Audit: What Say Polyverse Manipulator Using Style?

Audit: What Say Polyverse Manipulator Using Style? 

State What? 

Controller is a vocal preparing module which incorporates various impacts. That number is ten, obviously. A large portion of these can be robotized, adjusted and controlled in different approaches to make a truly gigantic scope of mixes. Huge numbers of those combos will sound broken as f*ck, however that is a large portion of the good times.

Audit: What Say Polyverse Manipulator Using Style?

To truly comprehend everything about what this module can do we exceptionally prescribe some RTFM time. It dives deep. But on the other hand it's extremely simple to get extraordinary impacts out of the container and there's a lot of presets to kick you off. Pitch can be controlled solely by the dials (as sketched out beneath) or by a MIDI contribution to play your very own tunes or harmony movements. 

We should have a brisk gone through of what the impacts are.

Pitch Shifter – there’s a fairly self-explanatory knob here that shifts the pitch of the incoming signal. It’s using a granular based algorithm to change the pitch and there’s a handy little slider for setting the smoothness of the grains. Smoother grains sound more natural whilst less smooth grains result in that cool, gravelly robot voice that I love. You can also adjust the formant of the sound for more pitch bending and vowel altering effects.

Harmonic Shifter – harmonic shifting results in changes in timbre, without necessarily changing the pitch. To really know what you’re doing with this it is helpful to have some understanding of how harmonics work. Or you can just play it by ear and twiddle around to see what sounds you get. The results from this one vary greatly from practical to extreme alterations.

Grain Alternator – another complex bit of programming here works by “cutting individual cycles into overlapping grains, and shifting the pitch of individual cycles up and down alternatively”. I think I understand what that means… but what it sounds like is a kinda shimmery, watery effect that’s not far from a good old-fashioned Dalek voice.

Further to the pitch adjusting controls there are a few awesome non-pitch related effects to go through.

Smear – Making use of the granular processing again, Smear warms the sound by looping and crossfading grains. At low levels this sounds a bit like a drunk robot. At higher levels the original context is lost in a blur… great for creating new, evolving ambient sounds.

Stereo – This is a mono-compatible stereo widener that widens the stereo in a mono-compatible fashion. And it does it good. (Note that this effect is available as a free standalone plugin: Wider from Polyverse)

Detune – is a granular based detune/chorus effect.

That pretty much covers the effects themselves. There are also a bunch of global parameters that allow you set; the MIDI control to mono, poly or off (off still sends MIDI signals to the modulators, which we’ll get to shortly), the pitch detection rage, parameter value snapping, gating, glide and dry/wet controls. Once again, I recommend hitting the manual for the details on how these all work.

We are the Mods

As if that wasn’t enough audio manipulatory shenanigans to pack into one plugin, there’s more. You can add extra factors of control to your controllers by using up to four additional modulators.

Did I mention that you might wanna take a bit of a look at the manual?

You can jump in the deep-end an get results but you’ll be missing out on some of the many intricacies available if you don’t do your homework here. Here’s the basics. There are five types of modulator available; Meta Knob, Follower, ADSR, MIDI and Sequencer. The Meta Knob allows you to link multiple parameters to one dial so you can adjust them all simultaneously. The Follower converts the source amplitude into a modulation signal (using this on a voice to control pitch has some actually hilarious results!). ADSR uses a configurable ADSR envelope to control whatever you want. MIDI converts MIDI messages into modulator signals. Finally, there’s a fully customisable Sequencer which allows you to use preset sequence shapes or simply draw your own. When modulators are activated, corresponding coloured dots appear on effect each dial. the dots can be dragged to set how each modulator affects that particular dial from -100% to 100%. Note that you can also modulate each modulator by any other modulator (coloured dots appear either side and below the modulator controls) leading to even more complex modulation possibilities.

If that’s not enough modulation for you then I’m afraid you can’t be helped.

How does it sound…?

Terrible Or amazing.

Or completely unexpected… and everything in between.

There are so many combinations that it is, of course, entirely possible to make a horrible hash of it. But once you get the hang of what does what you can begin to hone in on the perfect effect for whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. Or just muck about and see what happens. In fact, the only thing missing is a randomisation button. Please add one of those to the next update, Polyverse! Ultimately, the programming behind this is solid and it won’t glitch or sound bad unless you make it do so. There’s at least a hundred presets in different styles to get you started too. On top of all this, it looks cool. The interface is as clearly laid out as it could be for something so potentially complex, and the design is clean and modern. I dig it. Maybe you will too?

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