MODUS Review (spnsored content)
Physical Audio have hooked me up with their latest synth Modus, full disclosure, they have also sponsored my video of it, and by extension this review. As with with my other reviews, I tend to avoid too much criticism or negativity and tend to focus on what makes something unique, fun, or useful. So just keep that in mind moving forward, I don’t want my audience to feel mislead or lied to in any way, but I do also appreciate the support from Physical Audio as I’m still building this all up and any work helps.
Modus, like the rest of Physical Audio’s plugins is a physical modeling synth (hence the brand name). Modus uses various combinations of strings, bars and plates connected in various arrays (called maps) to produce different tones. Modus is quite unlike other physical modeling synths out there, it’s not designed to emulate flutes or harps or strings, it is designed to emulate the type of bizarre hybrid instrument/ art project you might find in a sound designers garage, like a sound sculpture designed for creating horror sounds and ambiences. This does make it a bit tricky to identify just how “realistic” Modus sounds, as there’s not quite the same frame of reference we’d have for more familiar instruments, but the sounds are definitely not too synthetic sounding, just a bit “unreal”.
Modus uses 3 different methods for tonal generation: strings, string-plate, and plates. Each one has an exciter with tone control and the option for multi-strike, which repeatedly excites the resonator with a set force and rate. The resonators are all connected by springs in one of 3 different arrays per resonator type. With 2 different spring types, and a couple other options per resonator mode this makes for 48 combinations. The connection controls are all quite minimal in their impact, besides the “strength” control, which can add quite a lot of rattle and tone to your sound. Additionally there are 2 LFOs, but they only map to filter and connection parameters. I’d have loved to modulate the multi-strike values, or some of the material properties, but it’s always nice to get a little extra motion involved.
STRINGS: Strings lets you pick between 2 to 4 strings with a fourth option to pair them up. There’s controls for damping, tone, material, mass, and a universal control for “stretch” which seems to define the harmonic content of the strings…
STRINGS-PLATE: Strings-Plate is 2 strings connected to a plate, this is my least favorite of the 3 models, as it is only mono or duo-phonic. Just like with the strings mode, there is damping tone and stretch controls to change the material properties. but string also lets you adjust the mass of the plate, with lower masses ringing out more harmonics. Additionally, the VCF and drive are deactivated for this mode. The different maps seem to have the most impact on this mode compared to the others, so if you are not planning on using polyphony, it is worth checking out the extra options.
PLATES: Plates is simply 1 or 2 plates connected by a pair of springs. It lets you place mics anywhere on the plates to pick up different resonant zones, but more importantly you can place a driver which excites the plate with either a saw or sine wave. I really like this mode as its able to create sustained tones that grow over time as the exciter builds up and resonates with the plate. There’s a mix control for the driver, I usually turn this all the way down as I’d rather only hear the more “natural” sound of the plates and not have that over shadowed by the bright synthetic sound of a saw wave. I would like to have seen a triangle wave, or a driver with a variable wave shape, perhaps a bandpass filter to sweep harmonic regions.
EFFECTS: The effects here are minimal, you have a simple LPF, drive, delay, and a fairly nice reverb. I should mention the reverb sounds a bit synthetic, it is nice soft and sustains for awhile, which is great for this application. But if you’re goal with using this tool is realism, you might want to deactivate this reverb and use a good convolution
What Modus does really well are the sounds it is capable of, which unfortunately isn’t the widest array. It’s very much a “get what you get” kind of tool, which is perfectly fine, because in reality, if you came across this device as a physical object, you wouldn’t be able to produce other sounds from it anyways. But I will say, I was often times surprised by what it is able to produce, especially its ability to do higher frequency plucked tones and weird bell/plucked string hybrids that sounded oddly acoustic. Where Modus excels is in dark rattling sound scapes with lots of texture, there’s this realistic high frequency content that isn’t just “noisy” but texturized. While occasionally piercing, it never seems to sound too digital or synthetic, frequencies are there in a way similar to what yo might hear in reality or at least closer than if you were just using an array of comb filters with white noise.
What makes Modus special is how much it invites you to explore, often times it doesn’t do what you want, and you just have to try something else, but then it makes a sound you just didn’t expect. From my digging around I found there wasn’t the largest range of possibilities, but there was often a good amount of nuance available for the sounds it was producing. And it did very much remind me of the process of experimenting with different sheets of metal trying to produce cool sounds. I hope Physical Audio continues to make new instruments into the future, everything they put out is just so strange and experimental, and they seem to try something new each time.