VISCO Review
Forever 89 sent me a copy of their Visco drum synth, I’m sure you’re all familiar with this one, a blobby drum machine that lets you create sounds out of goo. Visco also allows you to import samples as their own gooey blobs and can be sequenced like a drum machine. There’s a few other neat little additions like modulation and a couple effects, but let’s be honest, you’re here for the ecto-plasmic blobs.
So let’s talk about the blobs, first off, they are a bit hard to control, both visually and audibly it feels like the three tools have completely unpredictable effects on the blobs. Each tool can be adjusted in size via dragging the tools icon, but if you are too big, the impact is severe, and the impact is negligible if you are too small. I do think the tool size should be adjustable with scroll wheel if I were to make any feature request. You can morph between two shapes, so it’s kinda nice to set both shapes to the same drum sound, then mess with one, and use the morph to adjust the intensity of your edits.
Smearing the blob causes some very spectral sounding chaos, light adjustments affect the time and pitch, while swirling can completely warp the sound into weird effects and risers. Audio can be imported as a blob and the resynthesis is quite accurate, I imported samples from my Construct library and was pleasantly surprised at the cool textures and metallic impacts I was able to create. There’s also few controls on the side in a more traditional slider format that can also help you shape the sound. I kinda wish they leaned into the “blob” aspect of Visco a bit more, and left out the drum sequencer. I could see a few layers stacked together with some cross filtering or region sustain making a great sound design tool.
One of my favorite uses of Visco was to load in drum samples for the left sample slot, then sound effects like water, metal, or other found sounds into the right sample slot. Then you set up a fun beat with the drums, and slowly transform it into a crazy sound sequence with the global transform control.
The sequencer is basic, you can do polymeters, and there’s a nice offset adjustment, but over all I kinda wish this was more of a single sound generator rather than attempting to be a drum machine. I would have loved random modulation though. You can utilize the drum sequencer to create a nice chain of sounds for sound design uses, but it’s just a bit awkward to use when it’s designed to be used for patterns. I think I’d like a key-trigger mode for the sequencer to just play it though as a one shot on command. I do apreciate the modulation, but I wish they’d have opted for drag and drop instead of the classic matrix style UI. You get four basic envelopes, and four MSEG style LFOs. Finally, the effects are decent, nothing special, but they are nice to have.
I definitely think I am looking at Visco and it’s usefulness in my setup quite differently from how it was designed. The weird sound capabilities and the difficulty with controlled drum design make it less than ideal as a drum machine. However, on the flip side, the crazy sound capabilities and resynthesis make it a pretty fun sound effect generator, which is how I’d prefer to use this one. Everything said, there is NOTHING like this, and the results are pretty compelling. While I don’t think it is best at its intended purpose, I think it is more than capable as a sound design tool and will definitely find a place in my workflow.
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VISCO: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/7-Drum-Machine/12201-Visco-2-0?a_aid=61c378ab215d5