where the rhythm processing comes in: each
Engine also has two Rhythms, which are synchronized modulation sources for any parameters you might wish to control
in time with your music. A Rhythm can be a step sequence, an
LFO, or an audio sidechain input from another signal in your
DAW. By setting various effects parameters to be controlled
by the Rhythms, a wide variety of interesting motion effects
can be created.

Going deeper

The real delight of Movement isn't just that there's a lot of
available power under the hood, but that it's kept so simple
and intuitive to use that the plug-in never feels confusing or
opaque. It's always easy to see what you're doing and how
it affects the audio, thanks to all the graphic feedback in the
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RECORDING August 2017

user interface. (There's a low CPU mode that turns off all
the animations while leaving audio alone, if you're running
Movement on an older DAW.)
Selecting FX is as easy as clicking on an empty slot and
choosing one of the available FX types. You can't use an FX
more than once in an Engine, but they can be in any order
and can always be removed or muted as needed. When you
click on the FX, its parameters appear at the bottom of the
screen as a row of knobs. These aren't super-complicated
effects; none of them has more than ten parameters, and most
have only six to eight. They sound really good, but left to
themselves, none would win a popularity contest for Most
Interesting Audio Processor. That, of course, is before the
Rhythms get involved...
The key to Movement is attaching a Rhythm to a parameter
to modulate it. How do you do this? Drag and drop a Rhythm
to the parameter knob that you want to control. Bang, done.
You can then scale the amount of modulation with the grey arc
under each knob. It's just that easy!
Each of the Rhythm types has enough parameters to make
things really interesting without being overwhelming. It's
easy to select the number of steps in the step sequencer
and control whether each step returns to zero or goes from
value to value; there are 12 useful waveshapes in the LFO,
from a basic sine wave to complex or randomized patterns.
In each case, the time subdivision can be set along with
swing amount, and an interesting control called Flux lets
one Rhythm control the other for more intricate possibilities.
Waveform phase and chaos let you dial in the exact effect
you want, and the envelope follower that turns an external
audio signal into a sidechain input is easy to tweak for
the best results (although it helps to feed the sidechain a
relatively simple and clean beat rather than anything textural
or droney).

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2017