Heavyocity MicroFX is a new series of easy-to-use effects plugins powered by a flexible motion engine: Obscene, Filter, and Shimmer.
Effects, whether hardware or software, play a big role in sound design. They are omnipresent, whether as a sound shaper in the creative process or as a refinement tool. In software, I like it when effect plugins are very creative but compact and don’t overwhelm in the operation.
Heavyocity, the team behind many mighty, high-quality Kontakt libraries, presents the MicroFX collection, a new series of effects that goes in that direction. Less is more on the feature set but very creative.
Heavyocity MicroFX
The new MicroFX Collection features three effects: Obscene, Filter, and Shimmer. All three follow the same operating concept with a relatively limited number of parameters that are supercharged by a fully customizable, animatable X/Y pad engine.
MicroFX Obscene is a distortion FX with three distortion modes: Blaster (High gain pedal), Crusher (heavy drive and bit crush), and Nuke (broken fuzz). Tone, feedback, movement, and ring mod controls allow you to customize the sound.
Then, MicroFX Filter is powered by two multimode filters, including lowpass, highpass, bandpass, notch, and comb. Thanks to the morphing capabilities via the X/Y pad and various routing options (series, parallel, split, mid-side), you can archive up to 144 possible filtering options.
Classic cutoff, resonance controls, and additional ones like drive, dirt, envelope follow, and an offset give you flexible options to create the perfect filtering sound.
MicroFX Shimmer is a shimmer reverb with octave up, down, and both modes, allowing you to create complex textures. In addition to shimmer blend and tone control, you can adjust the reverb’s size, decay, modulation, and dynamics.
Heavy Modulation
The X/Y pad modulation engine is a highlight of all three Heavyocity MicroFX plugins. In each plugin, the X/Y pad manages two key parameters. For example, in the Shimmer plugin, it’s the shimmer blend (X) and tone (Y).
On the one hand, you can operate the X/Y pad manually with the mouse and via MIDI. On the other hand, you can animate it, which is much more fun.
These can be generated in various ways. With a simple click, you can generate paths that the parameters should follow. From very short to complex, it is possible here. Of course, you can customize the playback direction, adjust the speed, and sync it to your DAW.
This allows you to decouple the effect from your static constructs and make it more lively. The plugin is particularly suitable for achieving dynamic and modulated effects.
To get started, each Heavyocity MicroFX plugin comes with various presets so you can immediately see what is possible.
First Impression
Three exciting new creative effect plugins from Heavyocity. It’s nice they went for something simple and hands-on instead of a mega FX with a trillion parameters. The X/Y pad engine also looks like a lot of fun.
Heavyocity MicroFX collection is available now for an introductory price of $99 (reg. $119) or each MicroFX plugin for $39 (reg. $49). Owners of Vast, Fury, Punish, or Punish Lite plugins will receive an additional $20 OFF the Collection bundle with a registered serial.
These offers end on September 20, 2024. They run as VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugins on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: Heavyocity
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