Multiply by Acon Digital is a free chorus plugin with an innovative approach: every voice “is processed with a phase randomizing filter”. This means that you won’t get the same phasing / comb filter problems, which usually occur using other modulation effects.
..but does the plugin actually deliver what it promises? Read the full review and find out!
Acon Multiply can be downloaded for free via acondigital.com
First Impression
The first thing I noticed after downloading Multiply was that it looks simple and clean (what I like). Hovering over most parameters will display a tooltip, you can double-click to reset all parameters and you can use your computer keyboard to type in values. Furthermore you can seamlessly resize the whole GUI. Good job Acon. Let’s take a closer look!
Dry & Wet Controls
Every plugin brand handles dry & wet controls slightly different. With Acon Multiply you’ll get one fader for the dry signal and another one for the wet. Linking them via the lock icon in the middle allows you to adjust the output volume without changing the overall balance. At the bottom you can further type in exact values for each fader or bypass them entirely. While this part is obviously not the most important aspect of the plugin it still improves the workflow and shows that the developers actually care about the user experience.
Frequency Modulation
Below the volume faders you’ll find controls for the frequency modulation. “Depth” controls how much the source will be detuned and “Rate” controls how fast the detuning happens. If you worked with modulation effects before you’re probably already aware of this behavior.
Tip: Set the voice count to 1 and disable the dry signal to hear the effect most clearly.
After playing around with this section for a while I can say that I really like the sound and with a total of 6 voices (we’ll come to that part in a bit) you can create quite a lot of styles.
Amplitude Modulation
The amplitude modulation works just like the previous section, but instead of the tune, it modulates the volume. Going for a high rate allows you to create a tremolo like effect.
Global Settings
I previously mentioned that Multiply works with up to 6 voices. Their quantity can simply be adjusted via the “Voice count” control (1-6). Right next to it is the “Stereo spread”, which can set the output signal from 0% = mono to 100% = all stereo. The last parameter is the “Pre-delay”, which delays the wet signal by up to 500 ms.
Tip: While using Multiply on keys (a Rhodes piano for example), increase the pre-delay until it sounds like the sound is bouncing back from the walls of a room.
Equalizer
The final section of the plugin is a surprisingly complete EQ, which comes with 5 bands & Q-controls . Sure, I’ve seen other VSTs having output filters, but adding a whole EQ shows one more time that Acon thought out the workflow. Another feature I noticed is that the middle band – which is a bell curve – comes with 2 bandwidth controls instead of 1. This allows you to really shape the curve in some interesting ways.
Final Words
Time for a recap. The Multiply chorus by Acon has a clean interface and is easy–to-use. You can reset parameters via double-click, display tooltips, type in values and there are some additional features resulting in a great user experience. All-in-all the sound of the plugin is great and since it’s free I honestly don’t know why you haven’t installed it by now. Multiply is available in AAX, Audio Unit, VST and VST3 formats for both Windows and Mac users.
Download Multiply for free via acondigital.com