Following on from their retro-inspired BA-1 synth plugin, Baby Audio sends me into some other worlds with their new Atoms plugin.
The first of Baby Audio’s virtual instruments was a fun re-creation of a mini vintage synth. The sounds and presets were very juicy – modern, with retro underpinnings that made you smile, with plenty of warm and squelchy sounds, and plenty of useful analogue synth sounds. It has recently been updated with a useful separate FX strip plugin, an arpeggiator, and several other handy improvements.
Atoms is Baby Audio’s second VI and is an altogether different prospect. It uses physical modelling techniques to create “an endless variety of organic and otherworldly sounds”. The modelling simulates a system of masses and springs that vibrate when played with a virtual bow, so this is something of a niche science project.
Obviously, the first thing to do is check out the presets. As they are categorised and alphabetical, the first settings I waded through were in the Ambient category. To generalise, these feature some pretty thick sounds, quite a bit of seasick wobulation and quite a bit of reverb. Many are fairly complex; some of them develop in unusual ways as you hold notes or chords, and these are often not the sorts of sounds you’d be able to blend into a complicated mix easily – they would take up a lot of space. But for creating atmospheres and moods, especially to picture, these are impressive. There are certainly plenty of sci-fi score possibilities. While “masses and springs” might suggest you are going to be hearing metallic noises, that is not always the case – there are plenty of warm and squelchy noises too.
Moving on to the Bass category, there are plenty of big warm sounds here, with a distinctly analogue character in many cases. The detuned pitch-wow theme continues in a few of the settings, and I guess that sound is quite a fashionable thing. The mod wheel is generally wired to expanding this effect, which is useful if that’s your bag. Oddly, despite MPE support, there doesn’t seem to be a way to edit pitch-bend range, which seems fixed to just a semitone in either direction. Other categories are Keys, Lead, Pad, Pluck, Pulsing and String, and then you get the Radioactive expansion pack which is included, with a whole bunch more and some different categories. There’s plenty here to satisfy, even if you never get into fiddling with the nuts and bolts of the synth engine.
The plugin window is a continuously resizeable square. At smallest, it still takes up a fair amount of the screen, and much of it is taken up with a round washing machine style display that somewhat cryptically shows you shapes depending on which of the four mass-spring network profiles are in use – I’m not sure it’s an awful lot more useful than staring at the washing machine!
As is often the case with modern plugins, there is a randomise button. Helpfully, the function is not completely random, but biased towards creating musically useful sounds. Usefully, you can exclude individual parameters from this, and set ranges of the knobs for a limit on how random things can get. The adjacent Recycle button creates small changes to the existing loaded sound for a bit of variation, and you can always Undo as necessary.
If you want to dig deeper, Baby Audio have made things pretty straightforward, with a neat set of knobs to allow you access to their deep world of spring modelling. There are six main controls for the modelling engine, spread around the circular window. Chaos is the one that gives you that trendy random pitch modulation as you increase it. Turning up the Order knob increases spring damping and acts like a low-pass filter. You can increase the energy of the springs with Force, adding harmonics, and Overtones brightens the sound as if you were moving a violin bow closer to the bridge. Drive adds harmonic clipping, and finally there is a Filter knob. All these controls can be LFO-modulated in several ways, making for a more interesting texture. You can choose Sine, ramping (reversible) Sawtooth or Drift – which is semi-random. Additionally, MPE allows you to modulate with polyphonic aftertouch. Modulation ranges for each knob can be set with easy to drag end-stops. And of course you can tempo-synch with the host. Several LFO re-trigger modes are provided, and you can even drag and drop the settings from one control to another.
Along the bottom are nine further controls for global options such as a choice of four different spring network profiles, Root (octave), Attack and Release, Movement (for the depth and speed of bowing), Modulation (chorus), Vibrato, and an X-Y pad for the reverb control. The reverb is laid on fairly thickly with some of the presets, and yet I feel that there are far better reverbs available externally that would better enhance Atoms’ sounds. The X-Y pad merely controls the mix level and size (length).
In a fairly crowded virtual synth market, Atoms genuinely offers something a bit unusual, and I’m sure this will find a place in many composers’ and sound designers’ regular arsenal. It is probably not for everyone, so it’s worth checking out videos and trying the demo. Many of the sounds are complex, potentially taking up a huge amount of mix space, but there are plenty that sit well in different situations. I’d prefer some of the presets a bit drier, and a bit more sophistication from the in-built reverb. But I found it very inspiring and engaging. Time will tell as to how much use it gets. Further preset packs are promised, so it will be interesting to hear what other colours come along. It’s an extremely cleverly designed synth, and opens up a whole bunch of fantastic possibilities unachievable elsewhere.
Pros: An unusual concept which provides plenty of unusual yet usable sounds, lots of great presets, friendly interface, a fairly shallow learning curve.
Cons: Can be a bit Marmite, with a rich but sometimes odd character to some of the sounds, cannot seem to adjust pitch-bend range, many presets rely heavily on the relatively unsophisticated in-built reverb.