HATE Review

Full disclosure: I work for Dawesome and not only beta tested Hate, but also made presets for Hate. I will try to keep this review as objective as possible, but do keep in this in mind while reading this review.

Dawesome’s Hate is another multi effects processor similar to Love, this time around focussed on distortion and more destructive effects processing. At the heart of Hate is a wavetable based distortion engine, allowing you to load and morph custom distortion curves for an incredibly wide range of shaping potential. This is followed by a chain of up to six effects slots that can load a couple dozen different effects modules. I created 80 presets for Hate and am very proud of this collection, I made an effort to keep all of my presets simple and mix ready, I avoided using delays and reverbs and other time based effects so you can use them on any track without significant changes to your composition.

I’m glad to see more wavetable based distortions, this has been such a cool effect freeing up creative wave shaper design. Not only do you get a customized curve, but you can freely change this curve by adjusting the wavetable position. Hate offers a few more controls to shape the table and distortion focus, the “Flat, Edge, and Warp” controls all mess with the shape of the curve. Edge is by far the most fun of the three adding repetitions of the shape with more intensity. Flat tames the curve by smoothing out the edges. To the right of the table display are three controls for adjusting the distortion focus, Freq Tilt is like a tilt filter, filtering out low frequencies to the right and high frequencies towards the left. Punch can tilt the distortion focus onto the transients or tail of your sound, and Image is for focussing in on the mid and sides of the signal.

The six part modular effects section is where Hate really shines, a wide collection of modules can be arranged in any order you like. Each module loads with a playful graphical slider to control the effect’s mix. Below the slider are some arrows for browsing various presets, without even opening the module you can switch between various settings. Mixing and matching modules in this way can be a playful way to experience different sounds and textures, but if you want to get more detailed, you can click the gear to open up the module’s control panel. You can of course save your own module presets and rearrange modules to your hearts desire. The module selection is great, with a focus on distortion and mixing modules.

MODULES

You may recognize some modules from Myth and Zyklop, being able to apply these to external signals is quite fantastic, there’s also some new additions that I hope to see added to Myth in the future. I wont go over every module but I’ll go into details about some of my favorites. 

ORBIT: This one comes from Myth and Zyklop, a bit tricky to describe, but it has a similar vibe to an analog ring modulator. The sounds produced by the three different modes add interesting side band frequencies that can create some alien textures.

RASPATOR: Previously named BTTF in Myth, Raspator is an FM effect with a feedback loop built in. It can get wild and scream in some incredibly destructive ways. As I told Peter, this effect could stand alone as its own plugin/

MAL-SYNC: A virtual hard sync effect, but one that can be applied to any signal, not just oscillators built into a synth. I believe this is pulled off with some clever delay based phase distortion, as there’s a bit of a tail added to your signal when you use it. The Phat control adds saw like buzzing overtones, but the Skew control chews up the sound into some fun distortion.

ATARI PUNK: Another one from Myth, APC gets gritty and dirty with random signal dropouts like a busted processor chip. I like to push this module to very bright distorted settings and bring the mix down to a very subtle level.

FM: While FM is also available in Myth, this one is more of a phase distortion. I really appreciate the ratio control that adds a unique touch to the classic phase distortion FM sound. I used FM quite a bit in some of my favorite presets to add bright cutting overtones.

I had a lot of fun making presets for Hate, I really love the collection I made and truly believe they can be a valuable tool when mixing and writing music. I created my presets to cover a wide range of intensities and sounds that can enhance drums and instruments as well as completely transform your signals into aggressive sound design. I’m a big fan of distortion units that offer a plethora of shaping options and I think Hate will make it’s way into my mixes along side the likes of Thermal, Rift, Cold Fire and Trash. I do have my complaints though, the sliders are a bit tedious to work with, having to click a tiny gear for every module, and switch back and forth between views to adjust mix. The sliders were added to make Hate more user friendly for producers who don’t want to worry about the internal controls, but I wish they were more like macros rather than mix control. Essentially, when you load up a preset, you’re met with a row of modules that only have the mix control visible and I don’t think this is as playful and fun as it could be. That said, I feel it is important to point out it is only a minor complaint about one of my favorite Dawesome Plugins. 

You can pick up HATE from Tracktion.com: https://www.tracktion.com/products/hate