Triggering Sounds

Trigger sounds with the fire button! Click for single shots, or engage ‘burst mode’ and click & hold for continuous fire. Control the speed of the shots with the fire rate parameter.

Engines

There are four engines with four banks, with 5 sound effects in each. Each engine is designed to handle a separate layer of a sound effect design. You can load any sound into them, and the layers can be triggered in any order.

You can highlight part of a loaded sound to play back, using the waveform viewer, and you can use the plug and minus buttons to zoom into your selection.

Timeline

Next to the fire button is the timeline. This controls the overall shape of your sound effect, and visualises the results with incredible precision. The visualiser updates in real-time based on any changes you make to your sampled layers, synthesised layers or your mix.

There will be up to four waveforms displayed, depending on which engines you are actively using. Use the coloured handles below the waveform to place your sounds, and Weaponiser will trigger the layers in this order.

Variation

Variation is what Weaponiser is all about, and there are so many ways to introduce variation to your sound designs.

Sample Variation

Each bank has a toggle switch that lets you choose between round-robin, and random modes. If you set the bank to round robin, this bank will cycle through samples incrementally and if it is set to random, it will choose randomly from them.

Speed and Level Randomisation

Next to the waveform viewer on each bank is a speed and level parameter that can be set to a knob or an envelope. When set to the knob mode, you can select a range of values that weaponiser can trigger from randomly with each click 

Drag the white circle on the knob to set the range, then every time you click fire, a different value will be triggered within this range.

Burst Variation

When in burst mode, hold alt, then click-drag the fire rate dial. This sets a range of values, so every time you click the fire button, a different fire rate will be selected from this range  

Timing Variation

Finally, the drunk parameter adjusts the start times of each layer, so that every time you hit the fire button, the layers of your sound will trigger with small adjustments to their timings, for even more realistic variation.

The level of randomisation in Weaponiser lets you create an infinitely different number of variations, saving you hours of time compared to making small adjustments to your layers manually. 

Loading Sounds

To load sounds into Weaponiser, drag and drop them into the banks in each engine.

Use the library tab to navigate the factory library, use the file tab to navigate through your own file directory, or simply drag sounds into Weaponiser from any location on your computer.

You can search for sounds using the search bar, and once you find your sounds, click in the file browser to preview them.

Synthesiser Modules

There are three synthesiser modules also included in Weaponiser that you can find in the yellow, blue and red engines.

You can set the pitch, level and duration of the sound, then shape the characteristics of the sounds individually using the various parameters. The envelopes in the center then shape the sound over the time set on the duration dial.

These synths are incredibly powerful for creating transients, laser zaps, bass booms, and risers and all kinds of other synthesised sound effects

Reverb

Weaponiser has a convolution reverb located in the green engine. Drag an impulse response onto the reverb and send the yellow blue and red engines through it using  the reverb sends in the mixer. You can control the decay, level, mix and pre-delay using the parameters next to the waveform viewer.

Spectral Shifting

The spectral shifting module lets you affect the pitch of frequencies set at a certain amplitude. It gives the ability to affect the pitch for frequencies that have a chosen level. The result gives bizarre effects creating interesting spectral “anomalies” that create some interesting sound effects.

Use spectral shifting for new and unusual vocal sounds unlike anything else.

Mixer and Effects

The mixer in weaponser lets you control the volume, reverb amount and pan position for each of the four engines, with a master fader which controls the level of the final sound effect.

The mixer channel for each engine contains four effect slots, allowing you to shape your sounds even further whilst remaining within the plugin.

You can apply four effects, including EQ, Compression, Limiting, Saturation, Ring Modulation, Flanging, Transient Shaping to each individual channel, or the master channel, to ensure that any sound effect assets you create are as formed and shaped as possible.

Presets

Weaponiser comes with a vast library of expertly designed presets that you can add to projects. You can customise them and save your own versions to your user libary, or you can simply use them as a great starting point for your own sound effects.

You can expand Weaponiser by adding additional sound effect libraries from Krotos that are readily integrated with the plugin. Simply install them and they will be added to your presets folder.