United Plugins Releases JMG Sound Cryostasis - 07/10/22

Spectral Inertia effect enables progressive audio smearing until infinitely frozen in time

United Plugins has announced availability of the Cryostasis plug-in from founding partner JMG Sound. They describe it as an appropriately-named Spectral inertia effect enabling progressive smearing of any audio until it is infinitely frozen in time, thanks to spectral effects and controls that shape the character of the frozen tail to blur audio into atmospheric soundscapes. Here's the details in their own words...

Cryostasis itself is defined as being the reversible cryopreservation of live biological objects; on the face of it, then, it is also an appropriate name for an effect plug-in placing music into a state of inertia -- if it is possible to imagine such a thing. Thankfully, the imaginative team at JMG Sound have come up with a spectral freeze effect called Cryostasis to do just that, so users can concentrate on taking their music into a different direction, both speedily and easily, thanks to its spectral effects and controls that shape the character of the frozen tail to blur audio into atmospheric soundscapes. All are controlled by a continuously variable 'freeze' knob or an auto switch that can be timed in milliseconds or musical measures. Manually control the freezing process with the aforesaid knob or tell Cryostasis how quickly to take the sound from normal to frozen, in other words.

What is more, though, is that there is more to the superficially simple-looking Cryostasis plug-in than might first meet the eye. Examples of this include the SIZE parameter, which will change the time length of the spectral window, which will in itself completely change the sonic character -- lower values sound unnatural and robotic, while higher values sound smoother and atmospheric. And balancing out the easy-on-the-eye GUI (Graphical User Interface) is WASH, which controls the amount of reverb that is used to diffuse and smoothen the 'freeze' effect into a lush and smoothly modulated reverb tail. Try creating spaced-out ambience and soundscapes that dissolve into the ether -- surely sweet (ambient) dreams are made of this, while it can even be used as a sound design tool to create frozen vocal loops to load into a sampler!

Saying that, users can quickly fine-tune the resulting frozen sound colour with four filter controls -- PITCH (controls the depth of pitch shift scaled by the 'freeze' control, with a range of -24 to +24 semitones); FILTER (controls the HP -- high-pass -- and LP -- low-pass -- filtering depth scaled by the 'freeze' control); LOFI (controls the amount of BITS and RATE reduction scaled by the 'freeze' control); and SHIFT (controls the frequency shifting scaled by the 'freeze' control, with a range of -1kHz to +1kHz) -- to achieve even more unique results. Creatively coupling that LOFI magic with lower SIZE values makes creating dirty robotic glitches to washed-out dusty soundscapes a breeze. It is also possible to create a tape-stop-type effect -- whereby the sound appears to slow down over time until it is completely frozen forever -- by coupling the 'freeze' effect with the built-in PITCH shifter.

And as if that was not enough to get Cryostasis users shaking with excitement -- and hopefully not from an energy crisis-induced cold when working with Cryostasis in colder climes, it is well worth noting that it also has continuously variable freeze functionality -- unlike most other freeze plug-ins, so users can smoothly transition between freeze states, or even partially freeze to create time-smearing effects.

As always, JMG Sound's highly-creative Cryostasis plug-in shares several admirable attributes with fellow family members now numbering 26 plug-ins, each playing their part in United Plugins' proliferating product portfolio, providing maximum audio quality by using internal 64-bit audio processing as well as being able to handle any sampling rate -- why not try it at 192 kHz (or even higher)? -- and also the fact that it intelligently detects whether it makes sense to perform any processing at all; if not, it temporarily turns on sleep mode, meaning it requires virtually no CPU power at all, thereby saving computing resources for other processes. Putting a photorealistic 3D yet flexible GUI to the test with Cryostasis, likewise, leaves its users with the impression that they are working with real world hardware; however, it easily adapts to their needs since they can always drag the arrow at the bottom-right corner to change its size -- smaller to save precious 'screen estate' or larger to make it easier on the eye and, as a result, even easier to use than it already is.

It is fair to say, then, that there are (almost) endless possibilities for Cryostasis users to craft creative transitions that are applicable to single tracks or whole songs in the studio or on stage. Surely getting frozen has never been so much fun -- or so quickly reversible!

Pricing and Availability:

JMG Sound's Cryostasis is available to purchase for a time-limited introductory promo price of only €19.00 EUR until November 13, 2022 -- rising thereafter to its regular price of €79.00 EUR -- as an AAX-, AU-, VST-, and VST3-compatible plug-in (using internal 64-bit audio processing capable of handling any sample rate). A 15-day, fully-functional trial version for macOS 10.10 and newer and Windows 8/10 can also be downloaded for free.

Note that no iLok, dongle, or internet access is required for Cryostasis activation. (All United Plugins software uses license files for activation and owners can freely use purchased software on all their computers as long as they are the user.)

More information: Cryostasis