Droplet $29

Web ww.sinevibes.com Format Mac, AU

The latest Mac-only creative effect plugin from Artemiy Pavlov produces “a sound similar to drops of rain or small particles falling onto a surface”. Droplet routes the input signal through a series of 24 delay lines, the timing and panning of which are randomised when the plugin is instantiated. The amount of randomisation brought to bear is determined by the Deviation and Stereo knobs, the first offsetting the base delay time, which ranges from 20-100ms; the second keeping all delays (“drops”) dead centre at 0% and placing each one anywhere between hard left and hard right at 100%.

Further to that, the Feedback control pushes the output back through the input for extension of the delay tail at lower values and infinite sound-on-sound looping at 100%, with an exponential volume curve preventing excessive build-up. Unusually, Droplet does away with the usual dry/wet mix control in favour of a dry signal level control, and Send and Return level knobs enabling the dry signal to be ‘spun’ into the delay through live or automated manipulation of the Send.

Filtering is on hand, too, in the form of the Damping knob, which dials in a 6dB/octave low-pass when turned anticlockwise from centre, and a high-pass clockwise. And finally, a sine wave LFO can be applied to the delay time of each drop, cleverly inverting its phase on consecutive drops for, as Sinevibes perfectly put it, a “washed-out chorus effect”.

Droplet isn’t hugely configurable as delay plugins go, but it’s all about the number of delay lines it generates and their randomness. The chaotic nature of its timing suits it to the creation of spacey delay ‘clouds’, expansive blurring drones, and dense, unreal reverbs, rather than rhythmically precise echoes, and it does all of those things rather brilliantly, making it a unique and affordable addition to any electronic producer’s sonic toolbox.

n8/ 10n