KLEVGRÄND KNORR

Bass-specific processing comes in many shapes and sizes, and this plugin offers a new way to breathe life into your bass sounds

When Klevgränd develop their innovative plugins, they quite often will do so with a pretty specific function in their minds – and their latest, Knorr (AU, VST, VST3, AAX, iOS), is no exception to that rule.

This ‘bass vitaliser’ is designed to add presence and edge to monophonic low frequency sources such as bass guitars, bass synths and kicks. It does this using their own proprietary algorithm which uses a combination of filtering, amplitude modulation and frequency modulation. Check the boxout below for a bit more insight into what it’s actually doing to the signal.

The interface is wonderfully simple (bear in mind it’s also available for iOS) and uses an XY pad for key parameters. The x-axis controls the processed frequency range (100Hz to 1kHz), while the y-axis sets how much signal (Level) is passed to the processing algorithm (0 to 100%). There are also three intensity settings (Soft, Medium and Hard). Rounding things off in the top right is a Bypass and in the bottom right an Output trim (0dB to -inf dB).

Knorr’s window background incorporates a frequency display. This is a line plot and, according to the manual, it indicates the frequency response of the internal modulation signal. So, if you have the effect level at zero (with the XY marker at the bottom of the pad) and the plugin is therefore not processing the incoming signal, the frequency plot is flat. Having tried it on a few sound sources with a variety of frequency content, it’s also clear that the display is only showing frequencies up to about 500Hz.

Range bound

In spite of its broad operational frequency range (100Hz to 1kHz) Knorr is quite clearly designed for bass, so that’s what we opt to try it out on first of all. On electric bass, the added harmonics add presence, and getting the intensity right (using both the intensity settings and level) is very important, because using too much of either can result in it sounding unpleasantly processed. Nevertheless, it’s the Range setting that really ended up surprising us – we found that it can really help to define a sweet spot for the processing.

This can be quite high if you’re after a more woody sound or lower down for a rounder sound, and where you end up is obviously a matter of taste. On acoustic bass it was a very similar story, and we found it best keeping the effect level moderate in order to avoid it sounding too processed. Even so, it clearly creates options, and in a mix context that could be very useful.

On synth bass, once again, finding the Range sweet spot is key, but the added harmonics are also great for adding extra bite to smoother, less buzzy core sounds and, if anything, we prefer the effect that Knorr has on synth bass to electric bass. We also tried Knorr on a variety of drum sounds and found it to be most useful for kicks, where the extra bite adds useful flavour.

Overall Knorr is a useful plugin that we think works best used at moderate levels with the focus on getting the right frequency (Range) setting. It has uses across many low frequency sounds, but as far as we’re concerned, monophonic bass instruments are clearly where its strengths lie.