Output’s Movement Review

Today I have something exciting! Output – the creator of Exhale, Signal & Rev X – has introduced Movement – a powerful real-time processor, designed for both studios and live performance. This is a little unexpected, since it’s their first pure effects plugin, even if have shown in all the previous libraries, that they know how to use effects right.

Movement’s power comes from blending the original source with 4 unique rhythm engines, each with Sidechain, LFO, & Step Sequencer based modulation, as well as Output’s proprietary Flux and Randomizer. In addition, there are 76 parameters available to modulate and add motion to the sound. So quite a full package. It is definitely nothing less than I would have expected from Output. Let’s look a little clWhat’s

Whats in the box?

Movement come loaded with 300 presets. Its interface (image below) is easiest to understand when you look at it…like a modified DJ mixer. On each side sits an Effects Engine. They are governed on the top by an input control with a dry/wet fader. In between, in the heart of the interface sits something that looks a little like a maze. But it is actually an X/Y pad, controlling the mix between the two effect engines.

Every engine contains two rhythm generators, which are little monsters in themselves. They generate rhythm based on three different methods of which you can choose. A built-in step sequencer, with quite some power, a very usable LFO, and a very versatile sidechain input.

The generated rhythms can be assigned to almost any parameter, and create therefore an almost infinite amount of possible combinations. The most obvious being the “Volume” and “Pan” knob on each engine. But they work equally well on one of the Effects we can dock onto each of the effects engines. Yea, that’s right, effect docked onto effects controlled by effects.

And that’s just part of the story…

Each of these mentioned effect-docks has 4 solts. So a maximum of 4 effect units can be assigned to each effect engine. Our selection for these are Delay, EQ, Filter, Distortion, Reverb and Compression. I looked a little closer and have to say, all of these units offer an extreme amount of control and are very comfortable to use. I was positively surprised by that, given that these are just one component of this whole monstrosity of a plugin.

To end this overview without leaving anything out let me mention the output field at the bottom center, which comes in very handy to even out levels from the previous processing. Also, almost invisible, in the top right corner is a little gray question mark, which opens a very cool documentation overlay, showing each and every function and parameter. So just in case you ever forget what a knob does. Output has you covered.

How it works?

Like with all the other products from Output, Movement offers both, out of the box usability, and incredible depth to sculpt precisely the sound manipulation you imagine. Want to know the best part? Basically, all you have to do after the installation, is to plop this baby on the channel you want to manipulate and the fun can benign. You can use the arrows to browse through the 300 presets, build your own or use the built-in preset selector.

This is in fact a very cool little feature. By clicking the preset name in the top left corner, we can open a preset browser. This enables us to…to…, well, browse presets. It features several categories of which we can select multiples. The preset window below will the only show the presets fitting the selected category. Below is also a handy search bar, in case one already knows the name of the desired preset.

There is just one thing I would have really wished for here. The “tags” I can select are great, but given the overwhelming amount of presets, I would have liked some suggestive categories for different Instruments. Like “drums”, “guitars”, “keys”, “vocals”…etc. Not just people that are new to this might be overwhelmed or confused by the shier number of options to go through. So some quick ways to find a matching preset for the sound category I want to put the effect on, would have been welcome. Maybe this will get patched in with a future version.

Click on the picture below to see all the parameters and functions explained by the developer:

Conclusion

After Spending some hours with Movement I have a similar outcome to the other Output products. Almost everything I can say is positive. For the mid-range price, they deliver a super solid package. It sounds great, is more versatile than most similar products and yet easy to use and pleasing for the eyes.

So, I recommend you get it. It is a really great tool for production and performance and I’m sure Output will fix any bugs I didn’t encounter in no time, like the usually do and already did with the 1.02 update. So if you didn’t download that yet, I highly recommend you do so, since it contains a lot of fixes for bugs that otherwise might frustrate you.