TIDES Review

Tides is a new addition to Lunacy Audio’s Nova ecosystem. Tides is a six layer multi-sample engine that allows you to blend and loop layers in interesting ways. The mostly white UI is a little bright for my taste, and I dig light themes as well, but it fits the vibe of the sounds and presets very well.

The included samples range from voices, to strings, to wind instruments with a ton of spectral and foley textures to layer in. The main appeal here is the DAW-like multi track editor. Each sample gets loaded into its own lane where you can adjust the timing to play through a series of samples. Samples can be restricted to any key, or played only on the first note of a note grouping, and the whole arrangement can be looped as well.

Everything can also be aligned to the grid, meaning that presets will retain usable timing changes depending on your project’s tempo. Each sample is also processed by a smooth spectral stretching algorithm when pitched or stretched. Finally a simple effects section rounds things out with reverb, delay, dynamics, chorus, saturation and EQ. Effects receive sends from each sample, allowing you to apply reverb or delay to only some sounds while others play through clean.

Also, the delay effect has a grain mode, so you can add a bit of extra shimmer or texture to your sounds. This is a fairly simple plugin, but it has some depth, for example you can slip audio within a sample to retain its timing, but play from a different section of the sample. I think Tides shows that Nova is capable of some more dynamic designs.

You can pick up Tides for Nova here: https://lunacy.audio/products/tides/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=tides_launch26&utm_content=databroth_longformat