Forever 89 Topos is a new innovative FX plugin that lets you craft your custom saturation and speaker models let you seamlessly morph between them.
Both saturation and speaker emulations are popular tools in music production for adding character to modern sounds. Such plugins typically come with a handful of algorithms, covering many different types.
Forever 89, developers of the innovative Visco sample-modeling drum machine, show with Topos that you can do saturation and speaker design differently.
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Forever 89 Topos
Topos is the young Swedish company’s first FX plugin. It follows the same approach as the Visco drum machine. Instead of simply choosing an algorithm, you can create your desired saturation and speaker sounds through morphing/blending.
Forever 89 Topos’s signal path starts with an input filter, allowing you to adjust the low/high-pass filtering before amplification. This gives you precise control over your input sound.
Then, the signal reaches the saturation and speaker design engine. The first offers control over the drive, loudness and distortion level, and out gain, while the speaker module offers knobs for the fidelity, size, and presence.
Each module features a preset symbol. While these are unexciting at first glance, clicking on them reveals the complete fascination of this plugin.
Morphable Saturations & Speakers
At the heart of Topos are two interactive Map Views, one of the amps and one for the speaker, each color-coded in the same way as the module. Once open, you can find a map with different models. The user can then seamlessly morph/blend multiple modules.
So, instead of traditional preset switching, music producers can find the perfect match for their sound or track by continuously traveling through the map views.
The saturation section features a diverse palette of sound based on beloved studio preamps, vintage tube amplifiers, tape machines, and distortion pedals. The same is true for the speaker map, which lets you smoothly blend various speaker models, surpassing traditional cabinet simulations.
With this innovative principle, you can explore saturations as well as speaker design in a completely different way. Of course, you can move from one fixed point to another.
More exciting is the ability to explore the countless intermediate points, which allows you to capture characteristics of multiple types and put them in one model. This allows you to easily and playfully design your custom saturation and speaker design model.
Advanced Model Designers
If that’s not enough, you can go even deeper into the dedicated designer view and tweak the individual models. The amp section includes parameters such as emphasis, rectify, smoothing, and more for precise shaping of the saturation’s character and response.
Immersing yourself in the speakers is also possible. In the Speaker Designer, you can adjust parameters such as speaker size, internal reflection, venting, scatter, leak, and damping.
It uses physical modeling to simulate how various speaker designs influence the character and projection of the audio. This makes it possible to shape not just how something sounds but also how big or present it feels in a mix.
Further, Forever 89 has built-in an output stage in the Topos plugin. Flux and Dynamics controls enable detailed refinement of signal evolution, from tightening transients to subtly smoothing peaks — reducing the need for additional external processing.
Forever 89 Topos Play
For those still unsure whether they need the plugin, there are two options to find it out: Forever 89 offers a demo version, and Topos Play, a free, stripped-down version with a curated collection of the full version’s features. For example, the saturation and speaker designers are missing here.
First Impression
In recent years, countless saturation and speaker plugins have been released. Some would say that most of them use the same ingredients and sauces packed in different interface. It is said very pointedly, but is partly true.
This new plugin from Forever 89 is finally something fresher and more original. I also say innovative because I don’t know of any plugin that goes so deep but still remains so accessible. I hope we’ll see similar concepts for synthesizers, reverbs, or delays in the future. That would be very exciting.
Forever 89 Topos is available now for an introductory price of 79€ instead of 99€. I use a simple serial authorization, and it doesn’t require an online registration or an iLok. Topos Play is available as a free download.
Both releases run as a VST3 and AU plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: Forever 89 Studio
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