Audio Damage AD049 Enso v1.1.0 WiN OSX LiNUX

Audio Damage has announced the immediate availability of its latest plugin for Windows, Mac and iOS. An architecturally unique and sonically characterful looping toolkit for producers and live performers, inspired by both modern looper pedals and vintage tape-based setups, Enso combines elegant and intuitive UI design with a deep but accessible feature set and stellar sound quality.

Enso’s operation will be immediately familiar to users of hardware looper pedals or plugins such as Ableton Live’s bundled Looper. Start playback of the host DAW, hit Enso’s record button and capture your instrumental performance into a loop of whatever length you like, up to ten minutes (five minutes on iOS). Then, without stopping playback, overdub further passes to create layered grooves, complex harmonic textures, or dense, evolving soundscapes.

Beyond those basics, though, Enso takes software looping into new territory. Two Overdub modes configure the plugin for conventional looper pedal behavior or Frippertronics-style ‘dual tape deck’ manoeuvres, affecting the handling of the Feedback parameter for an endless range of layering possibilities; and up to four Sectors can be effortlessly defined, each with its own start and end points, for on-the-fly rearrangement of the loop.

With Enso, time and motion become truly fluid, as speed and direction are handled completely independently for playback and recording, the ‘through-zero’ bipolar Speed controls smoothly transitioning from forwards to backwards, and vice versa, in real time. Want to record forwards at half speed, while simultaneously playing the buffered loop in reverse at 1.25x? Of course you do…

Onboard tape-style saturation, filtering and chorus effects bring dirt, frequency-shaping and stereo thickening to the party; and a comprehensive MIDI assignment system makes it a snap to set your MIDI pedal or button controller up for operation of all Enso’s buttons and switches. With its animated play and record heads, meanwhile, the looping waveform display provides a clean, clear visual representation of the potentially mind-bending temporal acrobatics taking place, letting you get a handle on exactly what’s happening at a glance.