Background: Thinking Different
The industry needs transforming. It’s for others to decide whether they want to get stuck in the past or whether they want to come on the journey.
(Lucian of Samosata)
Noise Engineering is just different. Ever since the reveal of their iconic Basimilus Iteritas eurorack module, I was hooked. Not just a standard VCO with a few knobs and inputs, but a self-contained, percussive synth voice, built with dynamics and aggression in mind. To me, it sounded like Autechre in a box. All of their hardware modules have this sort of “edge,” both visually and sonically. I mean, take a look at an early version of one of their first modules, the Ataraxic Translatron. It looks like it was pulled from some cybernetic scrap heap and it sounds like it, too (it’s an Atari-inspired noise-generator.)
NE became known in the Eurorack modular world for developing creative sound generators and effects, and in 2021, they expanded to the software realm, with the Freequel bundle (Ruina, Virt Vereor, and Sinc Vereor); a suite of diverse synthesizers (Loquelic, Mantis, Cursus, and Basimilus Iteritas); and wild takes on delay (Imitor) and reverb (Desmodus). Each of these deserves a separate review, alone. Perhaps in the future. This review isn’t about NE’s crazy sound generators, though; it’s about their equally insane dynamics processors, Polydactyl and Librae.
Polydactyl – Reshaping Compression
Polydactyl (from the Greek, meaning “many toes/fingers”) is a multiband dynamics processor capable of everything from transparent and subtle mix-tightening to warm, characterful, glue compression, to extreme distortion and audio destruction.
NE started development from the ground up, meaning that they did not rely on common architectures or well-known styles of compression for Polydactyl. That is, if you’re looking for an 1176, LA-2A, or Manley emulation (actually, six of them!), look elsewhere. That said, Polydactyl certainly has its own “flavor” or “color,” as those classics do.
I don’t want to parrot exactly what the product literature says, so here are some highlights of the plugin:
- Six, processors, including four, frequency-adjustable bands, spanning the entire frequency range
- Separate controls for dynamics and distortion for each band
- Easy adjustment of compression, noise gating, expansion, and limiting on each adjustable band
- “Weight” controls for Pre and Post stages to control plugin response to incoming signal
- Individual Link controls for each stage for adjusting all four split bands simultaneously
- “Blend” control that allows for parallel processing
- Lookahead for transparent gain reduction
- Comes with a ton of preset patches to get you started
- As with all NE software, Polydactyl includes a deep modulation section
An Interface That Pops
This new school processor is light-years beyond The Ancients in terms of interface and playability. Just look at that screen. It just pops, almost literally–the hue and “fire” (3D effect) is fully adjustable (and it can also be deactivated).
Upon loading it up, you just want to mess around with everything, without even looking at the manual. And you can, because hovering over a control reveals a popup at the top of the window with helpful guidance. I think this is important in a product with few common reference points. That is, there are no controls for ratio, attack, or threshold. Instead, NE has “room” (amount of compression), “floor” (amount of expansion or noise-gating), and “weight” (low or high-frequency sidechain emphasis.)
There’s a frequency spectrum display at the top and an analysis window at the bottom, which is rich with information, displaying the input envelope, output signal, and difference. You can change the scroll rate as well. For me, this is especially helpful because I mainly adjust everything by ear. Again, this is not your grandpa’s compressor; sometimes you want to dial in an aspect more precisely, and this segment of the screen helps you visualize what’s going on.
Processors
Processors are NE’s word for the individual units that compress, expand, distort, and limit the incoming audio. There are four of them for the adjustable bands and they’re sandwiched by Pre and Post processors. All of these can be bypassed or blended with the dry audio.
The idea is that you have a “pre-processor” that sort of conditions the audio that flows into the individual band processors, then a final post-processing stage to glue it all together.
It sounds kind of insane to have this much going on in one compression plugin, right? How can a single transient survive the crushing force of so much compression? Trust me, it can turn any audio into a sausage waveform, but it can be subtle, too. I’ve used it on a “bluegrass-hiphop-indie-electro” (don’t ask) project on instruments (guitar, bass, upright bass[!], vocals, and drums) and for individual buss, and master buss processing.
Certainly, Polydactyl’s main job is to compress or expand a signal–and it does that well–but that’s only part of the picture. Each processing unit has saturation, soft drive, hard drive type distortion, and so-called “zero pop” noise, which adds a little airy fuzz to the signal. I think, if you’re not using these awesome, colorizing effects, you’re missing out on the best features of Polydactyl.
Modulation
Every NE plugin comes with a rich modulation section. Nearly every parameter can be controlled by: 4 LFOs, 4 macro controllers, and one envelope.
Standard LFOs would be too boring for NE, so each one can be a saw, sine, triangle, square, or a blended, warped version. Noise adds a slewed, random effect to the wave.
Oh, these modulators don’t have to be smooth: each “LFO” can also be a step sequencer, with up to 32 steps!
You might be asking yourself, why would I need to modulate anything in a dynamics plugin? These are usually static devices. Set it and forget it.
For many applications, you don’t want to mess with the settings too much, but here are some creative things you can do with modulation:
- On the High band, set Soft Drive and Soft Blend to 70%. Connect Soft Blend to Env and invert the modulation. Now, every time the envelope is triggered that Soft Drive goes down; upon release, the distortion of the High channel goes up, making a frequency-dependent sidechain effect.
- Taking a bassy synth track as input, assign a different LFO to the Gain parameter of the 4 bands. Adjust the speed and amount of the LFOs. That synth will go from static and boring to mean and animated.
- On a boring techno track, set Room and Floor to 100% so the Floor acts as a noise gate. Assign a slow triangle LFO to Floor. The track’s high end will be gated according to the Release setting, and gradually opened up, resulting in a more dynamic track.
Polydactyl in Action
NE’s Soundcloud page is rich with a variety of demos, including dry/wet comparisons.
Here’s Polydactyl in action, straight from NE’s YouTube:
So much of my own music uses Polydactyl (and Librae, and Desmodus, and…), it’s hard to choose one, but “AUG glitches” is a good one. The main, glitchy drum track is absolutely smashed by Poly, with the high end and atmosphere being enhanced by Soft Drive and Zero Pop, starting around 1:00. The entire track is reined-in with an instance of Poly and Librae on the master. The side channel is also brought up around that time, to enhance the stereo image.
Librae – Creative Mid/Side Processing
There’s more??? Yes, NE has not one, but two dynamics plugins. Librae is a “mastering-grade” plugin, focused on transparent or creative Mid/Side processing.
I don’t want this segment on Librae to sound like an afterthought. However, the plugin essentially uses the same processing units found in Polydactyl, in a Mid/Side configuration. So, instead of four frequency bands, you get Mid and Side, again, bookended by Pre and Post. All the same parameters are there, with the addition of a Mid <-> Side control, which decides the balance between the two channels.
You can do all the wild saturation and crazy compression that you can with Polydactyl, but it’s limited to the components that make up the stereo image. Still, if you are a producer, audio engineer, or mastering engineer, a plugin like this is good to have in the arsenal.
There’s really no alternative to what NE has on offer here
Noise Engineering Polydactyl and Librae Review – Verdict
Polydactyl and Librae are essential tools if you want to make punchy, impactful, high-end music. Heck, even if you want to make smooth, gritty, lo-fi music, they should be at the top of the list.
You can shape the tone and stereo image of your production in surprising ways. I say “surprising” because NE plugins invite the user to experiment and play around.
Minor gripes? No sidechain input. You can’t modify the frequency range of the band processors via internal or external modulation. You can’t add/remove bands (but you can bypass them.) That’s it, really.
There’s really no alternative to what NE has on offer here. Of course, there are multi-band dynamics processors by iZotope and the like, but I don’t see them as related.
Polydactyl isn’t just a compression plugin, it’s a multi-band filter, distortion box, and saturator, for starters.
Noise Engineering is just different.
Pricing and Availability
Polydactyl and Librae are $49 each, but choose another plugin and the three will come to around $125.
To get your copy and learn more about Polydactyl, Librae, and other NE plugins, visit the software section of their website.
