Independent plugin developer Sampleson has released the Scaper plugin, promising it will turn absolutely any audio signal into a droning cinematic atmosphere. To convince you, Sampleson’s loaded everything from an acoustic guitar to a sneeze into Scaper, with impressive results.
Scaper might be able to create deep, intricate soundscapes, but the interface and workflow seem far from complex. It’s neatly laid out with just a handful of dials and parameters.
Simply load in your audio (WAV, OGG or AIFF) file into the plugin and hit the Generate button, which should give you a decent starting point. Then, you can tweak the six parameters — three for Pitch, another three for Speed — and dictate how many particles you want the audio split into (from ‘A few particles’ to ‘Too much particles’). There’s a four-pole low-pass filter to further shape the sound, as well.
The main visual display lets you see the audio signal being affected in real-time, with nodes for each parameter moving around as you turn the dials. You can browse and select presets from the top bar, too. It all looks pretty slick and modern.
According to Sampleson, Scraper works “by extracting essential attributes from dropped audio files and incorporating them into the creation of atmospheric soundscapes.” It’s capable of generating “hours” of soundscapes, with a generative algorithm creating slightly different compositions each time.
And, yes, Sampleson does demonstrate Scaper’s capabilities by loading a sneeze into it. But the developer has also published an entire hour of cinematic soundscapes made solely with the plugin. Check both demos out below.
Scaper is also reasonably affordable, coming in at $29 on the introductory sale. It’s available as a standalone piece of software, or as a plugin for your DAW in VST3 and AU formats for macOS and Windows. You can grab it at sampleson.com.
Sampleson has a bunch of other plugins, all focusing on specific production techniques and quirks. They’re all pretty affordable, too. You can check them out at Plugin Boutique and Thomann.
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