Review: “Weaponiser” Sound Design Plugin by Krotos

Hi producers! This time I want to have a look at Weaponiser by Krotosaudio with you. The name might ring a bell for you. Especially if you are, like me, involved in sound design and game audio.

Krotosaudio is also the geniuses behind “Dehumaniser” and “Reformer Pro”, and have built an impressive name for themselves in the sound design and folly scene, by creating extremely well thought through solutions, that made the intricate and precise work of sound design more creative, faster and more fun while significantly improving the workflow.

So you can imagine I was quite excited when the news about Weaponiser reached me.

Weaponiser is created as a one-stop solution for weapon sound design and weapon folly. It comes in two versions, “basic” and “fully loaded”, and they are both very impressive. The functionality is the same in both, and for this review, I had the pleasure to take a look at the “fully loaded” version.

Covering every feature would be way a little too much, as it is packed to the brim, but I will give you a solid overview of what Weaponiser is, and what it can do. So let’s get to it.

What it is?!

Weaponiser is enormous, both in its capability and in its flexibility. It is best understood as a fully functional engine, just for weapon sounds. Using it felt like a bespoke mini DAW tailored to all the functions I would normally use to create dynamic weapon sounds to footage or for a game, only all in one place, with just one tool, and no loss in quality or variety. In fact, there was more of it.

Weaponiser can be broken down into these main components: “Tag-based, searchable library of Recordings and IR’s”, four different, dedicated “sound engines” for “Tail”, “Thump”, “Body”, and “Onset”, the “Timeline”, the “5 channel mixer”, and the onboard “Channel FX”.

Each of the sound engines packs four “sample banks”, which can hold multiple samples, a different “synth area” for each sound engine, a “convolution reverb module”, as well as control over speed and level of each sample bank, plus envelope control, as well as control over variation range of speed and level parameters.

This is not the only way, in which it is fully loaded. Weaponiser also comes with a bunch of extremely well-craved presets to get you going right away. It packs a huge bag of professionally recorded weapon samples, with multiple mic positions and takes, as well synth sounds, weapon folly, and impulse responses.

The onboard effects also feel and sound custom made for the occasion, and include EQ, Saturator, Compressor, Ring Modulator, Limiter, Flanger, and Noise Gate. The timeline offers control of how and when the layering of the four engines is placed and offers a great visual representation of the overlaying waveforms in different colors, and also offers a fire button with a switch for burst mode, and a fire rate control.

Weaponiser can easily be wired into your DAW or middleware. Either via Master Buss or with the four separate engine channels wired to four separate audio channels of your DAW for further tweaking or mixing of the signal, or the rendering of stems. And “yes” this is still not all. So if you want to know, or see and listen in more detail, check out this great overview video the guys at Krotosaudio put together.

Conclusion

Krotosaudio continues to impress me, and Weaponiser is just amazing. I already love it and know I will use it a LOT in the future. If you have your handy in sound design and see yourself working on a game or film in the future, needing some weapon sound, this is a total No-Brainer.

But even beyond that, Weaponiser can even be used for music production, as they demonstrate in this video here. I have to say though, that I wouldn’t really recommend getting Weaponiser if you have no interest in weapon sounds, and just want it for drums processing.

But no need to let me be the judge of that. Just check out the Free Demo they offer on their website. I have been wrong before, and maybe it is the drum programming workflow upgrade of a lifetime for you. In any case, this is an amazing piece of software, it saves tons of time, it’s fun to use, easy to learn, and still super deep, it sounds amazing and offers sound quality up to the 5.1 range. Just get it!

And if you are not quite sure yet at least check the Free Demo before you turn it down. It is really is that great and a lot of “Bang!” for your buck.

“Weaponiser” sound design tool is available in VST, AU, AAX Plugin format, and comes in two versions: “basic” / “fully loaded” (facts below), as I mentioned from the beginning of the article.