Tim Exile Releases SLOW Experimental Reverb for NI Reaktor

Self-proclaimed “performance-led musician and technologist” Tim Exile has just released SLOW, yet another amazing Native Instruments Reaktor ensemble to add to his list of creations such as The Finger and The Mouth, except this time you can purchase SLOW for free in return for a subscription to his newsletter!

On the surface, SLOW might appear to be just another reverb effect, but it’s actually more sophisticated than that, using more delay lines than traditional FDN (feedback delay network) based reverbs in order to conjure up a wide variety of ultra-diffuse atmospheres and effects in just a few knob tweaks.

I’m afraid Tim hasn’t provided a great deal of documentation, so I’m not entirely certain what’s going on under the hood, but apparently the core level programming has something to do with IBM architecture, having read the details in the YouTube promo video…

“It originally came to life as one part of the #IBM #RemixIT project where I sonified various uses of IBM’s technology. SLOW represents the journey from a single data point to a global pattern of masses of concurrent data. By slowing down the reverb algorithm you can hear the individual reflections as they build up from individual sonic events to a wash of millions of events with a collective sonic imprint.”

All I know is what I hear: a dispersal of early and late reflections scattered throughout the stereo field in ways that are leaps and bounds and backflips in the air beyond my programming expertise, and I’ve made a few reverb algorithms in Reaktor that I’m still very proud of.

You might notice that when you insert SLOW into a send channel as an effect, there is no audio. This is actually Tim’s mistake. All you need to do is double click on the “Input Level” fader at the top of Reaktor’s interface and you’re in business. Then just save over the ensemble to avoid having to do that again.

Not only is SLOW an effect, but it’s also an instrument. You can drag and drop WAV files directly from your sample library onto the sampler window within SLOW’s interface, and then trigger that sample either with MIDI notes or by clicking on the “Trigger Sample” button.

SLOW is immensely useful for creating huge atmospheres and ethereal pads in just a matter of minutes, and also for recording riser effects and experimental sounds by mapping MIDI controls to each of the seven parameters available on the GUI.

SLOW is available for free download via Tim Exile’s Newsletter (9.17 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 2 files in ENS format for Native Instruments Reaktor).