LOVE 2 Review
Dawesome has updated their multi effect Love to version 2.
You can read my previous review for Love here: https://www.databroth.com/blog/love-review
Love 2 contains the same core granular effects engine and all the previous effects from Love. Presets are backwards compatible and Love 2 comes as a separate plugin instance so you can feel comfortable updating if you are worried about a current project. The big addition here is the Hate style effects system, you can now arrange the effects modules in any order. There are also more effects this time around so you can choose between different filters, delays, reverbs, and other processing.
The effects selection has some overlap with Hate, but also has a few unique additions. I have slightly mixed feelings about these being two different plugins, I don’t mind it, but I kinda wish that Hate ONLY had distortions and the Love wouldn’t have any distortion at all, it’d just make them feel like they have their own identity. That being said, the included effects are great and offer a lot more variety for sound design than Love was previously capable of, I had a lot of fun working on my preset pack and was able to push into more experimental territory with ease.
Love 2 also introduces a new effect called “pulse gate”, an auto slicer with some neat additions. Pulse gate cuts the audio in and out at regular intervals, you can shape the pulsing to have more attack or decay for different pulsing/pumping effects. The “miss” control randomly skips pulses in the left and right channels and jitter messes with the timing. This effect is fun to take into high speeds where the miss and jitter controls make it into a sort of broken noise modulator.
Love 2 also features an updated browser as well as sub presets for each module making it a much more feature rich effect than it was previously. Having two additional grain modules also opens up a lot of granular sound design options. I would have really loved to see a pitch shifter added to this one, and maybe a few more modulation effects.