Recording - September 2011 - 39

can be pitch-shifted or even reversed. The Freqverb pitch-shifting reverb has to be heard to be believed! Similarly, the Phase modules have nothing to do with your average phaser; they can randomize phase information, cause it to change over time, or invert it with differing amounts of inversion depending on harmonic content. That last one, the Phlip module, is one of my favorites, producing some very beautiful evolving sounds when even harmonics are selected for inversion. The Loudness modules have a similar twist to them, applying compression and expansion in the frequency domain, reducing noise or boosting low level signals. These modules can act something like limiters or noise gates, but their behavior can be unpredictable and musically interesting because they don’t analyze signals the same way as a conventional dynamics processor. The last groups of modules, Combine and Miscellaneous, are the weirdest of all; they force the input and sidechain signals to interact in all sorts of strange ways, or offer effects like harmony generation or frequency quantization. There’s a frequency shifter for metallic sounds, a vocoder effect called Talking Wind, modules that cause parts of the input’s and sidechain’s frequency content to switch places (!), modules that transfer the overall frequency character of the sidechain to the main input, and more. I got a headache just trying to describe what Shapeless and Inserter did, so at this point I’m afraid you’re on your own...! Last but not least, a number of the modules are available as PVD versions. These modules convert

audio with phase vocoding to get more accurate measurement of frequencies and produce more smooth-sounding (or just different-sounding) results; to use them, you have to insert a special pair of modules that “start” and “stop” the PVD conversion, and put them in between the two, so a single PVD module takes up three slots of your available five. The resulting sounds can be quite beautiful, though, so it’s worth experimenting. In use and final thoughts There’s a free demo version of SpectrumWorx available from the Little Endian website; it has limitations on its audio output level and you can’t save patches, but otherwise it gives you a chance to try everything SpectrumWorx can do. And you’ll need to try this plug-in yourself; no descriptions of the scary, messed-up, incredibly cool sounds I came up with in my tests could possibly do it justice. I can report that SpectrumWorx loaded and worked without a hitch on my test machine, was very thrifty of CPU load (never above 11% no matter how hard I tried), and never distracted me from the process of creating some of the freakiest sounds I’ve ever made with software. SpectrumWorx is fascinating, absorbing, and utterly unlike anything else out there; check out the audio examples and demo version at the website and see if it gets your attention. If you think there’s really nothing new under the sun where audio plug-ins are concerned, prepare to get knocked off your feet. Mike Metlay (mike@recordingmag.com) would like to thank Darrell Burgan of Spirit Canyon Audio for providing impulse responses for some of his audio tests. Delivery: Web download Formats: Windows XP SP2/Vista/7 VST; Mac OS X 10.5+ (Intel) VST Copy Protection: user keyfile License: single user/multiple computer installs if not used at once Documentation: PDF included with application (including demo version) Price: $119 for one OS, $149 for Windows+Mac versions bundled More from: Little Endian, www.littleendian.com

http://www.littleendian.com http://www.lynxstudio.com http://www.lynxstudio.com

Recording - September 2011

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