Not long time ago, I was very close to sell my Virus TI and the only reason why I didn't was because I - by accident - routed it through my old Ensoniq DP/4 - it was like a door swung open in my face. What a sound! What possibilities! So let there be no doubt that a good effect can turn something meh into something hot. In some respects a good effect is more inspirational than a new sound library. A good effect can transform your old sounds, synthesizers and samples into something totally different.

But an effect can also complicate things and ultimately create a mushy soup of the material. It all depends on the usage and the effect. More complex effects are by nature more versatile but also more difficult to master. Yes, Native Instruments Reaktor. I am looking at you. I cannot think of any more advanced sound mangler than Reaktor and although I've had my share of fun with it - I honestly can't say much of the insane effects of the user library have ever ended up in any of my productions.
 

 

I think the now discontinued Native Instruments Kore Packs Deep Freq/Deep Transformations and Deep Reconstructions are all good examples on how effects in the higher level can be carried out in a fairly usable manner. Well written presets - but the control for the end user remains limited.

So when the kind people at Little Endian asked me to write about their latest version of the frequency sound mangler SpectrumWorx - I felt double to say the least. Damn intrigued about the possibilities and worried that this might be another of those theoretical plugs that score high on coolness but less on actual usability.

I am aware that I am not the main target for this kind of plug. Although I gladly explore odd sounds and atmospheres under my Bloatfield alter ego - there's no escape from the fact that I am a boy born and bred with pop. After all, I am Swedish.

But this also posed an interesting challenge. Creating weird sounds that sounds like mp3 compression from the year 2020 is easy, as is transforming a drum loop into something that sounds like birds song. So in this review I set out on a quest to get more usable results. And usable here is entirely from my own, personal perspective.

WHAT IS
SpectrumWorx describes itself to be a modular effect processor that works exclusively in the frequency domain, with two major features that makes it unique: its ability to manipulate the frequency domain and its modularity.

If this sounds like obscure tech-talk to you, then let me interpret it for you. Let's say you have a drum loop playing. This drum loop contains a kick and a snare. If you add a normal delay on this drum loop, the whole loop will get coated in the effect. The kicks as well as the snares. But with a frequency-domain tool such as SpectrumWorx, you can decide in which frequency to put the delay. In other words, it's totally possible to add a delay on just the higher end of the snare but leaving the low frequencies of the kick drum unaffected.

The idea is pretty cool and when you take into consideration that SpectrumWorx comes with over 50 effects - spanning from simple delays and pitch shifters to odd sound mangling functions I don't have words for - you probably get the picture. It works on a whole different level.

But as with all complex effects or modular synthesizer - there is always a tendency to make things overly complex - just for the sake of it. I remember when I was using the first generation of Nord Modulars and all those mad scientists were creating self-generating and self-playing sounds called Noodles. Cool, oh my yes. But usable? Not even on my horizon.

INTERFACE and ARCHITECTURE
The interface is a bit original but easy to get around. On the left side are the controls that operate on a global scale and on the right side is where you insert the modules and make the settings. Easy enough for anyone to understand. If I should look for things to complain about I think that maybe the interface could be a little bigger and maybe include some built in help or guidance about the modules. Maybe I spent too much time in Max 5 lately, but I really do appreciate its context sensitive menus and the possibility to call up unique examples. But those wishes entirely fall into the deluxe category and I don't let any shadow fall on SpectrumWorx not fir including this.

The routing of effects is always in serial and goes from left to right. On the left side there is a knob where you set how much of the whole chain should be applied to the signal. It's possible to let an lfo modulate the parameters. The lfo has a bunch of usable waveforms and it's possible to synchronize to the master tempo of your sequencer. A nice detail is that it's possible to set the starting point of the lfo - which makes it easy to fine tune modulations.

PRESETS
When starting out with the presets just to get a feel of SpectrumWorx capabilities, my worries was somewhat confirmed. SpectrumWorx 2 is like a huge candy store and you're that five year old with way too much money.
To be blunt - I didn't dig the presets at all. But that means very little. I hated the presets in Sugar Bytes Artillery/Effectrix as well - and everyone knows how damn useful those effects are. So, presets are what presets are, and the best way of getting to know SpectrumWorx is to take the long way around and build your stuff yourself.

EFFECTS
I won't go into detail with each and every effect - sorry. Since there are around 50 separate modules in SpectrumWorx, I decided to surf around and pick out what caught my attention in both good and bad ways.

Starting off on known ground - the Pitch Shifter does what you expect it to. It allows you to transpose the incoming material +- two octaves. As with any pitch shifter you can mess up the sound pretty well - and SpectrumWorx is no exception. It's worth keeping in mind that since SpectrumWorx is a realtime effect it cannot compete in quality with rendered pitch shifting algorithms and you get that typical sound you get with all tools based on fft analysis: slight phasing and a portion of the clarity gets lost.
 

The good news here is that you - just as with all fft tools - can set the resolution of SpectrumWorx, ie how many bands are getting used. Since this is my blog I am naturally speaking from a personal point of view, but I always find lower resolutions far better sounding than maxing out on the available bands. Even better news is that you can select different algorithms of the actual fft-analysis and this makes some quite cool changes the sound - way nastier with a fair dose of bit crusher and ring modulation in it. Really good stuff.

After spending lots of time with my Ensoniq DP/4 I know to to appreciate the modularity of SpectrumWorx, and one of my addictions is the chain distortion-compressor-distortion-compressor and seeing how close I could get on a similar chain was my next goal. While there are no compressors nor distortion units in the traditional sense in SpectrumWorx, I had to improvise.

One of my favourite modules quickly became the Exaggerator among the loudness modules that works great with drums. I cannot really say what it does, but set up an lfo modulating the intensity of the Exaggerator - add an external bus compressor - set it to stun and you have something really cool going.

Regarding traditional distortion - I cannot say I found anything directly similar among the modules. They all distort the sound in their own odd ways. The controls are generally quite unpredictable - turning a knob to the right produces a certain kind of result - and turning the same knob to the left produces a radically different result. It's worth knowing that this behavior is more or less the same with all the effects. It's like fumbling in the dark. You rarely know what will happen. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it most definitely demands a certain amount of patience and the will to explore the unknown. If you know what will happen when you slam a SSL bus compressor on top of a classic four-on-the-floor house beat, but when adding SpectrumWorx - it sounds like a cliché but the only thing you can expect is the unexpected.

When trying to recreate chains even remotely similar to what I use for my own processing, I realized that the modules lack controls of setting how much of the effect should be applied to the signal. There is a dry/wet knob but that only applies to the signal as a whole. In all fairness, there are a few modules that let you set the amount, but generally they don't.

One theoretical way to get around this is naturally to use several SpectrumWorx plugs after each other. But it doesn't work that well since each instance degrades the sound due to the fft-analysis and this degradation doesn't improve the sound with each instance.

For me personally, the fact that you cannot adjust how hard each module should affect the incoming signal limits the usage of SpectrumWorx quite a lot since the modules and effects of SpectrumWorx is everything except subtle.

Another thing that repeatedly entered my thoughts were a possibility to use different effects on different bands. For example - due to the whole process of Fourier-analysis many of the effects work very badly on bass sounds - they muddle up the spectrum. But applied to higher frequencies that effect is highly usable and can be twisted into many interesting forms. So apart from being able to individually set the dry/wet amount for each effect, it would be very useful to have a function to process different groups of bands with different effects. Again - some effects have a similar functionality, such as a special version of the pitch shifter that let's you change the pitch of a certain portion of the incoming frequencies and leaving the rest totally unchanged.

Interestingly enough, this and the possibility to set the amount of effect (in a dry/wet fashion) is planned for a future update. Apart from dry/wet functionality within each module, there will also be possibilities to get gain and adjust the start and stop frequencies.
 

TuneWorx and Reverser were two modules I liked a lot. Tuneworx can maybe be best described as an Auto Tune-esque function, forcing the audio stream into specified tones. Although Tuneworx coats the sounds with a layer of fft-blurriness, it's a quite cool function that can transform your tunes into new ideas. Reverser is a quite simple module that reverses the content in a interval set in milliseconds. Simple but very efficient.

CONCLUSION
Initially I felt I came off on the wrong foot with SpectrumWorx. I felt this was just another sound mangler that could turn any signal into a mushy mess that while cool, have little practical usage. But after spending a handful of focused quality hours with it - I must say that my initial thoughts were wrong. SpectrumWorx is a cool effect that can help you find new sounds from your existing ones. But getting good results, demands work from your part. This is not a click-and-go solution such as Native Instruments effects in the Deep series, and before you even start mucking about with it, you absolutely should spend the time to set up the resolution and algorithms used to get the sound you prefer.

I think SpectrumWorx is a very innovative and useful collection of effects. I think most people will find ways to improve their sounds with it. But it's not without faults. Although you cannot set how much individual effects should be applied to the signal, it's coming in a future update, as well as the possibility to specify modules to work within certain frequencies. I can easily see how well it can work for design of sounds to video games and bring atmospheric sounds into a totally new dimension. If you like where the fluff is - SpectrumWorx is your bag. For sharper and more precise sounds, it can help lay the foundation for goodness. But for that you need to work harder with it.


Sample Magic Electro
Web: www.littleendian.com
Price: 119 dollar
Good: easy to use, many innovative effects
Bad: no possibility to set dry/wet for individual modules (but this functionality is said to be coming)

Review copy: thanks to Little Endian for NFR!

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