In this article and video, Italian pianist, composer and sound engineer Alessandro Panella delves into Butterfly Effect – a new ambient reverb plugin that purports to dynamically respond to your playing, generating beautiful, emotive pads from melodic instruments. Over to Alessandro…
At this time of year, with Black Friday promotions firing at us from all directions, the urge to look for another plugin can be extremely compelling. However, as most of the products we find are new instances of emulations of the “usual suspects”, new channel strips or super-detailed reverbs, the choice gets increasingly difficult.
Fortunately, this year blesses us with a sort of “reverb with a twist” plugin, which promises to open new dimensions in the creation of evolving ambient effects: SoundBetter Butterfly Effect.
What Is It?
As described by the developer, Butterfly Effect is an ambient reverb plugin that can create evolving atmospheres starting from sparse arrangements, in order to convey emotions to be felt more than heard.
Far from being a usual reverb plugin with some extra features, Butterfly Effect offers three “reverb” engines (named Shimmer, Blur and Space) with very distinct sounds and uses, ranging from the creation of sparkles and crystals, to ever-moving patterns of notes immersed into a deep halo, to wide and open reverberations that can take us where no man has gone before.
All these flavours are complemented by some useful bonus features, namely Hi and Low Pass filters, a very interesting Motion section (more on that later) with chorus and tape flutter, and compression, that come in handy for the creation of unique soundscapes.
In Use
The first thing that I noticed after loading the plugin is the GUI, which comes in a light and elegant colour combination, with simple but well-designed controls. The interface is “busy” but not cluttered, at least according to my tastes, and it can be easily resized up by dragging the lower-right corner of the interface, without losing definition.
The second thing that caught my attention is the fact that the controls do not give a numerical feedback, apart from some simple static labelling, and I believe this is a winning choice, as (at long last!) it helps the users avoid getting distracted by numbers and concentrate on the sound.
The third pleasant feature I found is the possibility to drag the potentiometers horizontally, vertically or diagonally, which is not obvious in many plugins…
The lower part of the GUI includes two graphical representations of the plugin activity: on the left we have a static drawing of the three engines, while in the centre a “moving lava-like blob” tries to describe visually the sound being produced (these are the only “bells and whistles” of this plugin, if you understand what I mean).
Sound
The presets are very representative of the potential of Butterfly Effect, all the features are well represented and the names give easily understandable clues about what to expect in terms of sound. Programming is very straightforward, as the controls are clear (and, if needed, some useful suggestions appear under the blob if we hover over a specific parameter).
The sounds of the three engines are very distinct and each engine has its dedicated mix knob that allows to isolate a single engine or to mix them to the user’s preferences and needs. The Particles section can be very fun to play with thanks to the possibility to create “crystals” of the notes being played and/or add a touch of reverse effect, maybe with some saturation.
I found the Blur section a little tougher to tame, as the feedback control can easily yield extremely long and dense haloes which risk to, well.. “blur too much” the patterns generated from the notes we are playing. My advice is as follows: play few notes and experiment with the controls (pattern and density), setting mix to maximum and feedback at about 30-50%.
The Motion section is particularly interesting, as it can inject more life in the notes coming post the Blur section. The Sweep/Note control creates (obviously!) frequency sweeps that can inject into pad sounds; this control can be automatic (with lengths defined in bar numbers) or manual, or it can accentuate specific notes. This parameter can be assigned to a physical controller and a MIDI CC, but the procedure is rather quirky: you have to create a MIDI track, set its MIDI out to Butterfly Effect, record engage the MIDI track, right-click the control on the interface and then turn the physical knob. In my opinion, a direct “Learn MIDI CC” command would have been a better solution, in terms of user experience. This section offers also a chorus and a very subtle tape flutter effect, which can be used to further customize the behaviour of the sweeps.
The last engine, Space, sounds more like a standard reverb, with controls for the levels of early and late reflections. What I found really interesting is the possibility to accentuate the duration of the low or high frequency content, as it facilitates the creation of specific soundscapes that may be needed in various contexts.
The Compression section is very comprehensive, including three modes of operation: ducking, sidechain and press (i.e., full signal compression). All of these functions are self-explanatory, but I must say that the sidechain mode is really good, both in terms of sound and easiness of use.
Take a listen to some of my audio demos below…
Conclusions
Being a pianist/composer, I’m continuously looking for new sound palettes that may help me in my job by allowing me to develop “my sound”, something that characterises me and my music in a personal way, beside the standard language of music.
I think that Butterfly Effect will be one of the tools I will resort to whenever I need to create and convey emotions without being too intrusive or didascalic in musical terms (using the standard music cliché repertoire that we all know and have as composers).
I think that the real strength of the plugin resides in the crafting of piano sounds in ways that can otherwise become very time consuming. The possibility to add a reverse effect and the particles engine make Butterfly Effect highly appealing to sound designers and film composers who are constantly required to be recognisable but original, while following the “emotional noir” trend that seems to rule modern film soundtracks.
Let me finish with two questions….
Did we need another reverb plugin (albeit very unusual)? I would say yes, precisely because of its very unusual, musical and emotional character.
Is this plugin for everyone? It depends. First of all, it depends on your need to have a plugin which is dedicated to one specific task, namely sound design. Second, it depends on the user’s ability and willingness to take time to experiment as, in spite of being of very immediate use, this plugin is deep in terms of sonic possibilities and needs some time to be adequately mastered.
Check out our video walkthrough below as well as some audio examples created while exploring this plugin.
SoundBetter Butterfly Effect is available now for just $74 in the Black Friday sale until 30th November (normally $149).