Caelum Audio Flux Pro £50

Can an affordable plugin deliver compelling multi effects? This latest offering from Caelum Audio could be the one

If you’ve used our very own Flux Mini CM plugin (update free with this issue!) then you’ll already be pretty familiar with Caelum Audio’s graph-based modulation system. It gets a big upgrade with their latest plugin, Flux Pro (VST3, AU, AAX and iOS). It’s a new multi-effects modulation plugin with ten modulation effects spread across four effects slots. There are three user configurable and editable modulation curves (A, B and C), a bank of 48 drag-and-drop preset curve shapes and a slick new interface with frequency analyser. You’ve also got 115 categorised presets to get you started. Further features include control voltage graph output to send to external hardware and MIDI CC output of the graph data to control other plugins, although as ever with internal MIDI communication, features are somewhat DAW dependent.

Flux Pro has a typical array of effects including two filters, two delays, phaser, chorus/ flanger, width and ring modulation. You’ve also got a utility module that includes pan and gain. The interface displays two of the four modules at any one time, and they can be reordered to taste using drag and drop. Below each module parameter you’ll find a modulation depth slider (+/-100%) and this will apply whichever curve (A, B or C) is selected in the bottom left-hand corner. All three curves can control each parameter concurrently and adding modulation depth also creates colour-coded halos around the parameter knob. It’s a really simple and clear scheme, and means you can easily glean which parameters are being controlled and by which curve.