Artificial Audio has released Obelisk, its new spectral multi-effect for Mac OS X. It is a combination of a Spectral Delay, a Spectral Filter and a Spectral Gate.
Obelisk puts many, many effect parameters under easy graphical control. It has 2-dimensional LFOs for setting up interesting modulation possibilities to enable endlessly changing sound layers of the processed signals. It is also CPU-friendly.
It costs €99, and is available in the Artificial Audio webshop in VST and AU plug-in formats for Mac OS X.
Obelisk Main Screen
Functionally it reminds me of iZotope’s Spectron, but a lot more intuitive. Be sure to check out the cool video tour. I’ll report back in a few weeks on what I find.
Features:
Spectral Analysis / Synthesis:
- High quality spectral analysis and synthesis (256 or 512 frequency bands).
- Adjustable frame size and overlap.
- Multiple window functions : rectangle, triangle, Hanning, Hamming, Blackman.
- Real-time Spectrum Analyser:
- Realtime spectrum analyzer with hold function.
- Selectable analyzer sources : input signal / effect signal / output signal.
Spectral Delay:
- Individual delay with feedback for every single frequency band.
- 10 delay points to define the delay line.
- 10 feedback points to define the feedback line.
- Different line styles : polygon / square.
- Delay points can be quantized to sync the delay times to the song tempo.
- Selectable sync tempo : external / internal.
- Beat grid for quantize positions.
- RESCUE switch to clear the feedback buffer.
Spectral Filter:
- Individual gain parameter for every single frequency band.
- 10 filter points to define the filter line.
- Different line styles : polygon / square.
- Filter force parameter for smooth or hard filter action.
Spectral Gate:
- Individual noise gate for every single frequency band.
- 10 gate points to define the gate line to adjust the gate thresholds.
- Different line styles : polygon / square.
- Global attack time and release time parameters.
- Mono / stereo switch to link the gate (left / right) in 2 channel mode.
Spectral Shift:
- Shift of frequency bands between analysis and synthesis (+/- 64 bands).
2-Dimensional LFOs:
- 3 LFOs to create 2-dimensional point movements.
- Independent x- and y-axis parameters.
- Snap function to lock the LFO start to a fixed song position.
- LFOs can be synchronized to the song tempo (from 1/16 note up to 8 bars).
- LEARN MODE for easy modulation target assignment.
- 5 modulation targets per LFO.
Help Function:
- Information display for every parameter control.
Undo / Redo:
- 50 step undo / redo for all point line parameter changes.
Parameter Automation:
- All parameters can be fully automated by the host sequencer.
