One of the more intriguing elements has to be the Flux control, which lets you modulate the speed of a selected LFO/step sequencer using the rate of the other. As you’d expect, Rate can be locked to various clock divisions – from 1/64th notes, right up to eight bars – as well as including both dotted and triplet settings. We also enjoyed the addition of a Chaos control, which varies the amplitude of the LFO on each step, making the output more interesting to the ear.
Looking first at the LFO, it’s pleasing to see a range of creative waveshapes (like Quad Stepped Sawtooth, or Notch) as well as the conventional sine, triangle and sawtooth shapes. The beating heart of Movement is the four rhythm sources: each set to work as an LFO, step sequencer, or sidechain modulator. Once assigned, numbers in the centre of each pot indicate the routing, as well as small bar graphs on the bottom of the pot to see the depth of modulation. The accessibility of Movement is perfectly illustrated in respect to the modulation mapping, where the rhythm sources are assigned to parameters within the FX engine simply by a process of drag-and-drop. What could be a complicated plug-in, therefore, remains intuitive throughout the entirety of its use – immediate and accessible for the first-time user, yet deep enough to keep ardent knob-twiddlers happy for hours. Part of the appeal of Movement, as with Output’s other products, is the way the interface integrates itself into the process. A vanilla-sounding synth pad, for example, suddenly comes to life with pulsating filter treatments or a simple guitar line suddenly becomes a rhythmic feature with a choppy, staccato-like gate, bathed in echoing delays.įor new users, it’s well worth spending time with Movement’s presets just to see the breadth of what the plug-in can achieve, and thanks to a clear preset-tagging system (using descriptions such as choppy, pulses or sidechain), it’s easy to find the treatment that you’re after. Sonically speaking, the output of Movement can be characterised as a range of animated FX treatments that vary given the material presented to them. The rhythm generators are presented as LFOs, step sequencers and a sidechain input, all designed to add movement to the aforementioned, and otherwise static, FX engines. What makes Movement really interesting, though, is the introduction of four rhythm generators, spread across the two FX engines. Movement is powered by two parallel effects engines (A and B), each of which has up to four different effects slots that can be used to instantiate a range of signal-processing options, including filters, delays, reverbs, compression and distortion.
To fully understand what Movement has to offer, it’s worth taking some time to describe its signal path and the creative possibilities it entails. However, given the high standards we’ve come to expect from Output instruments, does Movement make the grade as an audio processor? Movement is Output’s first audio plug-in, and it’s designed to impart a range of rhythmic qualities onto any number of audio sources that you pass through it.