Arturia Efx Motions review, new multi-FX plugin lets you explore effects in motion Giveaway

October 18, 2023 Synth Anatomy News, Plugins, Plugins, Reviews, Software 125

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Arturia Efx Motions review: new multi-FX plugin sets effects in constant motion, in sync, and fully customizable to your sounds and tracks.

Classic effects are available in high quality in every DAW, even as a free download. A reason why many developers are shifting their new effect plugins to new areas. A big topic is extensive built-in modulation engines that stir up the effects like a tornado—resulting in more dynamic, evolving effects processors.

Sugar Bytes Effectrix, a classic in the field of sequenced FX, was solidly upgraded to version 2.0 last week. With Efx Motions, Arturia is now entering this field with its own multi-fx processor.

Arturia EFX Motions first look

Arturia Efx Motions

Effects bundled with deep modulations are not new for the French developers at Arturia. Almost every creative FX plugin in its portfolio has a deep and versatile modulation engine built in. And this can compete easily with any other sequencing FX on the market.

But now, for the first time, a standalone plugin specifically designed for this purpose. Efx Motions is a multi-FX processor supported by a powerful modulation engine, putting every bit of your FX in motion.

At the center of Efx Motions are five effects modules, each providing a different type of FX: filter, noise, drive, volume, and pan. Each is feature-rich and has effects that you have already learned to love from other Arturia plugins. 

Five Effects

The filter module offers clean multimode filtering, SEM and MS-20 filter emulations, phasing, and more. Adjustable with cutoff and routable to the motion envelope and the dynamics processor. More about this later. 

Noise gives you a variety of different timbres available in a dedicated menu. Exciting is the option of loading your own samples. This way, you can design very personalized noise effects. I tried it with a voice sample and got some crazy, unique results.

Arturia Efx Motions effects

Drive is also more extensive. It hosts a wide range of different distortion algorithms, ranging from subtle warmth overdrive/saturations up to wild distortions like wavefolders and waveshapers.

As the name suggests, volume is a VCA that can create pumping effects through modulation. Pan is just as simple and is a panner that directs the signal to the left, middle, or right. 

Then, a motion envelope sequencer powers each effect, putting them constantly in motion. So, each FX can operate at a different speed, allowing for complex motions. One slow, another faster… and your simple synth patch sounds like it comes from a mega sophisticated modular synth.

Arturia Efx Motions Motion Editor

This magic is all in sync with your DAW, with MIDI, the motion envelope, or other signals. And these motion envelopes are fully customizable. You can craft classic ADSR envelopes, multi-segment curves for smooth transitions, or a step sequencer.

Besides the tweakable and sync-able clock, you can also use the dynamic section hosting an envelope follower. 

The combination of effects and modulation is a lot of fun. The effect selection is somewhat limited, and could happily offer more. I would welcome more special ones like granular, spectral processing, and more. A good counter-example is Infiltrator 2, which provides a massive amount of FXs. 

Repeat, Glitching…

In addition to the five core effects, Efx Motions has another effects section loaded with processors that drive your signals into experimental, wild fields. Roll, reverse, pitch, stretch, and stop are available here. It’s a shame there isn’t a dedicated glitch effect. 

These are trigger effects driven by a 16-step step sequencer. You can specify the value triggered with every sequence round in each cell. Additional dry/wet allows you to manage this effect’s dose precisely.

Arturia Efx Motions Beat Repeat

Even if there is no specific glitch processor, you can create similar effects with it. You can get circuit-bending FX, glitching rhythms, digital-style noisy distortions, up to robotic manglings. Many extraordinary sound manglings are possible.

The beat repeater is not the most out-of-this-world and always-great sounding one, but crazy enough to have with it. In particular, the interface of it could be better implemented. 

Next, you have another two slots that can host all-time classic Arturia effects. You can choose two effects from 14 algorithms, including reverbs, delays, modulation FX, and more. Also, these features various parameters. Excellent for refining and finalizing the Efx Motions effects.

Modulation Overdose

Not enough modulation yet? No problem. Push the advanced screen button, and the well-known Arturia modulation engine unfolds. It has three slots. You can host one modulator in each, including a function generator, sequencer, random, and envelope follower.  

This gives the motion engine almost infinite levels, as you can map them to any parameter you want. Animate the motion depth, and give the secondary effects a moving boost… you can take the effects to absurdly deep levels where things start to get interesting for Richard Devine.

Advanced Mode

Further, you get two mappable macro controls on top of the UI and controls for the output level and dry/wet mix. 

Arturia Efx Motions Review

Effects that are constantly in motion. Effortless, in all directions, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, always in sync, and under full control. This is the core idea of the Arturia Efx Motions plugin. It succeeded, which was to be expected since Arturia had already implemented bits and bytes of this idea in many other FX plugins. But this time in an independent plugin with that concept in mind.

Efx Motions is a creative, entertaining multi-fx plugin with infinite options. The engine is multi-faceted and flexible. From subtle, smooth sound mangling to extreme, crazy sound havoc, everything is possible. You decide where the journey goes.

The core effects (filter, drive, noise…) are a good selection. However, it is a bit tiny compared to other sequenced multi-fx plugins (Effectrix 2, Infiltrator 2…). The quality, on the other side, is top-notch. So quality comes before quantity. The range of secondary effects fills this gap a bit, and thanks to the built-in modulators, you can modulate almost to the same extent as the main engine. 

Different with the Repeat FX section. The amount of FX is decent. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated glitch FX, but it’s possible to replicate it. Sonically, they are solid but not high-end. So no instant ear-candy factor, for me at least. Also, the handling of the 16-step sequencer is a bit uphill. It could be implemented better in certain places.

All in all, Arturia has achieved to turn its modulation engine into a mighty standalone sequenced multi-FX plugin. It’s fun, inspires, and brings life and variety to every track. The plugin is not perfect, it has its weaknesses. But these are manageable and always very person-related. And please, Arturia, give us a dark UI that is more pleasing. 

Alternatives: Devious Machines Infiltrator 2, Cableguys ShaperBox, Sugar Bytes Effectrix 2… 

Availability

Arturia Efx Motions is available now for an introductory price of 79€ instead of 99€. It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (Intel + native Apple Silicon) and Windows. Or buy FX Collection 4 and get Efx Motions for free on top. 

Giveaway

To celebrate this release, I launched a giveaway. I have three licenses to give away to three lucky winners. You can participate until next Wednesday, October 25, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. CET by leaving a comment below. 

Don’t comment twice. Respect fair play. I can see it 😉 Don’t panic if your comments are not displayed. I need to verify each comment before releasing it. And please use a valid email so that I can contact the winners. Good luck in advance, and thanks, Arturia, for making this possible. 

More information here: Arturia

Available at my partner 

Plugin B.

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125 Comments

  1. Looks like a nice effect. I’m always amazed how good Arturia’s UI design(er) is. Though I agree I would have preferred a dark version as well.

  7. Arturia certainly make effects plugins that I actually use. This looks like yet another that I’d use!

  19. Really ? Am I the first one to comment on this ? Look a bit like the cableguys thing, is’nt it ?

  21. Weiiiiii… this one looks amazing !
    And surpasses Shaperbox in many regards.
    Really digging the Repeat / Glitch section….and the clean GUI!

    Keeping my fingers crossed .

  24. I’m a huge fan of Arturia Efx Fragments, so I am looking forward to this. I have seen a review that complains there are not enough effects to choose from, but I think that limitations are what brings out the creativity in a person.

  25. Thanks for keeping us updated on this! Sounds really awesome. I’m a big fan of Arturia’s instruments and effects.

    • So many fx suites coming out now. I’m which will rise to the top and which ones will fade.

  26. Very nice of you, this giveaway. Quite a complex FX plugin, but at first glance a useful add-on for straight FX as well as for experimentation

  28. Hm, quasi die Konkurrenz zu Effectrix von Sugar Bytes. Schwierig aber Arturia liefert souverän ab.
    Gruß aus Düsseldorf!
    Rüdiger

  32. This is got to be the new tool to go to making any track come alive
    another useful piece software from Arturia that’s worth having

  33. Another win from Arturia – great gui as usual, and very intuitive by the looks of things. I’ll take it!

  52. Very interesting. This Modulation Engine, putting FX in motion, has particularly piqued my curiosity and interest.

  54. Thanks for the review! It looks really interesting. I now have only two options: win or buy 🙂

  56. I really love Arturia in general, from their humble beginning of Moog vst to the CS-80, I remember the shit they got for emulation and now they are the best, imo, in the industry! Hope they continue to innovate and recreate 🙂

  60. Interesting addition to the Arturia catalogue… though I still have to figure out their Efx FRAGMENTS plugin (only used it a few times). Would be interesting how heavy this new one is hitting on the CPU. Might be a challenge for my ancient computation machine…

  62. Insteresting plugin, i have Fx collection 3, Efx Motion is like Efx fragments family effects in their product design!

  67. I can’t keep up with the awesome stuff Arturia keeps putting out. I need to look into this…

  68. It may need a dark mode, but at least it’s not monotone teal like Fragments. I’ll take it!

    If you give it to me.

  71. Glad you’re doing a giveaway as I won’t be buying this one, for now. It’s a 50USD crossgrade and I’m expecting my update to “FX Collection 5” to be a better deal. (And I can wait. Got plenty of FX to tide me over.)

    Speaking of deals, it’s interesting timing, shortly before “Black Friday Month”. Typically, Arturia has been offering heavy discounts on upgrades through BFS. There haven’t been that many releases since FX Collection 4 and V Collection 9.
    So maybe they’re shifting their strategy a bit. Or they had issues with development of new plugins.

    Honestly, my biggest hope, at this point, is to get both MPE and MTS-ESP across the whole V Collection, including Analog Lab.

  78. This thing looks extremely interesting. Any opinions or insights about how it compares to something like Transit from Baby Audio?

  80. Looking forward to trying this. If its as good as Fragments, then the Efx range will definitely be one to keep an eye on.

  81. This seems excellent, as we have come to expect from Arturia. Creative/sequenced multi-FX do seem to be having a moment and having a typically well-designed and solid Arturia spin on it can only be a good thing. I will likely demo it to see what it can do that I don’t already have covered (Infiltrator and Shaperbox cover a lot of the same ground, Coldfire and Fragments add some craziness, Byome/Triad and Kilohearts can get pretty wacky as well, and pretty much anything imaginable can be made in MXXX) – I do have a crossgrade offer from Arturia for this but it’s not quite in no-brainer territory, so I’d be more than happy for a free copy if the winds blow my way!

  82. Had you already chance to compare it with Cableguys Shaper Box? I am Arturia user, but I also like Shaper Box.

  96. I like plugins like this. It helps to get unexpected results when you don’t know what you want.

  103. Nice. This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been looking to explore on a DAW as I come from the hardware world and this makes me want to use a computer, which is sometimes hard. I’m the kind that couldn’t sit still as a kid.

  118. Thanks for your review. I love arturia stuff, but you are soooo right about the dark theme being needed, lol.

  119. Looks neat, even if it doesn’t set itself apart from alternatives much I feel

    I still wouldn’t mind having it though

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