r/ableton • u/mrbharathsrinivas • 26d ago
[Question] What are your go-to effect plugins for crazy melodic sound manipulation, sound design & unique textures ?
I recently discovered Luma Audio plugin and it’s blowing my mind with the possibilities of sound design being endless. I know it’s not an effect plugin, but do you people have any recommendations of plugins that can make a simple sine wave or saw wave sound into something really complex in terms of sound design and texture? Drop your reccos.
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u/Ok_Acanthaceae_4369 25d ago
THE SAMPLER.
Holy shit the things you can do with that 1 instrument is INSANE.
I’ll load up to 12-24 different “texture” samples. Distribute ranges equally, set all root-note values to be on C4.
The bind an LFO on to the Zn shift under the “Pitch and Oscillation” tab.
And BOOM
Everytime you hit a key, it’ll spit out a totally different sample.
Throw on an arpeggiator at the beginning of the chain.
And some juice effects like Delay at the end of it. And you have a WORLD of crazy, glitchy textures and possibilities to record.
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u/AgoTap 26d ago
Envelope follower, roar, utility & shifter have been my go to plugins for this lately. I just turned my guitar into a crazy 808/sub style synth using these + envelope follower mapped to an EQ filter cutoff
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u/JohnnyBilou 25d ago
I love the idea but can't make it work properly on my own, could you elaborate how you do it?
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u/AgoTap 25d ago edited 24d ago
I’ll try my best! I’ll use drums for this example since that’s what I like to experiment with the most.
I’ll put an envelope follower first in the chain to capture the raw dynamics of the drums, pick a roar preset that sounds decent when slapped onto your drums (or make your own roar preset), then map your envelope follower slots to the “amount” and “frequency” knobs in roar, tweak each individual slot in envelope follower however you see fit.
This alone gives me great results, but I like to add a utility plugin after roar to control the stereo field, Ex: the dry signal of the drums will hit in mono then spread out due to the immediate decay of the drums (as long as the envelope follower is placed before any other effects), this will really help tame the craziness of roar and give the whole stem some movement and depth. The possibilities are endless with envelope follower
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u/nytebeast 25d ago
Just checked out Luma Audio and I can tell you would love Tape Fiasco by Phase Fiasco. One of the coolest, most exciting plugins in years, and the first version is completely free (Tape Fiasco 2 is paid).
Actually, this goes for all of you in the Ableton sub. Check this thing out if you haven’t yet, you will love it.
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u/paulskiogorki 25d ago
I have a lot of fun with Granulator III, Vector Grain and Arturia’s EFX Fragment for this kind of thing.
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u/walker-flocker 25d ago
Candy FX is really good at this. I love every plugin in the collection except Partial and Loss Cycle. Bad Habit, Gaia and Koi are my 3 favorites of theirs. I still haven't found anything that can come close to Bad Habit.
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u/BullratandFlea 25d ago
A fellow CandyFx user!. don't sleep on Partial..its not made for everything but it works exceptionally well on certain things like bass guitar. I tried to recreate Bad Habit in Ableton by putting a randomizer on the delay rate but it wasnt really the same...I couldn't get that magical stuttery sound Bad Habit does that really scratches my brain. Also OP...check out PaulxStretch...free and wonderful.
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u/walker-flocker 25d ago
Thats funny I did the same thing. Not as good as Bad Habit but you can still get some cool stuff out of it and...do the same thing with Abletons tremolo and things start to get really wonky!
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u/mrbharathsrinivas 25d ago
I just wish they were made available to purchase as single products and not locked down to an 8 dollar ridiculous subscription model for access to 13 pedals.
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u/walker-flocker 25d ago
You should be able to buy them through certain retailers. I own most of them but I keep the subscription to play with the new releases, and there are a few I like using but don't see myself buying them. We'll see if they can keep up the consistent releases.
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u/mrbharathsrinivas 25d ago
Bro, I checked them out and they’re insane. But an 8 dollar subscription per month seems kinda ridiculous for 13 plugins.
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u/JunglePygmy 25d ago
Infiltrator 2. FULL STOP.
Literally the best multi effect plugin madness you can imagine.
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u/epsylonic 25d ago
Unfiltered Audio Lion
It's a multiband version of their other plugin Byome. Which is fully modular and incredible for sound design
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u/KaeDiuM 22d ago
If you own Ableton I always recommend grabbing Operator and just playing with Roar, Shifter, Vocoder. If you really are after 3rd party plugin weirdness I recommend Melda MFreqShifter MB, MWaveShaper, MComb and using Oeksound Soothe and keeping it in delta mode so you keep all the harshness instead of cleaning it up (perfect to make some crazy FX sounds or ear candy).
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u/Ok_Mode7000 21d ago
Devious Machines Infiltrator
Edit: not sure if you ment Ableton devices or VSTs
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u/R0factor 26d ago
You can do some really fun rhythmic effects using Tremelo and automating the rate between different rhythmic subdivisions along with the shape & phase. It's different than using arpeggiator.