Best 'transforming' effects - additive, spectral

[fbrickley]

Hi all

I'm a big fan of synths and effects that can take a 'normal' sound and transform it in real-time into something else, and I'm looking for whatever are the 'best', most interesting, or most unique - what are your favourites?

to give you an example of what I mean - I absolutely love additive synthesis where you can create a normal square or saw wave, and with a turn of a knob the partials slide out of harmony with each other, or fold round, or something else, and then slide right back into place.

I have VSTs like NI Razor, Arturia Pigments, Izotope Iris, and as potential purchases I have my eye on Melda MMorph and MCharacter, and Unfiltered Audio's SpecOps, and I would love to get hold of a Mac VST of Fruity's Harmor or Apple/CamelAudio's Alchemy for their resynthesis capabilities. what else would you recommend?

[plexuss]

Oh my, Ina GRM tools are my go-to's for that kind of thing. many different algorithms and processes to play with!

https://inagrm.com/en/store

[fbrickley]

thanks for this - these look vaguely familiar but i’d completely forgotten about them. they actually also reminded me of the free soundmagic spectral plugins, so thanks for that too!

what are your favourite grm plug-ins?

[CinningBao]

The old Anarchy Effects are still available on archive.org here
https://web.archive.org/web/20180824015 ... ythms.com/

scroll down until you see Corkscrew

I've got the GRM stuff and I always end up in Evolution and Grinder. Fusion is a weird FFT buffer thing where can set up delay lines in specific frequency zones, and kind of slant the 'read' head to skew all the frequencies in time. It's pretty unique and cool

[plexuss]

Also https://www.soundhack.com/ looks interesting. I've only demoed and played with the free ones.

[fairlyclose]

Also https://www.soundhack.com/ looks interesting. I've only demoed and played with the free ones.

I never had much success with the soundhack fx but I use the GRM quite a bit.
For the OP - GRM are often on sale and the sales are worth waiting for if you can. I find most are pretty useful particularly when you start using their internal automation and being subtle rather than full on destruction (which they do very easily)

I dont have the Spaces bundle but have the others

[thecontrolcentre]

Some of my favorite "transformative" vst effects ...

Output Portal & Movement
Unfiltered Audio SpecOps, Triad & Byome
Devious Machines Infiltrator & Texture
Freakshow Industries Mishby, Dumpster Fire & Backmask
Inear Display Amalgam & Litote
Ju-X Frosting
Sugar Bytes Turnado, WOW2 & Effectrix
Thenatan Vybz
Glitchmachines Convex & Cryogen
Audio Damage BigSeq2, Replicant2 & Automaton

There are a ton of wacky free max devices available if you have Live ...

[cron]

I think someone said they'd discontinued or dropped support for the VST version (I haven't looked tbh,) but Harmor is the king of transforming samples.

It's not really an effect in that you need to load your sample into it, but that non-real time aspect means you can whip around the time structure of your sound as well as mangling the frequencies.

You can even process sounds visually in image synthesis mode by copying your sample, pasting it into something like Photoshop or GIMP, and then bring it back into Harmor - all without ever exporting any files - two-click copy/paste stuff in both directions.

It's an obscenely powerful synth.

[Spring Goose]

I think someone said they'd discontinued or dropped support for the VST version (I haven't looked tbh,) but Harmor

That is correct.

[MogwaiBoy]

https://rastsound.com/downloads/transformer/

[morphex]

There's the classic PaulXStretch plugin at https://xenakios.wordpress.com/paulxstretch-plugin/ for extreme time-stretching and other spectral processing. Instant soundscape machine!!

Full Bucket Music has entered Grain Strain for free in the KVR Developer Challenge 2021 https://www.fullbucket.de/music/grainstrain.html It features "flexible grain-looping with sync-to-host options" and "grain vocoder".

FKFX Obvious Filter morphs and turns your audio into a rhythmic workout. You can download it for free here https://www.patreon.com/posts/fkfx-obvious-for-51762779 or you can donate to their Patreon for updates and more presets.

FKFX Influx is a "sequenced resonator distortion plugin" that is also free and part of the KVR Developer Challenge 2021 https://www.patreon.com/posts/fkfx-influx-free-53221341

I would also agree with any recommendations for Infiltrator, Portal, Movement, Thermal, GRM Tools, any of the Unfiltered Audio stuff and Boom Library's EnRage multi-effect powerhouse. I know these aren't all exactly spectral processors but they are effective at transforming your audio into something totally different and they are worth checking out.

[Ah_Dziz]

Spec Ops is amazing. You also can't go wrong with the GRM tools. I use evolve from them a good bit and Pitchaccum, but all the stuff I've tried/ own from them is very good stuff. I am a fan of the Melda plugins in general and the spectral ones especially. MMorph Mtransform and MSpectraldelay are all really fun for severe sound processing.

[dubguy99]

I love spectral processing, additive and resonators!

https://rekkerd.org/dtblkfx-fft-based-m ... r-windows/

This is ancient freeware with a whacky GUI but it's still one of the best spectral effects. It can do things that even SpecOps can't do.

BYOME/Triad by Unfiltered Audio can also get crazy. It has a resonater and comb filter.

If you use Live, the IrcaMax M4L devices have amazing cutting edge spectral effects.

Moodal by Tritik is a complex spectral resonator effect.

In Softube Modular and VCV rack, you can get equivalents or emulations of the Buchla spectral filterbank, Mutable Instruments Rings and the 4ms resonator.

[k2006]

Dtblkfx 64bit available here,
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=489398

[fbrickley]

wow, thanks all, there’s a lot of stuff to check out here. looks like i’m not going to be making much actual music for while!