- Slicing audio and software instrument data into individually processed units is a popular effects approach these days. Plug-ins like Glitch, Turnado and Stutter Edit provide this kind of flexibility. Now XILS Lab have jumped in with R.A.M.S.E.S.—a Rhythm and Motion Stereo Engine System, to give it its full name. R.A.M.S.E.S. uses XILS Lab's Le Masque step sequencer at its heart, which in turn provides control of up to three lanes: Filter, Pan/Level and one called Advanced.
Within the GUI, these lanes occupy a generous portion of the upper-right corner, with settings for the plug-in's modules spread around it. In the top-left corner, you'll find the filter section, which provides either 12 or 24 dB/octave low-pass filtering, 6 or 12 dB band-pass options or a 12 dB high-pass filter. Next to this is a rotary to set a resonance amount, and further out from this dial you'll find a variable drive controller. Additionally, you can enable a hiss option, to give your filter choice some sizzle and fuzz. Below this is a bitcrusher slider and a stereo width control to allow sounds either to be narrowed or spread wider. A green balance LED lets you bias the input signal towards the left or right. To the right of these controls, an overall level slider controls the main output volume.
Underneath these settings are master controls both for the dry/wet balance and the level of the built-in delay module. Strangely, the dry/wet balance is labelled the wrong way around; for a while, I was baffled by a full wet setting having no impact on the sound, until I rotated this dial towards the dry side and the signal began to be processed. This is frustrating since reaching for this dial becomes a necessity—the presets, which offer a useful insight into R.A.M.S.E.S.'s capabilities, nearly all select the fully dry position as their starting point. The better news is that it's possible to lock the balance control, so once you've selected a position that lets you hear what the plug-in is doing, it'll stay put as you switch between presets or begin to build treatments of your own. Also in this section, you can specify the overall delay time, introduce a less quantized version of that overall setting using the Offset LR dial and select the Stereo Spray amount to control the stereo width of the delay taps.
Once you've set these overall controls, you can then start building motion sequences. In the top-right corner, you can decide which of the Filter, Pan/Level and Advanced lanes will be active simply by clicking the ones you want. Then you draw directly onto the sequencer to generate a block of activity where you want one. You'll need to customize the display to provide grid spaces of the length you want—1/16th notes, 1/8th notes, etc.—but the grey background will be interrupted with a blue block wherever you draw one. R.A.M.S.E.S. lets you determine the length of these blocks freely, so if you wanted a single block to occupy the first four grid slots before leaving a gap and creating a short one to fill in the ninth step, for instance, no problem.
Then, within each block, you'll find a red and a white line, which can be moved up or down to create offsets from the default values for two parameters. So within the Filter lane, the red line controls cutoff frequency offsets, and the white line manipulates resonance. As your sequencer plays back your audio, a running light moves through each consecutive step, so it's easy to see as well as hear the effect your settings have, allowing you to make changes on the fly. Within the Pan/Level lane, the red line controls pan offsets, either to the left or right (up or down), and the white line creates volume changes. So you can pretty quickly see that it's possible to create wah treatments at the top and tremolo/autopan ones in the middle, as just two examples.
Such movement can be made more sophisticated still, as it's possible to introduce both envelope and LFO movement to lanes, too. If you press the Overview button at the top, you'll see all three lanes of data at once. But if you toggle this off and then click on just one of the available modules, the screen instead provides a set of bespoke additional controls for each type of processor. In the Filter section, you'll be greeted with four-stage envelope controls, along with an amount dial and a multi-oscillator LFO that can either be sync'd to tempo, set freely or guided by the sequencer itself. Similar but completely independent controls are available for the Pan/Level section.
The Advanced lane allows you to configure a wider collection of parameters to the red/white lines. Clicking on this tab in the top-right corner opens a screen that lets you click and select parameters relating to all of R.A.M.S.E.S.'s modules—filters, envelopes, LFOs, delay and stereo/level—and then to select a specific target for each. You can pick up to four of these for both the red and white lines, with amount dials selecting which two are active at any one time, allowing for parameter morphing. It's powerful stuff, and with a huge range of available options, this Advanced pane is where you can design more radical treatments.
There's no doubt that this kind of processing encourages you to think about how fun it would be to operate such audio mangling in real-time. Fortunately, R.A.M.S.E.S. is ready to respond. For starters, it's a simple task to freely assign MIDI CCs to a range of parameters right within the window. The lower section is called R.I.T.A., and it encourages you to set up R.A.M.S.E.S. not as an audio effect but rather as a MIDI-controlled one, subject to the specifics of your chosen host. R.I.T.A. makes uses of R.A.M.S.E.S.' bottom pane to allow you to assign your choice of parameters to the pitch bend and modulation wheels, to velocity and to keyboard tracking, as well as providing a note/velocity X/Y pad, aftertouch control and further MIDI CC assignment. Used this way, R.A.M.S.E.S. becomes playable in hugely enjoyable and creative ways.
As mentioned earlier, while R.A.M.S.E.S. offers its own twist, it does rub shoulders with the capabilities of some well-established rivals. Does it do enough to make itself the standout choice in this arena? Yes and no. The sonic capabilities are very impressive, and this is, of course, the most important factor. But I'd like the interface to be a little larger and clearer, and I'm not entirely sure about the colour scheme, either. Compared to plug-ins like Glitch, its dominant greys, blacks and blues feel a touch drab. The mislabelling of the dry/wet control will no doubt be sorted in a future update, but for now, that's a touch frustrating. Other plug-ins also offer a wider range of effects types, though it must be said that many offer substantially fewer controls within each module. R.A.M.S.E.S.'s filter, in particular, sounds much better than most.
If you can put up with its drawbacks, R.A.M.S.E.S. is certainly capable of some wonderful results. Whether you want to chop up a drum loop or apply movement, dynamism and retro-filtered warmth to a static, digital-sounding synth pad, its combined step sequencers can certainly deliver the goods.
Ratings:
Cost: 4/5
Versatility: 3.5/5
Sound: 4/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5