U-He - Uhbik-T

OK, this is where things really start to get interesting! Uhbik‑T is described as a "trans‑modern pan and tremolo” but, in my opinion, that description doesn't even begin to do justice to what this plug‑in is capable of. In fact, I think that a full description of all it can do would probably take longer than this whole review, so I would refer you to the excellent manual for a full description of what is possible. But, in a nutshell, you get traditional amplitude‑based tremolo effects, along with a low‑pass filter that is modulated by the same LFO but with an independent depth control, plus a Haas delay, again controlled from the LFO and with its own depth control. So you can actually combine the three different effects in any combination or levels. The Haas delay applies a very short delay between the two channels that isn't heard as a discrete echo, but gives us the effect of direction and helps us place sounds in a three‑dimensional space.

In use, I found the amplitude and filter sections worked as expected, but whereas the Haas delay section gave a sense of spatial movement on percussive sources, it seemed to function more like pitch modulation on melodic sources. The real fun starts when you abandon the LFO in favour of the pattern generator. This is, in many ways, similar to the step sequencers found on some analogue synths. For each of up to 16 steps you can set a modulation depth between 0 to 100 (in multiples of 10), with results ranging from stepped waveforms to more 'trance gate'‑like effects. In addition, you can have up to 11 different patterns to choose from, with the option to use different ones on each channel and the ability to smoothly crossfade between patterns. Impressive stuff for sure, and the only thing I missed was the ability to combine cyclic LFO modulation and the pattern sequencer, so you could have a 'gated' pattern that was also swept up and down by the LFO — but now I'm just being fussy!