VOLT and TIME Expansions for BEAM
Since Beam’s launch, Lunacy audio have added two new node modules to their creative multi effect. Previously Beam had more of an ambient lean to its effects selection, but these new modules add quite a bit of range to what is possible. The new Volt distortion provides much needed edge to Beam, and the Time node adds remixing and glitching to the arsenal. It’s really nice to see Beam expanded like this. each new node exponentially increases the amount of configurations that you can play with. Each node add on also includes a collection of presets built around their specific module, so it’s like getting a new effect and a preset library.
You can read my full review of Beam here
VOLT
Volt brings distortion to Beam adding a whole new palette of sound capabilities to this creative multi-fx unit. Three controls for “heat” “crush” and “charge” allow for a surprising array of brutal distortions. Heat is a classic saturation that pushes into beefy and extreme distortion, Crush is a decimator type effect that seems to combine both sample rate reduction and bit reduction tastefully into a single control. Charge is an OTT style multi-band upwards compressor reduced into a single control.
Following these distortions are a pair of color and contour contour controls to sculpt the resulting tonality.
There is also a feedback path for adding screaming resonances to the distorted sound. Volt offers a unique take on feedback by including scatter and diffusion into the short delay to give a wider range of feedback characteristics.
Volt also includes an added selection of cabinet convolutions for added tone shaping.
TIME
Time is a buffer looper effect with enough flexibility to be its own plugin. The buffer region can easily be set to tempo synced loop divisions, but can also loop in free time anywhere from one tenth of a second up to a whole minute. Slice marker can be removed or added to pick up and rearrange various sections of the looped buffer. You can add slopes to slow down or speed up time and ever reverse regions.
Resample mode behaves more like a tape loop, with pitch changing as things slow down or speed up. Texture mode is more of a granular stretching algorithm where you can set a custom window size and manually shift pitch up or down with out affecting playback speed. Finally you can play with different playback modes and even freeze the buffer if you so desire.