Tired of mediocre melodies and bored by repetitive riffs? Sometimes you just need to give your sounds a new soul. Strap the Hematohm into your rack and marvel at the devastation it can reek on dull drums and soporific synths. Not only can you radically manipulate the frequency content of your sounds, but the built in LFO and envelope follower will transform static parts into pulsating sonic behemoths. Throw a tempo synched delay into the mix, and the scope for generating complex, shifting, rhythmic textures becomes irresistible. You'll be able to recycle your whole loop/audio library, as after passing through Hematohm no sound remains the same! Core features are:

• High quality stereo Frequency Shifter (up to 5kHz in either direction).
• Tempo-sync'ed delay line, containing the main effect inside its loop, which changes the sound more and more across the repetitions.
• LFO with 10 waveforms, including brown and white noise.
• An envelope follower very useful to add some color to your rhythmic sounds.
• Simple phaser effect.

Hematohm is used by several top producers, including Stuart Price (Coldplay, Madonna, The Killers, and more) and Tony Maserati (Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears, Fergie, Beyoncé, Mary J. Blidge, Black Eyed Peas, among many others) and has also made a good impression at the specialized press, as you'll be able to check in this Computer Music magazine review. Would be better to see it in action? So take a look at this Hematohm video tutorial and see how powerful this FX could be.

Useful for:

• Electronic music freq-shifting and sweeping effect.
• Sound design and special effects for movies/TV.
• Creative sound mangling.
• Grotesque and alien sound textures.
• Horror and Science Fiction effects.
• Bizarre vocal effects.
• Weird instrumental harmonics.
• Classic 1960's Lo-Fi sound effects.

Hematohm is in fact a real-time frequency shifter, and actually the best you'll find out. It shouldn't be confused with pitch-shifting, this effect moves the whole sound's frequency content up or down by a fixed amount in Hertz. When applied to pitched sounds, the results are usually disharmonious, as the frequency-shifted fundamental and harmonic frequencies no longer bear any musical relationship to one another.

The basic frequency-shifting algorithm is enhanced by three main additions. The first is a tempo-sync'ed LFO with 10 different waveforms (including brown and white noise), which can be used to control the amount and direction of frequency shift. The second is an envelope follower, while the third is a tempo-sync'ed delay line, from which output can be fed back into Hematohm to add to the sonic carnage. The amount of frequency-shifting that can be imposed is huge (up to 5kHz in either direction), and the LFO and envelope follower allow you to sweep the frequency spectrum of the audio in innumerable ways.

However, you'll be surprised to find that Hematohm is also suitable for subtle applications. It can be used to add slight random variations to synthesized instruments or sampled drums, with the aim of creating a more 'human' feel. Hematohm can also produce far-out chattering and burbling noises that are all its own. The cherish on the cake is Ohm Force's traditional preset morphing function that allows you to create long, evolving effects by moving gradually between Hematohm patches.

A wide range of very interesting results can be obtained with drums and other instruments, and specially with vocal tracks - for weird voice effects. It will produce anything from sinister robot voices and sci-fi bad guys to more subtle ambient delays and atmospheres. Unlike many vocoders and other similar effects, it seems to retain intelligibility and the dynamics of a human voice even when used heavily.

Quotes :

"Stability 10/10, Value for money 7/10, Ease of use 10/10, Versatility 8/10, Sound/results 8/10", Future Music
"A very strange plug-in", Computer Music
"It's nice to have a plug-in that actually does something drastic for a change", Computer Music
"I found Hematohm particularly good for weird vocal effects", Sound on Sound.
"I have to say, this is a total gem of a plugin. ... It's a must have!", Studiosense