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Meet the family: the complete SoundToys native collection.

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• Review

Those who buy the SoundToys effects invariably love them, but at $495 for the native package, it's not an investment to be undertaken lightly. However, with two new plug-ins included and no price increase, v4 is already looking far more attractive than v3.

Previously, the bundle included five core effects: Echoboy, Tremolator, Crystallizer, FilterFreak and PhaseMistress. Pro Tools users also benefited from the Speed timestretch plug-in, with its algorithm also available in Logic's Time and Pitch Machine. And TDM users could enjoy a further three legacy effects: SoundBlender, PitchDoctor and PurePitch.

The pre-existing effects haven't changed, so we won't cover them in depth here, but you can read the SoundToys v3 review if you want to find out what we make of them.

Overall, the plug-ins lean towards time/pitch effects, with a large slice of vintage flavour thrown in. Whether you want tape-type echo, rich analogue chorus, swirling pedal phase or rhythmic stereo filtering, it's all in there. And with an abundance of presets and simple parameters, you can produce both subtle and crazy effects with ease. Possibly the most interesting of the lot is Crystallizer, which yields all manner of harmoniser-influenced weirdness.

So, how have things progressed? Well, the plug-in shell has a new menu-based preset system. All previous presets and expansions (such as the Richard Devine set) remain, but there's a 'new for v4' folder, too. Beyond that, though, it's all about the new plug-ins: Decapitator and PanMan

PanMan

PanMan is heavily influenced by rackmounted classics, such as Audio & Design's PanScan and Electrospace's Spanner. You may wonder why you'd need such a plug-in when most DAWs include an auto-panner anyway, not to mention the fact that you have automation at your disposal. Well, there are two reasons: simplicity and, uh, complexity. Allow us to clarify…

On the simplicity front, PanMan's five modes - LFO, Rhythm Step, Rhythm Shape, Random and Triggered (PingPong and Random Step) - enable you to set up either tempo synced or free-running autopans in a jiffy. And with simple global controls (offset, width and smoothing) and a hardware-style position meter, you've got quick control and visual feedback.

That, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. For the first three modes, the Tweak button opens the envelope/gate panel, where you'll find level-dependent methods of further modulating the offset, width and, in LFO mode, panning rate. This turns PanMan into a dynamic effect that reacts to the level of the signal - going past the threshold provides more modulation.

By contrast, in the two triggered modes, when the threshold is exceeded, the signal is panned to a new position. Here, the Tweak option opens up the trigger filter page, where you can fine-tune and monitor the trigger signal.

This sort of flexibility can seem daunting, but we found creating dynamic effects a doddle and were particularly taken with the idea of panning that becomes wider as the signal level increases.

PanMan has one last trick up its sleeve and that's the option to effectively move signals 'beyond' the speakers (up to 105 degrees either side). This can be used either to create ultra-wide sounds, as with most stereo width processors, or simply to pan sounds past the usual limits of the speakers, which is less common and a great way to add extra space to busy mixes.