A Few of My Favorite Things - Effects Edition - Part 2

Picking up where we left off yesterday...

6. iZotope BT Stutter Edit ($249)
I'll say right off the bat, I think this plug-in is over-priced.  A $150 price point seems much more reasonable.  That said, this is an amazing tool for creating all manner of complex glitches, transitions, and warps to your audio.  What makes it especially cool is that you play it like a MIDI instrument, playing notes to mess up the incoming audio in different ways.  You can map an entire keyboard with different settings for tons of options whether you're auditioning effects or triggering the effect live in performance.  An enormous amount of fun to screw around with.  For those who have already graduated from Ill-formed's Glitch 2.

7. Smart Electronix Ambience (Free)
This plug-in is actually pretty old, but it is still one of my favorite reverbs for snare drums.  Lots of tweakability, a really nice sound, and it's FREE.  Why aren't you already downloading it?

8. Ohm Force Ohmicide Multi-band Distortion ($128)
This is the distortion equivalent to a Swiss Army Knife.  An insane amount of programming depth and options make this a plug-in anyone who uses distortion has no excuse not to own.  Audio can be split into up to 4 different frequency bands, each with not only its own settings, but its own type of distortion.  And there are a TON of these.  From analog overdrives, to digital waveshapers, there is plenty here to put a hurting on your sounds.

9. PSP Audioware N20 ($149)
Filter plug-ins are a dime a dozen these days, so when a unique filter plug-in comes along, it really stands out. PSP Audioware's N20 is a semi-modular effects system with up to 4 different effect blocks, which can be routed in virtually any way you care to.  You not only get some great sounding filters to play with, but also reverb, pitch shifting, distortion, delay, lofi effects, and more.  What makes it even cooler is that you have 4 modulators to play with, so you can create some really organic, evolving effects chains.  Although filtering is clearly the main focus here, this is more like a sound design toolkit.

10. Sonic Charge Permut8 ($66)
If you're into glitchy sounds, circuit-bending can provide an endless array of digitally tortured sounds.  The problem, though, is that circuit bent devices tend to be very unpredictable, so it can be hard to hone in on the sound you want, and even harder to sequence it rhythmically in a useful way.  Sonic Charge comes to the rescue with Permut8, a fantastically weird plug-in for punishing audio in rhythmic ways.  A full explanation of how it works is beyond the scope of an article like this (you can check out my full review here), but the basic idea is you flip switches to turn virtual bits on and off, which effects the way the incoming audio is played back from the built-in memory.  Chaos controlled in a really fun way.  Noise lovers will lose themselves for hours in this one.