TURNADO Review

Turnado is a fairly old school multi effect at this point, with a UI that can’t resize this weird Sugar Bytes plugin might feel a bit out dated. However, here in the Databroth studio, I’m all about fun, and Sugar Bytes has known how to have fun for over a decade. Turnado may not have the most up to date sound, but it’s still a fairly capable device worth digging into from time to time. A collection of 24 different effects you can chain up to 8 at a time to create all sorts of whacky combinations. The effects range from interesting delays, to granular and freezing tools, to stutters, filters, an amp, and even a spectral effect. For it’s time Turnado was WELL ahead of the curve for creative multi effects. Lacking any sort of effect sequencing, Turnado has a macro dubbed the “Dictator” which allowed for performance motion across all 8 devices.

As usual with Sugar Bytes plugins, the simple front panel opens up into something with a bit more depth than you’d expect at first glance. Each effect can be opened up to reveal a control panel with an extensive macro system and modulation. Every effect has 4 parameters often with additional modes to select from, here you can map the macro to manipulate any of the controls and even apply one of 20 remap curves for more dynamic control. There are 2 LFOs with a variety of shapes, randoms, and even a step sequencer, and additionally an envelope follower to give some motion to these effects. The idea is to assign the macro in interesting ways to create a fun single control effect preset. After building a collection of these presets, you can assign different presets to each slot or use the dice to randomly assign them. From here you’d use the dictator to create an array of macro values, or again, just randomize the field. you’ve now boiled down 8 different effects to a single control that at the time I assume you’d record with automation, but nowadays I’d simply map this to an LFO (assuming your DAW allows for that).

EFFECTS: As mentioned earlier, Turnado includes 24 effects, there are 8 categories these effects fit into, broken up into different colors to give the UI a fun look.

Some of these effects are more fun than others, so I’ll cover a few of my favorites. It’s worth creating a default version for each of these, and exploring them all for at least a little bit, sometimes the results are surprising.

Tonalizer: a comb filter with a variety of scales to pick from. The “auto” mode tracks incoming pitch and plays comb filter along with incoming audio for some weird results

Reactor: samples and freezes the incoming audio, you can set the time it takes to refresh the buffer. There’s 3 different modes; freeze time stretches the audio, reverb loops a ghostly reverb, and looper which is a buffer looper for those robotic stutters. Reactor can be triggered manually or via audio threshold and you can also repitch the frozen audio.

Slicearranger: loops incoming audio and plays it back in one of 50 different patterns, the two fill knobs add even more variation to these patterns. Both the pattern and fill controls have a variety of sub options to choose from.

Granulizer: granularizes the incoming signal, you can either manually adjust the position, or use the amount control for automatic playback. Grain size and distance provide a variety of textures and a selection of grain shapes. Lastly of course you can repitch the signal.

Spectralizer: this one is really cool, it’s a modal resonator with different scales. You can of course set the resonance and base frequency. Then you can choose how many bands are active, each one corresponding to the set scale. Now what makes it interesting is the delay control, which delays each band from the next, creating interesting patterns sweeps and arpeggios.

UI: I want to touch briefly on the editor page UI. The front panel is obviously fun and simple and inviting, but I can imagine some people see the editor controls and perhaps feel overwhelmed.
there are two types of controls here, the mapping controls, who’s center displays the current remap curve, and the main controls which display 3 pieces of information at once; the main knob body shows the control value should there be no mapping, the solid curve shows the mapping range, and the red indicator displays the current value, moving if modulation is applied. It’s really a clever and fun design, that might predate many other visual feedback systems, but obviously it’s a bit much to look at.

Sugar Bytes often feels like the WIlly Wonka of software effects and synthesizers, I believe they really started leaning into this around this time, lots of quirky and fun ideas, always a bit more under the hood than you first expect, but still quite accessible and limited once you dig in. They encourage you to explore every combination, every setting, every little detail of each device, which sets a feeling of discovery, where instead of just adding another module or lfo, you end up finding a clever solution, or system to maximize what is available. If you find yourself with a copy of Turnado, don’t pass it up, give it a go, spend a bit of time with it and see what you can make, there’s more powerful and intuitive tools around today, but you never know, Turnado might just blow away some of the creative barriers those more advanced tools can sometimes create.

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TURNADO: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/53-Multi-Effect-/528-Turnado?a_aid=61c378ab215d5