First test
Let’s give it a first try:
- Put Finisher NEO into a track.
- Click on the large lime-green title left-center and from the menu select the Mode SPREAD: “Infinity”
- Send audio into Finisher NEO and while it plays, turn up the Big knob.
You will hear that as you turn the knob, the signal gradually gets filtered, becomes wider and more blurry, and a higher octave is added to it.
How does this work?
The effects used to create the Infinity Mode are Grain Pitch, Chorus, a Highpass filter, and Reverb.
The signal gets sent through all these effects, and the Big knob controls different things for each of them:
- The Chorus is set to a full, rich chorussing effect. That signal is mixed in, and the Chorus rate and depth are increased as the Big knob goes up.
- The HP12 (12 dB Highpass Filter) Cutoff Frequency and Resonance are set to zero and get turned up with the Big knob, resulting in the filtering effect that makes the signal thinner and more resonant.
- The Grain Pitch is set to a Granular Delay pitched an octave upwards. The Big knob mixes the effect signal in.
- The Reverb effect is set to a very long reverberation that is inaudible at the lowest position of the Big knob, and turning the Big knob mixes the Reverb in.
Now try the following:
- Adjust the Vari 1, 2, and 3 knobs, and notice what they do to the effect character.
- Adjust Vari 4 - it’s a UJAM-unique filter that we call the Highlighter - when turned left, it lowpass-filters (or dampens) the signal, when turned right, it highpass-filters (or thins out). Vari 4 is the same in all but one Modes, allowing you to always add a nice riser, intro or outro effect.
- Switch to a different Mode by either clicking the lime-green title and choose one from the browser, or use the little arrows. Note how by switching the Mode, the knob settings are not affected!
- Go to the top of the UI (right next to the UJAM logo) and select Presets the same way you select Modes. This time the knobs move with every Preset. Presets are settings of the entire user interface - Mode, Knobs and Levels.
All 5 knobs are set up individually for each of the 50 Modes and designed to give you access to the qualities of the effect that are musically most useful.
The four smaller knobs let you adjust the two most important qualities of the effect signal, while the Big knob really shines when moved in real-time or automated. All five knobs in combination provide for a large variety of effects for each single Finisher Mode.
What’s inside Finisher NEO?
You could think of Finisher NEO as a mixer channel strip with almost unlimited slots for effect processors, all of which can be activated and adjusted at a simple click on the Mode selector.
Finisher NEO features 27 different effect types – from simple Chorus to Multiband Distortion, from Convolution to Grain Pitch, from Multimode Filters to Multitap Delays - with a total of over 60 Effect Slots distributed across 3 Busses plus a Master Bus. That’s quite some real estate if you’d try to build that in hardware.
The Big Knob can be wired to every parameter of every active effect, in varying degrees. No worries – this has already been done for you.
For example, the Big knob can dramatically speed up the phaser while introducing a little distortion and mixing in a dash of reverb.
The same is true for the Vari 1 - 4 knobs which you can use to adjust the effect to your scenario or taste, but which you can also automate.
Every Mode and its Knob assignments are a complex sound design piece to create one particular “change of scene” for your track.
That you can’t see all the hundreds and hundreds of parameters under the hood is deliberate. It enables you to focus on complex sound changes as simple knobs, encourages you to use your ears and your openness to be inspired.
Switch Modes, turn the knobs – and make your tracks more beautiful, interesting, bigger, tougher, or change them entirely. Achieving the same dynamic and motion in conventional effect plugins would require dozens of automation lanes and diminish serendipity altogether.
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