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Thermal £134

Output Audio

Web output.com Format PC/Mac, VST/AU/AAX

Output Audio’s granular multi-effects plugin, Portal, was one of our favourite software releases of last year (10/10, 273), and the follow-up, Thermal, is a three-stage creative distortion module that adapts and elaborates on the same architectural foundation.

Thermal’s main page houses a visually sexy but functionally unremarkable XY controller mapped to a macro on each axis that can be freely assigned to any number of parameters throughout the plugin. Those parameters are accessed via the Advanced page, wherein three serial processing stages, two master effects, two multistage envelope generators, and a master compressor and HP/LP filter are manipulated. The three processing stages are identical in their components, each consisting of two effect slots - the first offering 19 overdrive, waveshaping, clipping foldback and other distortion algorithms, the second nine assorted processors (Bit Reducer, Chorus, Compressor, Stereo Delay, Filter, Frequency Shifter, etc) - stereo widening, and low and high shelving filters. Crucially, each stage can be filtered down to processing only a user-defined frequency range, which brings a hugely empowering multiband angle into play - although it seems odd that you can’t view the band limits of all three stages together in the frequency display.