Interested to hear how you feel about it!
I wonder how it combines with their Texture plug-in Texture - Devious Machines
Anyone that’s using the complete Devious Machines bundle?
haven’t decided whether I’m going to give it a go yet, have some other choices listed earlier in this thread on my plate
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Here’s another investigation to chuck on the pile. I have a specific use case for chopping what are usually vocals and lead synth/instruments lines. Generally this is a single sample. Less so drums, but anything is fair game I suppose. I suppose you could call this semi automated/randomised chopping. Generally the goal is to run something a few times, resample and go from there.
I use Effectrix which I do like; but then I realised I mainly make use of the stutter & reverse effects over anything else in there. I noticed that SugarBytes have Looperator which is I guess a sequel of sorts to Effectrix. Demoing this one, I realised again that I have little to no interest in the effects underneath. Perhaps SugarBytes got similar feedback about Effectrix and focussed on the slice & loop, which is front & centre where the effects are hidden away a bit on this one.
I actually quite like how this one visualises what’s happening in each 16th to be fair. What’s extra cool is the ability to throw a sample in, and quickly randomise stuff. So for example, you can click in all the boxes and set all of them to randomise every time; so you get essentially a new loop on each go around. I wouldn’t do that all the time, and the image above is probably a fairer reflection of what I’d actually use it for.
As always, I know some of this can easily be covered with stock tools. I have Buffer Shuffler 2.0 which can do something somewhat similar (although less refined); and I’m probably cool with this and maybe picking up Looperator on sale.
Is there anything else out there that’s got this simple sequencer x random simple sample chopping that I should know about, that take a similar approach? Anything especially honed in on looping & slicing? Mostly this is abour rhythmic chopping rather than out & out glitching.
VSTs, Ableton stock & M4L all worthy contenders here!
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Yeah you can use a sampler like simpler or serato sampler, auto chop to 16ths and then put a mono sequencer of your choice in front of it and set it to random. Unless I am missing something
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Effectrix is one of my fav VSTs. And this is long overdue if only for the GUI, which is miniscule in Effectrix 1. I’m slightly unsure why stutter isn’t in there anymore since that was one of the original’s strong suits. But some of the effect options like they may be improvements. Seems like they’ve kinda combined Effectrix and Looperator here with maybe some others from Graindad etc. The upgrade price isn’t super appealing at the mo, but might be fun on sale, eventually.
$79 upgrade. harsh.
i don’t own effectrix anymore. do have looperator though.
yeah competition is tough these days, decided to complete the sonic charge bundle today cause I wanted to get synplant 2, already owning microtonic made the price of completion only $206 and Permut8 looks like it might be alot of fun.
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the alternate firmwares for Permut8 are magic. it’s like 8 plug ins in one. pretty sure they’re included in the plug in by default now.
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really, I was actually gonna send a feature request to make them all available at once
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Sugar Bytes stuff eventually lands for a deep discount. Definitley one to be patient with (especially with Black Friday coming.) Bear in mind Effectrix was running £50/60-ish recently, which is about 1/3 its normal price. Glad to see it updated though, one of the best plugins I’ve used and it sips CPU (or at least - it did!). I know we now have Shaperbox and Infiltrator, but honestly Effectrix is the OG for me. It’s a mangler, but not a sound destructor. I always preferred the blocks approach to the LFO style used by Shaperbox. This looks like it’s taken influence from Looperator, Shaperbox and Infiltrator and updated it all into one package, which might just simplify the workflow enough to consolidate Effectrix 1, Looperator and Shaperbox into one plugin for me. I’ll just have to squint for a while longer until the upgrade price is a bit more palletable.
If you want to try it, I find the SugarBytes demos are one of the least onerous in terms of pushing you to buy. Maybe with new tech that will change here, but usually you get a lot of mileage. But I will be taking this one for a lengthy test drive for sure.
I dunno something about effectrix I’ve just never got on with, definitely no impulse buy for me
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Yeah for sure. There’s plenty of manglers to go around, and I love this category of VST, to the point where I maybe have one too many. But I’ve always loved Effectrix. I have to say, having played with the demo it’s a big step forward. The GUI is infinitley better, the customisation of each parameter is much deeper, but it somehow retains that absolute focus on quick/easy editing. Also, the famed stutter effects are now not a lane in their own right, but contained within Loop.
One of the big weaknesses of Effectrix 1 for me (ironically as it’s a multi effect) was the effects. They just aren’t that good. The distortion was just awful to the point where you turn that off and put it into bitcrush mode always. Now the rubbish distortion is gone, and a better bitcrusher has replaced it. It now has random features, undo (thank heck!) and probably more than I’ve had chance to explore. CPU wise it can be a bit more draining than the original, but I’m guessing some of the effects processing is a bit more intensive (eg: granular.)
I need to investigate more in demo mode, but for me this replaces Shaperbox, Looperator (and the OG Effectrix of course), and puts it into 1 plugin. So from a workflow perspective, I think this is a definite win, but that’s me and my odd obsession with these plugins.
I checked the pricing again, and it’s actually not too bad. I paid £60 for Effectrix 1, Effectrix 2 is £70 as an upgrade. I’ll still see what they do in a few weeks tho, BF is not far away!
Additional note: couple of crashes happened when initially loading this one so… may also be one to watch out for.
spot on
that’s very gracious of you 
I’m gonna have to at at least give it a gander as like yourself these types of apps always intrigue me, I’ve had the OG since day one and every time I fired it up I got disappointed
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I love Small Winters. Have made some cool, weird tracks within it. I do experience quite a lot of crashes with it though…I almost try and speed-run creating a weird piece with it, knowing there’s a chance I lose it all 
but yeah, cool simulation of a broken 4-track with cool granular touches
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oh that’s unfortunate, have you gotten any feedback from the dev about that?
I spoke with them yeah, but they said they really needed footage to demo which I’ve not been back to capture. It runs at a high cpu usage which is fine but feels like there’s maybe something spiking there. On Mac Mini M1 16gb ram so don’t expect even one hungry plug-in to crash projects, nothing else does. Anyway, not to derail, just word to the wise. I still think it’s worth it, just know this!
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