DIGITALIS Review
Digitalis is a glitch/ Lofi plugin created by Aberrent DSP. Out of all the lofi plugins to come out in, Digitalis is one of my favorites, focussing more on digital artifacts and creative sound design, rather than subtle retro character and tone. With 3 main modules you can place in any order, and a simple parameter sequencer, there’s quite a wide variety of fun effects you can create. The quirky 2bit UI has a cat that acts as a manual, and the drawable spectral filter is worth the price tag alone.
DATA: This section is probably the main reason I use Digitalis, the spectral effects are fairly minimal, but introduce unique watery digital artifacts, giving a softer sound prior to the harsher noise bit reduction effects or round them out after the fact. As mentioned earlier, this section contains the drawable spectral filter. This filter allows you to draw any shape you want and filters out any frequencies as the playhead moves over them. You can lock the playhead to tempo divisions, and even import art to use as a filter.
The telecommunications section emulates low mp3 or poor internet quality, reducing the spectral data present in your signal
This section also contains a pitch shifter/ auto tune effect that you can set to any major or minor key. I haven’t used this particular effect very much as autotune doesn’t always do a whole lot to synthesizers, but it can be a fun way to get some unique artifacts.
CORRUPTION: This next section is focussed on various methods of bit reduction type distortions. Between decimate, bitcrush, and bitrot, there are plenty of options to get those crackly sparkly retro qualities. A little goes a long way here and these particular bit reduction effects seem to have a nice character and focus to them.
If you’ve played with one bitcrusher, it’s not a stretch to say you’ve played with them all, but having features like a crossover to target a range, a compressor to balance the volume, and options like futility and dropouts can add a good amount of variation to the effect.
TIME: Here we have a beat repeat style effect going from straight repeats to complete chaos. The repeater lets you set standard or dotted divisions for repeats, and how many times the repeated section loops. You can set the loop length anywhere from 2 to 64 repeats, this is interesting because you can set it to odd or unusual values to get some interesting polymetric repetitions. You can even turn off sync (not something I’ve ever done tbh, but it’s nice to know you can. The repeat rate can be as fast as 1/4096 for “stutters” that behave more closely to oscillators.
The glitch section just beneath allows you to inject variation and chaos into the repeater. There’s quite a few options in this section and it can actually get pretty crazy and wild, which is very fun if you’re trying to create nonsense to sample from later.
SEQUENCER: Finally at the bottom of Digitalis we have a simple sequencer, I am always a fan of effects with modulation and sequencing, especially when they allow you to a range of controls to modulate. You get 4 sequences, with any length up to 16 steps, which as I love pointing out, lets you do fun parametric sequencing. the rate of this sequencer can be whole notes down to 32nd notes per step. You only get about 20 destinations to choose from, but they include all the fun ones you’d want anyways, this limitation is made up for by the sequencer values displaying their destinations relative control settings, rather than a static value between 0 and 1. This is nice for controls like rhythm or pitch where you’d like to see the actual value per step, instead of having to calculate it for yourself..
This sequencer sections really takes Digitalis to the next level, as fun as lofi and glitch effects are, there’s so much more you can do with them by varying their controls per step.
Sequencing bit reduction and pitch shifting and stutters creates dynamic and rhythmic patterns that are fun to play into.
Digitalis is a whole toybox of effects to play with and as simple as it is, it’s actually fairly deep. I like to use Digitalis to quickly create chaotic glitchy and colorful artifacts without putting much thought into it. It’s a great tool for resampling and creating a bank of presets to “just see what happens” with. And as redundant as this sounds, the including of a sequencer makes it great for creating sequenced artifacts, instead of just having a static fuzz or glitter applied to the whole track
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DIGITALIS: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/53-Multi-Effect-/8908-Digitalis?a_aid=61c378ab215d5