$179 (Launch sale worth of $129 at time of writing), kalidemusic.com
Music manufacturing will be described as harnessing know-how within the pursuit of artwork. However, as Kalide places it, “creativity is just not a one-size-fits-all” — in different phrases, there are those that lean in the direction of the technical, and others who’re all in regards to the musical artwork. It’s the latter group who’re the actual audience for the newly up to date and overhauled Collage, Kalide’s distinctive tackle a multi-effects plugin.
Nameless widgets
Collage’s principal view — the Interplay view — comes as a shock whenever you begin loading presets. Every has its personal colored and/or textured background, accompanied by a number of unlabelled, chunky and sometimes unconventional-looking widgets. And that’s it!
Waggling a widget will do one thing, though it isn’t clear prematurely what this will probably be (and isn’t all the time clear post-waggle both). Hovering your mouse over a widget opens a chunky label, however the names which are displayed aren’t all the time useful. Generally, these favour flowery ambiguity over succinct accuracy, however even the place a extra typical title is used, it isn’t clear what it refers to — “mix”, for instance, may have a number of meanings.
Because it seems, the peculiar widgets are nothing greater than artsy knobs and sliders that act as macro controllers, linking to parameters from throughout the most of 11 results processors that underlie a Collage preset. These processors, accessed from the plugin’s Editor view, will be enabled and disabled as wanted and will be organized in any order.
The plugin contains an easy-to-use instrument for including and positioning widgets, and for mapping every to as much as three impact parameters. As well as, every widget will be modulated by considered one of 4 inner LFOs, including automated and rhythmic motion to the parameters they’re controlling. There’s a giant assortment of widgets on provide starting from the just about typical to the downright weird (a knob that appears like a curtain pole finial, anyone…?)
The thought is, after all, that you could create your individual mix of the underlying results together with your individual customised consumer interface for controlling them. The power to mix parameters from totally different impact processors below one macro management makes for some fascinating efficiency prospects too, particularly if utilizing a {hardware} controller.
Controller or no, we strongly dislike the dearth of everlasting labels. Kalide seems to take the view that this encourages experimentation and focuses consideration on the sound fairly than the parameter. Sadly, we discover it deeply off-putting to be introduced with display screen after display screen of strange, nameless widgets, usually laid out randomly, towards a equally random background.
Results and variations in Collage 2.0
Every of Collage’s impact processors handles a specific sort of impact — reverb or filtering or no matter — and most provide a number of variants inside that sort, giving a grand complete of 43 totally different processors to select from.
Artsiness for artsiness’ sake makes one other look right here within the names of the consequences themselves, with examples corresponding to “Starboard” for modulation results and “Calico” for delay. The kind of impact is proven in a pop-up when mousing over, however may simply as simply have been included within the static label: “Calico Delay” can be simply tremendous!
This obtuseness continues into the naming of impact variants too, for instance “Smear” and “Eskalator” for varieties of reverb, “Pulley” and “Incidence” for EQs, and “Midas” and “Guardian” for flavours of stereo adjustment.
This way of naming could make sense to some, however it’s meaningless to us. We don’t settle for the premise that the right impact names (reverb, delay, compressor, and many others.) and impact sort names (corridor reverb, parametric EQ, refrain, and many others.) are complicated or overly technical. Inventing a complete new vocabulary hinders understanding and instinct fairly than serving to it.
We additionally really feel the enhancing views, although straightforward sufficient to make use of, are simply disagreeable to have a look at, with overly vibrant and garish backgrounds, and a hideous, scrawly, Comedian-Sans-like typeface. It’s sufficient to burn your eyeballs — ironic, then, that the plugin gives a high-contrast mode for the visually impaired. On a severe be aware, it’s very optimistic that Kalide helps this group of customers, however we’d strongly advise the model additionally features a pores and skin that’s much less intense and that makes use of crisper, extra legible typography.
Does Collage 2.0 truly work?
Collage’s particular person results sound spectacular and the methods you’ll be able to mix and management them are nearly limitless. The principle Interplay view encourages real-time management and efficiency and, if utilizing the fitting mix of results and macro configurations, can provide some very satisfying outcomes. It’s this combining of results and impact parameters that’s Collage’s strongest swimsuit, permitting you to create authentic and performable impact chains. The unconventional styling goals to encourage experimentation and focus one’s consideration on the sound, all of which is completely laudable.
Nonetheless, lots of the presets on provide are little greater than commonplace processors — a compressor or an EQ for instance — however with solely a handful of the processor’s parameters uncovered as widgets inside the primary view; others could mix a number of results however solely expose controls for one — a reverb and EQ, for instance, however with solely EQ lower/enhance controls supplied. Such utilization fails to benefit from Collage’s finest characteristic — particularly the flexibility to mix parameters inside a single macro, so we battle to see the purpose. In such instances, we’d all the time want to make use of a regular-looking plugin with common controls and accompanying labels.
There are a few elementary paradoxes in Collage’s workflow too.
Firstly, the distinctive styling is meant to encourage intuitive interplay however, with no commonality of perform, format or design from one preset to a different and no completely seen labels, there is no such thing as a prospect of creating an intuitive sense of what the plugin’s controls truly do. What ensues, then, is reluctantly loading presets with out having a clue what they may do, after which randomly poking at widgets to seek out out. It’s possible you’ll hit on a cheerful accident, however that is neither a artistic nor intuitive means of working.
Secondly, should you want to take Collage past its manufacturing facility presets, you need to delve into the processes of configuring the consequences you propose to make use of, selecting which parameters to reveal and which to mix with different parameters, and designing the consumer interface to configure the widgets that mix and management these parameters. This can be a cool factor to have the ability to do, however music manufacturing doesn’t get far more technical than this!
Must you purchase Collage 2.0?
There will probably be producers who welcome Collage’s visible quirkiness and (claimed) banishment of technical element however, for us, it’s exactly these features of the plugin that we discover hardest to get on board with. They simply don’t ship what they’re purported to.
Regardless of its simple versatility and uniqueness, in making an attempt to attraction to our purely creative sides Collage reduces fairly than enhances its accessibility, intuitiveness and, in consequence, its artistic potential.
Key options
- Mac and Home windows plugin (AAX, AU and VST)
- Absolutely customisable principal consumer interface for every preset
- 11 results processors:
- Calico: delays
- Cloak: convolution processor
- Colossus: waveshaping or bit crushing distortion
- Crest: gates, expanders, and many others.
- Equator: EQ
- Kilter: filters
- Panoply: stereo subject processor
- Quell: compression processors
- Quiver: rhythmic gating
- Starboard: modulation results
- Verbal: reverbs
- 43 totally different impact varieties in complete
- 4 LFOs that may map to macro management widgets