SILO Review
I meant to review Unfiltered Audio’s Silo awhile ago, but I’m just now finally getting around to it. I actually got to make the presets for this one, which I’ve actually had a lot of people complain to me about (without them knowing I made them). So before I continue this review, let me defend my presets for a second, if you are using Silo in Ableton Live or Bitwig or any DAW that sends midi to effects, make sure you go to the settings and click “bypass midi in”. These presets were made without midi pitch control in mind, which will throw them wildly out of their intended use. If you still don’t like them, well, I guess I didn’t do this plugin justice and I apologize, this is really the only plugin I’ve ever seen complaints from (in regards to presets. I think this alone is what prevented me from reviewing SIlo for so long.
With that out of the way, let’s review the actual plugin. Silo is a granular effects processor with playback and a built in lo-fi reverb. The grain spatialization gives this effect a nice subtle flavor, especially with the pitch modes applying a doppler effect to the grains as they fly by. Everything is laid out in a nice logical order, I really apreciate the visual hierarchy, with various controls being shaped and sized depending on their importance and utility. Most of the themes lean towards greys and greens, giving it a somewhat military/scientific feel.
The grain playback can go up to 500 Hz getting a decent ways into the audio range. Like many other granular effects, the main controls have “deviation” controls to spread a bit of chaos per grain. The main controls in Silo also each get a few various modes, allowing you to reconfigure the grain engine in some unique ways. Setting size to ratio allows you to get some incredibly small grain slices. Pitch and rate can be quantized to musical values. And speed has different modes that control the buffer playback, the “skip” mode can pull off some particularly neat tricks.
Silo hosts a variety of window shapes, with a variable shape control giving you a load of grain envelopes to chose from. There’s also a variable “freeze” control which will hold the buffered audio aching as a delay. Speaking of the buffer, Silo has a boatload of buffer sizes, I’m surprised it’s a dropdown menu instead of a variable control. Obviously most of the time you’ll just want to keep this set to a musical division.
Unfortunately there is no modulation in SIlo, I think this was one of the first Unfiltered Audio plugins to drop their old modulation system, which is a shame because modulation would work wonders with this effect. Playing with it again, I’m reminded of just how versatile the sound of SIlo is and modulation would really allow us to expand its expressive capabilities. That said, Silo does offer a “mask” control, which will mute grains based on a (an?) euclidean sequencer. This opens up some pretty neat rhythmic ideas especially when paired with tempo synced grain playback. This mask feature is also available in the reverb allowing you to combine two euclidean sequences and create some generative rhythmic patterns
While Silo could definitely benefit from modulation, I think the core engine has some neat and unique features that opens up some fun textural sound design. I’d say it definitely leans a bit more towards the experimental side of things rather than being a typical “grain cloud” granular effect and they give you some nice ranges on the controls to push things out of the usual comfort zone. In hindsight, this was one of my first preset projects, going through these presets, there are some mistakes I’d no longer allow myself to make, I’d have also pushed for an output level trim control as there’s no simple way to control the effected volume.
If you plan on purchasing SILO from Plugin Boutique, please consider supporting me by using my affiliate link SILO: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/17-Reverb/14933-Unfiltered-Audio-SILO?a_aid=61c378ab215d5