iZotope Stutter Edit
If glitch is your thing, iZotope’s Stutter Edit might lead you down all kinds of creative avenues. Alex Holmes checks it out.
Price: £249.00
Manufacturer: iZotope
Website: http://www.izotope.com
Stutter Edit
Manufacturer iZotope
Price $249
Contact izotope@izotope.com
Web www.izotope.com
Minimum system requirements
PC Windows XP
Mac OSX 10.5.8
Stutter Edit is a plug-in we never thought would actually see the light of day. There has been rumour and speculation surrounding the software and its sister effect, Break Tweaker, for years, with no mention of an actual release date. Luckily, iZotope has stepped in and this glitch performance plug-in designed by virtuoso producer BT is finally with us. For those who don’t know, BT is a US composer and producer responsible for a number of film scores, club hits, deep electronica albums and a few more poppy tracks that we shall not mention.
Stutter Edit was designed by BT as a way to perform live his signature sound of incredibly intricate micro edits and creative rhythmic effects. It loads into your DAW as a MIDI-controlled effect, accepting incoming audio via its sidechain input. How complicated this is to set up will depend on your software of choice, but we had no problems running it in Logic and feeding in either an audio or instrument track.
The plug-in works in much the same way as Sugar Bytes’ Artillery or NI’s The Finger, whereby you activate effects by holding down keys – except in Stutter Edit each key triggers a different gesture containing multiple effects running simultaneously. Although the focus is on creating rhythmic glitch cuts by moving through a sequence of beat divisions, you also have control over the gate time, panning, high-/low-pass filters, lo-fi and bitcrush effects, two stereo delay effects and output volumes. As this software is designed to be performed, you can choose different values for the input quantise so that every gesture is triggered on the grid. There is also a Generator section that gives you the choice of 34 noise risers and hits, enabling you to add excitement to your performance as you move between sections.
Shape shifting
What makes Stutter Edit stand out from other glitch plug-ins – apart from the large collection of superb presets created by Mr BT himself – is the fact that every parameter is set to an LFO. When you hit the keyboard key you set all the LFOs in motion and each parameter moves from one value to another, which means you can’t actually program your own steps or shapes. Although this initially sounds restrictive, it works wonders as it blends the movement of all the effects into one, creating complex but incredibly fluid sound-mangling. Whether you feed through beats, vocals or even instruments, you can instantly create the kind of complicated sounds that would take hours to program ‘normally’. And as everything is tempo-sync’ed it all stays in time and performance is very, very fun!
On top of simply hitting keys to trigger different presets you can also move the mod wheel to take control of the LFO and sample buffer timeline, enabling you to slow down the movement of your effects. There’s also a global low-/high-pass filter controlled by the pitch bend wheel, although we found the Q value to be set a little too high for our tastes. Unfortunately, you can’t automate any of the parameters, which will upset some. The main reason for this is that each preset is essentially automated by the LFOs from within the plug-in itself, although allowing automation would open up many more creative possibilities.
If you already own glitch plug-ins then you may not get a great deal more out of Stutter Edit. It may also seem a little restrictive to those who like to program complex glitch sequences as you’re tied into the LFOs and working within the GUI. However, the quality of the sounds that it creates, the ease of use and the sheer amount of fun that can be had all combine to form one of the most exciting plug-ins we’ve tested for quite some time. MTM
Verdict
WHY BUY
Superb sound-mangling tool
Easy to get good results
Fun to play
WALK ON BY
GUI is a little dark
Slightly restrictive programming
An incredibly fluid and fun performance effect that enables you to easily re-create BT’s signature glitches and rolls.
★★★★★★★★★
Score: 9
This review first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 96
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