The WOW effect or how to give your production a…

WOW2 Header

The WOW2 by Sugar Bytes is one oft he most powerful filter plugins I ever worked with! I saw this PlugIn on a lot of EDM music production sites and thought, maybe this could be a useful tool for radio imaging too – and baaam! IT REALLY IS. Check out how you can treat drums, synths and FX with that small, red bundle of energy!

The Main Ingredients:

WOW2 has a freaky look and as the most important part, the filter, is placed right in the middle. You can choose between 21 (!!!) different filter types, which can also use in a vowel mode. Around the filter unit are the dry/wet, distortion, volume and filter resonance controls.

The distortion section has seven different types and you can choose, if want to add the effect before or after the filter. All types sound massive and fat and are perfect to give any audio a heavy drive. The volume knob can be used perfect because WOW2 has a build-in, good sounding limiter and who does not like to turn it up?
That’s it! The rest is „only“ modulators – looks simple, but has countless possibilities.

The Modulators:
WOW2 has for different modulators and they can control any parameter of the plugin (including each other). The most unique and most famous is the Wobbler. It is one knob which allows you to slide through different waveforms. Every waveform is assigned to a specific note length from 2/1 to 1/48. When you modulate the filter cutoff with the wobbler and control the knob by automation or by midi, you can easily create typical Dubstep basslines. Using distortion and maybe a bit modulation on it or on the resonance amount, you can turn nearly any synth into a fat bass:

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But the other modulaters of WOW2 are very strong too. The envelope follower for example can be adjusted, that it only reacts in a specific frequency range. The LFO can be triggered via audio too and the step sequencer can be easily adjusted or randomized (like the wobbler too). So with all that modulaters you can create a lot of dirt, glitch, noise and power. But because you can lose yourself in processing, Sugar Bytes delivered a ton of different presets.

Presets:
The presets are sorted by creators because a lot of sounddesigners and producers contributed ideas to WOW2. You can scroll trough them or just hit the randomize button and WOW2 will choose for you. Some of the presets already have in their names for which instrument they could fit. Here is a hihat loop crushed and spiced up with a Sugar Bytes drum presets to give it a noisy, pumping feel:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159292801″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]

The presets and WOW2 in general are also very cool to modify FX or to create your own. For example with presets which use step sequencer you can easily create hard stutters without cutting the audio. Here is a WOW2-stuttered riser:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159292814″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]

In Imaging:

So why not trying out WOW2 on ramploops or hooks if you want to create heavy, freaky effects – or with the vowel mode phasing, vocoder-like sounds. But besides that, the main plus of WOW2 in radio imaging is that you can easily create your own EDM oder Dubstep loop directly in your session. Play a bassline in the key of song/-s of your promo/sweeper, maybe spice up your drums and your done. Check this beatmix and how it’s brought together by WOW2 (using the bassline, the hihats and the stuttered FX from the audio examples):
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159292864″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]



You don’t have to buy Dubstep libraries or synths, just take an onboard synth of your DAW and start wobbling. And beside that specific use you get a great tool that can be used on any audio of your production – and for all that 99$/99€ is a great deal!

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