Ugo has released Ironhead, a "Morphing Percussion Synth", and Tunguska, a "Morphing Multi Effect". Both are available in VST format for Windows and cost $40 for the pair.
Ironhead
Ironhead is a "Morphing Percussion Synth". Its interface has been built to provide a simple set of controls that make it fast, easy, and fun to use. Ironhead allows you to create a "cool and interesting" percussion sound quickly, without having to get too caught up in all the synth programming details of how to get there.
Synthetic Junkyard Percussion: Ironhead has been designed to provide sounds that will likely be different from the other percussion sources you have, increasing the chances of you finding something that will spice up your tracks, while minimizing the chances of overlap with your existing synths and samples. This lets Ironhead work well not just as a primary percussion source, but also as a secondary source for layering with loops and other drum synths. Ironhead's sound is best thought of as synthetic junk percussion and the 15 instruments in Ironhead's kit are named after the types of sounds they produce. Ironhead can go from familiar drum/percussion sounds to wild sweeps, thumps, knocks, smacks, clangs, and bangs...
Morphing & Variance: To add further life and movement to your grooves, Ironhead offers two types of modulation: Morphing and Variance.
Ironhead's Morphing allows you morph, or switch, between two different control states for each instrument. The results can be anything from just a quick jump to a different sound, to subtle shifts and sweeps, to wild experimental sounds. Morphing can be turned on or off individually for each drum and the morphing can be controlled via BPM synced LFO, the mod wheel on your keyboard / MIDI CC, VST automation, or just with your mouse.
The Variance feature allows you to set an adjustable degree of random variation in the sound. This feature is independently available for each instrument in the kit and, with this function turned on, each hit to that drum will sound randomly different. Lower settings provide subtle variations that are useful for making grooves feel less repetitious, while higher settings can provide dramatically different sounds that are fun for fills and experimental purposes.
Outputs: If you require more sound shaping than what is provided onboard, Ironhead also has 4 stereo outputs that are assignable per instrument, allowing you to run specific pieces of the kit through whatever external processing you want. Ironhead comes bundled with Tunguska, a morphing multi effect that was built especially for use with Ironhead.
Tunguska
Tunguska's two key components are its granulator and filter, both of which can be morphed between two states, allowing you to bring additional movement to your grooves.
Tunguska's effect can range from subtle tweaks to your sound, to mutating it into something completely different from the original. Tunguska can be useful as a master effect for the whole kit, or on specific percussion sounds sent to Tunguska from Ironhead's additional outputs.
Features:
- Interface style of Ironhead.
- Pitch shifting granulator (morphable).
- Resonant filter (morphable).
- Distortion.
- Down-sampling.
- Dual delay (BPM sync with dotted notes).
- Morphing (controlled by LFO, VST automation, MIDI).
- Envelope Follower.
- Stereo signal path.
- 32 presets.
Ironhead and Tunguska are sold together for $40. Ugo also offers a bundle that, in addition to Ironhead and Tunguska, includes the multi effect Metallurgy for a total of $50. Current registered users of Metallurgy will receive a discount offer via email for Ironhead+Tunguska.
