Seen from a technical point of view, Ronin is a multi effect built around two independent delays, two filters and two saturators. There are two LFOs and one envelope follower that can be used to modulate your sound in various ways. Although Ronin isn't really a difficult plugin, this was the first time I had to really read the manual for an Audio Damage product.

The reason for this is that the signal path in Ronin is not fixed, but open for the user to decide. This radically expands the use of the plugin but also it's complexity.

Delay Godzilla
Let's start with one of the real highlights of Ronin – the delay. The first encounter reveals an unsynchronized delay that spans from two milliseconds to one whole second. Delay fetishists – like myself – who instantly examines the lowest possible settings might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The three lowest settings for the delay is: 2, 15 and 27 milliseconds.

While this certainly is correct, this is just a part of Ronins capabilities. The delay can be set in four different modes: 1x (normal), 2x (double delay time), 4x (quadruple delay time) and 8x (eight times longer delay time). So taking into consideration the four mode buttons, our delay suddenly spans from two milliseconds up to eight whole seconds with the 8x mode activated.

While this is jolly good news for all lovers of silly long delays – the situation for us who like to create our own modulation effects and create fake doubled voices with the help of extremely small delays is still quite limited – right? Not so. Just the lowest setting for the normal delay time spawns three other small settings. In total: 2, 4, 8 and 16 milliseconds. Things are indeed starting to look bright again, but put your sunglasses on – we are not nearly finished yet.

The Fine parameter takes any delay setting and multiplies it with a decimal value from 0.50 up to 1.50. In other words, you can subtract down to 50 percent of any given delay time – or add up to fifty percent. So from our three lowest delay times (2, 4 and 8 milliseconds) we can basically get any of those cool ultra low delay times. And when we're at it – the maximum delay time just got bumped up to twelve full seconds.

One might ask, why Audio Damage chooses to split up a delay into two sub-functions by using different modes and fine tunings. My personal answer to this is rhythm. Instead of having an one kilometer long delay fader – this method puts the focus on the rhythm of the delay. After you've found a foundation you like, you can quickly experiment with different variations – just by pressing a few buttons or dragging a slider. It is very very clever.

Crunchy filter

Although the filter is of the multimode type and allows the user to set it to a handful of different filter shapes, each and every filter is limited to one steepness. While with most plugins you can usually switch between 12 dB/octave or 24 dB/octave – but not with Ronin. There is only one setting for the steepness, which might be a slight limitation for some sound designers. All filters have the 12 dB/decibel steepness, except the lowpass which is a Moog-type Ladder filter with the steepness of 24 decibel/octave. Personally I am not a big fan of the classic Moog filter – but the Audio Damage adaptation is good. Very good, in fact. It has a pleasant crunchy character with the resonance set two thirds up. Reason for this is that the filter lacks the feedback that gives the its screechy sound. The resonance can be pushed to self-oscillate if that rubs your kettle.

That Ronin isn't capable of switching between different modes of steepness isn't really a big loss. My personal experience is that there are very few filter plugins that handles both two-pole filters and four-poles in a good way. More often than not, one is way better than the other. One of the few really good ones is John Bowens emulated Curtis filters – both the two and four poles are extremely tasty, and is just about the only thing I miss from the Creamware Scope platform.

The saturators are based on a soft clipping algorithm – which in the world of plugins doesn't say much. In the case of Ronin we are not talking about gentle tube-clipping emulation - the sound is distinct and quite aggressive at the maximum setting.

The routing matrix
The delays, filters and saturators are all controlled by two modulation matrixes. The modulation matrixes – or to be precise, the routing matrix is the heart of Ronin, and is nothing I've ever seen in a effect plug before and is the most complex part of Ronin. If you are used to tweak knobs mindlessly until you stumble across something that sounds interesting – Ronin will probably not going to be your best friend.

Go out. Make a cup of Mr Reardons famous java, splash yourself in the face with cold water and go back.

Working with Ronin doesn't mean you have to have a plan of any sort – you can gladly make up your idea as you are moving along. But a sharp, focused mind will most definitely, be rewarded.

The routing matrix is extremely powerful and once you got the hang of it, it's quite fun. You can basically connect all the different parts of Ronin in any way you like. And in any order.

Not before long you start to think like... first I want a short delay going on this kick, but with an almost endless feedback tail. Then I would like to filter out the low frequencies of the delay slightly to take away the mud. Then I bring the whole lot through a saturator to give it some egde. To avoid going into white noise-land we assign an LFO to modulate a second filter and bring in some rhythmical movement to the sound. Finally we top it all with another delay. No... wait. Let's add some extra saturation. There. Voilá. Beautiful brutality.

Working with the routing grid is not difficult, but requires attention and a steady hand. Before I got the hang of it, Ronin quietly ignored my pathetic attempts until I gave the manual a good read-through.

If you think of the horizontal axis as inputs and the vertical axis as an output, you can pretty much figure out how to route the signal in any way you like. Working with the modulation grid is other hand very easy. You select a modulator, a destination and the strength of the modulation.

There are lots of small details that greatly expands the possibilities in Ronin. A couple of examples: You can morph the shape of the LFO with the shape slider. Apart from the normal filter modes in the multi mode filter: lowpass, hipass, band pass and notch, Audio Damage invented a few variations: lowpass+notch, lowpass+bandpass and bandpass+hipass.
The delay include a reverse function, a looper that continuously loops the delay and also a kill switch that can be used to stop the feeding of the looped delay.

Once you get the hang of Ronin, you open a flood gate of ideas and you start working with sound design in a very creative way. If, as they say, Tetris make gamers smarter, then I'm sure Ronin will improve the creative thinking of producers. But there is a flip side to all this. As you get going for real – you want more. And more. And bloody more. You start wishing there were a Rough Rider compressor in there, a couple of distortions from Kombinat and of course a big slice of stuttering Replicator. And. Etc. If I were the author of Ronin, it would probably be big as a refrigerator from the 1950s and quite impossible to get the hang of.

No demo? No demo!
For people who are not familiar with the “no demos” policy of Audio Damage, I'd like to say a few words on how it works. In contrast to many other developers, Audio Damage does not have any demo versions of their plugins. Instead, they have a 30 day return policy. You buy the plugin and
if you aren't happy with the plugin within 30 days they will refund your money – no questions asked. And no questions asked is really no questions asked. I have done this myself and instead of getting a bunch of marketing emails asking about why I weren't satisfied etc – they just gave me back the money.
Dealing with its customers, Audio Damage is a nice and laid back company. No matter how many products they make. No matter how much or little you buy from them, they won't waste any of your time with unique product offers, information about their new releases or in general fill your mailbox with click-here-to-buy-our-stuff-now mails. In fact – I've been on their mailing list for years and I never ever got a mail from them. Never.

Conclusion
The old saying that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts, neatly sums up what Ronin is all about. The keyword is synergy and while Ronin indeed is capable of sounds from the subtle and normal all the way to shocking sonic mayhem.

Personally, I found Ronin to work best on sounds with not so much activity. A kick, a slow hihtat loop, a few bass drops, an isolated sound effect and so on. During while I was writing this review, I made a bunch of presets that are intended to be used in this fashion (you can click here to download them).

After using Ronin for a couple of weeks the only things I miss about it has to do with the saturation. While the saturation itself does what its intended to, a second flavor of distortion would drastically expand the the use and sound of Ronin. And it would be fantastic to be able to modulate the saturation with an LFO.

If you are looking for a plug that will give you instant cool effects in form of presets – Ronin will certainly do that, but is like buying a Jeep coated in Swarovski crystals. Very cool – but apart from you feeling like a playa for a couple of weeks, it's pointless and is ultimately a waste. Ronin is a toolbox you should pull out when you feel your ordinary delays or modulation plugs doesn't tickle your senses any more.