XY-Transfer

When making music, there are no rules. Well, technically there are plenty, but none of them should be in the way of your creativity. Even within the most conventional genres, you may stumble upon musical pieces where producers have tried something different or unusual: an offbeat percussion, a weird reverb, an unexpected vocal sample.

Many producers want to innovate as soon as they learn the basics, and some tools seem specifically designed with that in mind, allowing you to have an unusual approach to music from the get-go. Today we’re going to take a look at XY Transfer, an audio plugin that could help you take your sound design in new directions.

XY Transfer can be best described as a filter bank; the input signal is processed by three separate filters and by an additional stereo delay module, which usually results in an output that sounds very different from the original. While the stereo delay stays more or less the same within its parameters, the other modules (called “blocks”) can be filters, but they can also be comb filters, waveshapers, room reverbs, or gators.

Each effect is mostly controlled through its own XY pad, an element that can be found in many of the instruments and effects developed by Rob Papen. You can easily record paths on each pad by drawing them and then replaying them in loops, but you can also use many of the presets created specifically for these tools. More importantly, you can set the path that your audio signal takes through the three blocks and the delay.

It’s obvious that XY Transfer can drastically modify any sound that comes through it. For this reason, it may seem like a bit of overkill to any novice producer. However, if you’re already at a stage when you keep adding sound design elements to your composition, then you should definitely give this plugin a shot.