JMG SOUND ORBITRON
Providing an original method of effecting your sonics, Orbitron’s fresh concept conjures living, breathing modulation. Is it a hit?
Re-thinking staid ways of working can lead us down unusual creative routes. The usual approach to shaping our softsynth sounds with modulation effects, say, involves stacking or chaining said effects, with occasional automation bringing in certain modulations at key points. While an established approach, JMG and United Plugins’ Orbitron plays with an entirely other dimension: sounds – and modulation effects – quite literally, orbit each other. Your audio track is visualised at the centre of the plugin’s UI, as a small white dot within a larger X/Y circle. This white dot moves in a circular motion between four different modulators, each of which can be assigned to 12 different in-built FX types. The result is a strikingly organic sound that can repeatedly transition between shimmering chorus, earteasing phaser, frequency-chewing chaos or space-age resonators. Even the most mundane of tones can become something new entirely.
Say you want a revolution?
Though at its heart Orbitron is an effects plugin, it’s the novel ‘orbiting’ concept that is really taking our dry tones to a new level. While other effects plugins typically allow for simple routing of modules, Orbitron’s always-moving conceit means that the end result is never settled, blending numerous effects to craft hybrid sonics we’d never normally stumble upon.
The default approach with Orbitron, is to tempo-match the orbit, so that its effect-cycles sit better within an existing track. This works well, though that’s not the only option. Randomisation functionality leads to more unpredictable flavours, while a manual mode equips us to fine tune, and lock, bespoke effect blends. It’s also possible of course to override the entire orbiting concept, and simply use any of the (pretty top tier) effects individually. Playing with the three dice icons in the top right of the UI generates more unpredictable changes to your setup.
Escape velocity
Onto the effects themselves, which are largely superb. Amongst the usual effect suspects, we find Infinite Combs, which can conjure an animated infinite rise and decline of pitch, Kinetic Resonator and Chaos Vortex, whose names describe what they do pretty succinctly, while Space Time is a particularly cool audiomangler, feeding in a series of quirky, sci-fisounding delay lines. Each of the FX quadrants is equipped with Depth, Rate and Width knobs, as well as bespoke sliders which vary depending on the effect selected, for specific adjustments. Each also has its own X/Y circle, if you want to set amount-defining orbits per-effect
In our tests, we explored the potential of effecting not just synth sounds, but guitar lines and even a few off-the-wall vocal performances with a spectrum of typical effects, as well as a more chaotic jumble. As with any plugin that promises infinite possibilities, the end results were hugely variable, though by and large, each effect-soaked sound felt immediately more ‘alive’ as our audio made its gradual rounds between the quadrants. On a technical level, CPU-lag wasn’t detectable, even considering that, when bypassed, the effects remain in sync with each other (with the software keeping a clever eye on performance drain).
Getting used to Orbitron’s concept may take time, and for some effect combinations it just doesn’t work, but this is an otherwise wonderfully idiosyncratic piece of software, that breathes fresh life into our sounds.