Only one way to describe it: Digital Mayhem!

Aberrant DSP is famous for the tape VST emulation, Sketch Cassette II which is featured in all almost every list of the best tape plugins out there. Even on our own list! And now they just released their new plugin Digitalis.

Their own description of Digitalis is very much on point:

Digitalis is a multi-effect digital degradation and glitch tool. Inspired by bad converters, unearthed CDs, weak internet connections, and catastrophic errors, Digitalis is your personal vehicle through an endless digital wasteland.

Here in Sinesquares, we review a lot of plugins of any type. There are only a few times that when we get a plugin for a review that gets us so excited and amazed. Digitalis is definitely one of those times.

This thing is absolutely crazy. There are so many different effects that you can combine to completely destroy (in a good way) your signal and before you know you spend hours of tweaking and experimenting with different settings and on different instruments.

It is the definition of making something sound interesting. And the thing that we loved the most is that you can use it on any type of sound. Drums, Vocals, Synths, Acoustic instruments, all can be run through it and sound radically different and full of texture.

Its main idea revolves around bit crushing and downsampling but the combination of its options opens up so many new ways of using those effects. The Data and Corruption windows serve as the main effects sections with 6 different effects that you can blend all together while the Time window is a weird beat-repeater that can generate glitchy rhythms.

But our favorite feature is definitely the sequencer. It has 16 steps and you can use up to 4 channels to sequence almost every control of the plugin. This way you can create so many unexpected and beautiful results, and the great thing is that it is a hands-on experience of trial and error. It may take you some time to get the sound you want but that’s the fun part of the process of creating music.

Let’s break down the specs of Digitalis to understand each of its functions:

Data manipulation window:
- Spectral filtering PaintBox, allowing you to filter your audio with custom patterns
- Pitch section including pitch shifting, formant shifting, and pitch quantization
- Telecommunications section for lossy audio effects
Corruption window:
- Decimate section for flexible downsampling effects
- Dynamic bitcrushing section with multiple modes for a wide range of digital fizz and grit
- Bitrot section, emulating data loss and corruption on old digital media
Time window:
- Highly adjustable Repeater section for tempo-synced or free-floating retrigger and beat-repeat effects
- Pitch Shift and Bend controls for modulating repeats
- Rhythm Glitch and Pitch Glitch controls, adding a layer of chaos and complexity to repeater patterns
Customizable window order, allowing you to change Digitalis’s signal flow
16-step, tempo-synced sequencer with 4 slots for effects, opening up endless possibilities for custom modulations and rhythmic variations
Advanced AI assistant Jon to guide you through all that Digitalis has to offer
Custom preset system with 98 factory presets illustrating Digitalis’s vast arsenal of effects

Conclusion

For me spending the 20$ introductory price (it will be 30$ in the future) for Digitalis is a no-brainer. And I’m not saying that for any plugin I review (and to be clear, this is not a paid review). This plugin is an amusement park for effects, its theme of the early digital era is delivered beautifully, and most importantly, it creates amazing sounds with anything you feed into it. For people that enjoy experimentation and want their sound dirty and gritty, Digitalis is hands-down one of the best choices right now.

Buy Digitalis