TOPOS Review
Forever 89 the makers of Visco (review coming soon) sent me a copy of Topos, their creative distortion effect. Topos is a fairly simple distortion with a couple cool tricks up its sleeve. It has an amp distortion, a pre filter, cab emulation, and a couple oddities in its mixing section. The UI is simple, with basic controls on the front, and some tabs for a few more advanced controls. The amp and speaker sections have presets for their various controls, and this is where things actually get interesting. There’s a map for the amp and speaker presets, that lets you smoothly morph and transition between presets, each setting is arranged by similarity.
This map system doesn’t just organize these sub-presets by similarity, it gives you the average values of the settings between presets. There seems to be a sort of topographical heat map as well, I’m not sure if this is just stylized or if this provides any information about the distortion quality or volume perhaps. I do wish we could access both maps at once, having to jump back and forth between amp and cab maps somewhat hinders the exploration vibes. I also wish there was some motion here, maybe paths that could be travelled. The mixer section has some strange “flux” controls which introduce motion to the sound, perhaps it’s as simple as a chorus, but it has a cool sound that adds a nice little extra touch to Topos.
I’m not sure how often I’ll use this distortion, I think the speaker simulator will be useful, especially with being able to blend between styles. I think I’d likely use two instances, one for the amp and one for the speaker, so I can have both maps open, then drag around both until I find a tone that works. This does seem like a bit much, but I think for certain instruments it could be a viable technique. In the end, I enjoy the creativity that forever 89 brings and will be keeping an eye out for whatever they come out with next.
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TOPOS: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/44-Saturation/14572-Topos?a_aid=61c378ab215d5