New Music Gear Monday: Rast Sound Naturaliser Humanizer Plugin
Samples and loops have become a part of everyday production, but a common complaint is “How can I make this sound like a human played it.” This is especially true for drum samples, which are now front and center in many home studio productions. Besides getting a real human to play for you, the next best thing might be the Naturaliser from Rast Sound.
Naturaliser creates a more human track by slicing time into small pieces, and then adding spectral and attack shaping as well as coloring effects to the incoming audio. That means that the audio keeps changing even though it’s the same sample or loop repeating over an over. This is exactly what happens with a real player!
The plugin has 3 dimensions that you can turn on or off as needed – Spectral, Transient, and Colour. These are controlled primarily by the large Intensity control in the middle of the UI.
Speed allows you to select the rate, intensity and dimensions that your audio is affected, and can be automatically timed to the tempo of the track. Noise adds a motion sequence to make the audio changes a bit more random. If you want more than just making your track less robotic, the Extreme button takes the plugin into the realm of sound design.
Naturaliser is intended more for electronic music producers, but it’s the answer to boring drum tracks in any genre of music. It’s available for both Windows and Mac platforms with 64 bit operating systems, but only in AU and VST3 plugin formats.
That said, the plugin is only about $47USD, so it’s a bargain for what it does.
You can find out more on the Rast Sound site, or watch the video below. You’ll be able to hear exactly what this plug does from the audio examples.
