That’s it. Rawton Forge has nailed it. With the new Rupture 2 on the kick and bass drum synthesis side, and Impactor handling general-purpose percussion synthesis for kicks/toms/tonal, you have an ideal floor-rattling, punchy, snappy synthesis duo for Ableton Live.
Yes, automation is there, including mapping to Push (and by extension, Move). Yes, the visualizations are terrific — Rupture 2 will even pop out a scope for a bigger view. If you like percussion synths, with onboard FM and noise, you’ll just love this.
And they really do make sense as a pair. Impactor seems like it’s a kick and tom synth at first, but you quickly find it’s a general-purpose instrument. (Someone was complaining that they don’t make snares or hats. Folks, let me introduce you to not just the FM and additive controls, but the Noise section.) And it has a bunch of layering and stereo options, plus an excellent reverb that happily leaves the transients intact.
Rupture 2 is more of a kick tool and fills in any of the territory left by Impactor. But you can also dial up some unique percussion sounds with it, too — and the sample loading is there to be used (for tops and crunch and whatnot) and abused (for things it’s not supposed to do).
Impactor, in a nutshell:
- Additive synthesis engine with 12 partials and stereo spread
- Eight envelopes: pitch, amplitude, and per-modifier (see Curve control), plus an overall Time section (very Ableton-y)
- Stereo width
- Transient-split FDN reverb (on the tail only)
- Analog and digital noise with stereo variations
- FM (or vibrato or stereo modulation) with a second oscillator
- Sample-accurate deterministic behavior with phase lock (so this is really precise)
I’m not going to endorse pure-stereo kicks, but adding stereo to other percussion can appeal to anyone. And there’s this nice “patch” section, too. Now — what I would love in V2 is the ability to use the various envelope generators as sources, too. This overlay is calling for some kind of addition or another. But this is already an easy way to add some expression and variation:
Rupture 2, in a nutshell:
Rupture was already a hit, and now you get a stock-style Ableton interface (which still has plenty of personality, I’m in), plus a new per-block velocity matrix.
- Triangle, saw, and square oscillators with continuous controls, plus fold, “spike,” and drive controls — with —
- Hands-on control: six knobs already ready to grab out and tweak
- Fully pitched — meaning you can absolutely use this as a sibling to Impactor for even more pitched and tonal percussion, plus of course bass
- Six preset slots (that’s the 1-6 on the top)
- Lowpass filter with continuous
- Amplitude and pitch envelopes with precise options for each
- Built-in modulation mapping which lets you use Rupture as a source for modulating other devices (like effects)
- Noise/sample layer with drag-and-drop sample option and speed control
- Ring modulation
You get these excellent controls for how you want to target randomization:
The pitch envelope controls alone open this up to lots of percussive and transient sound design, far beyond the advertised range of kick and bass:
The lowpass filter comes with its own extras, too:
Oh, by the way, you can use that internal modulation mapping to route control from Rupture to Impactor (even if that probably wasn’t intended) — some added power there.
Here’s me playing around with both. Ignore the fact that I got excited and forgot to turn up FM amount in Impactor.
I could say more, but I just want to go back to playing with these. There are other options for more Roland-y-sounding drums, or for adding more distortion and samples — see PunchBox 2 for kicks, which I recently reviewed. But for synth percussion? This is hard to top. Add in Toybox Thump One, which is free for some reason, and I don’t think Live users need much else!
And the controls are just so accessible. This takes everything I love about DFAM-inspired sequenced percussion and makes it readily accessible in a single percussion voice you can dial in live. Record some automation with some box with some knobs on it (Novation, Ableton, whatever), and you have instant percussion fun.
Go get them at Isotonik Studios (bundle options available; their other devices are also really nice):
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PS, if you’re wondering about the colors in the video and screenshots, welp: