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Since that’s a lot of potential modulation targets to ponder for a first timer, the plug-in offers five randomization options – audio effects, distortion, feedback, filter, and modulators. First off, modulators work on all of Rift’s knobs and sliders. The Modulation section is deep, to say the least. It’s accompanied by Resonance, Morph, and Filter Spread parameters. Then, the Cutoff parameter can be assigned to track MIDI input, quantized to notes and scales, or worked into standard frequency cutoff. For starters, it features 24 algorithms and 4 filter types: Basic, Morph, Peaking, and Harmonic.
#Izotope trash 2 vs fabfilter saturn for free#
The Filter section is evolved to the point of existing as a separate plug-in – Rift Filter Lite – which you can grab for free for a limited time. There are also HP/LP filters and a Mix slider. The feedback is further shaped by Amount, Distort, and Spread parameters. This way, you can play and modulate melodies that sound like nothing else. Using the Pitch Snap tool, you can quantize the Frequency parameter to notes and scales. Indeed, the feedback rate can be set in notes (MIDI input or specific notes), Hz (for comb filtering effects), milliseconds, and BPM-synced note divisions. Next up is the Feedback section where you can tap into stereo and ping-pong delays, distorted feedback, chorus and flanger-like modulation, resonators, and even frequency/note-tuned feedback. Additionally, the distortion engine can operate in Stereo, Wide Stereo (inverts the right channel bipolar processing), Mid/Side, Mid, and Side modes. You can also engage an output limiter with soft clipping. The Drive, Drive Boost, Trim, and Output controls (in Advanced View) enable immediate distortion shaping. You can also control the blend between waveforms + and -, with two modes: Hard (brighter, more defined) and Smooth (warmer, less defined). You can select the number of distortion stages – more stages equals more sauce at a greater CPU expense. There are 5 distortion types – waveshaping, wavefolding, noise, bit depth reduction and sample rate reduction. The processing chain begins with Distortion, where you can chose from 30 distortion algorithms for the positive and negative waveform halves. You can’t re-arrange the sections, but you can bypass them individually, and the filter has a Pre/Post switch for basic routing experiments. The latter pulls double duty, visualizing either the output signal and distortion scope (how the positive and negative waveform halves interact), or the filter’s frequency response (while in Play View). Rift is beaming audio through six sections, arranged near an oscilloscope-like analyzer. Dividing complex plug-ins into separate views like this is something developers should do more often – it makes everyone happy. You can access the same features in both views, it’s just that Advanced has all the cryptic parameters to explore. Advanced View is where you put on your lab coat and overshoes to enter the reactor control room. Play View contains the essential controls for dialing in the core sound. Styled in a sanitary blue and gray scheme slightly reminiscent of Trash 2, Rift features 2 main views: Play and Advanced. As far as I’m concerned, the envelope-pushing thinking behind Rift is only rivaled by Glitchmachines. Then, the robust modulation options (which include MIDI keyboard input) and esoterics like tuning the filter cutoff frequency to musical notes turn Rift into a distortion synthesizer, of sorts. As the first distortion plug-in designed around this largely unexplored concept, Rift is bound to sound fresh and different. You will find splitting waveforms like this in a handful of plug-ins, such as Fruity Waveshaper, and possibly some Eurorack modules. Bipolar processing is not a new and groundbreaking approach, but it’s exceedingly rare.
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The two are then mixed in different ways and modulated into a life of their own. Rift’s core identity is bipolar processing, a method for distorting and manipulating the positive (upper) and negative (lower) halves of a waveform separately. It feels “cutting-edge” like few plug-ins have in years past. Rift expertly takes the “distortion lab in your DAW” concept to 2021.
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Then Rift dropped and, a few minutes in, I already think iZotope can pass the torch to the Minimal guys. While FabFilter’s Saturn 2 comes close, I couldn’t really think of an immediate successor to it, and it’s been close to a decade. It has seemingly all the gritty analog and geeky digital nuances of the stuff combined into a tweaker’s paradise. Released in 2012 (which makes it ancient in plug-in years), iZotope’s Trash 2 is still something of a gold standard in sophisticated distortion plug-ins.