Ever wanted to blend the characteristics of two different sounds? Morph Pro makes that easy.

Available for the usual plug‑in formats on Mac and Windows, Morph Pro takes two audio signals and computes a third signal, called the Morph, based on their characteristics. Add in some simple controls to manipulate the result, a few onboard effects and a mixer to blend the various signals, and what you have is a clever, powerful and unique sound‑design tool.

Morphology

The resizable (50‑200%) GUI has input source controls on the left, the mixer and effects on the right and an X/Y pad to adjust the Morph in the middle. The track on which you insert Morph Pro is the Main In, and the side‑chain input is the Aux In. New to v3 is the Modeller, which not only plays user or factory samples, as an alternative to the Aux In, but also offers a Style Transfer function — effectively a granular processor that attempts to reconstruct the Main input using granular slices of the Modeller. It has several modes (Loop, RMS, Peak, Spectral and a Custom option), a sampler‑style pop‑up interface, a multi‑zone mapping editor and additional analysis features so there’s plenty of control here. Also worth noting is that you can adjust the loop’s start and end points during playback, which can create some interesting sounds and effects.

You can morph only the Aux or the Modeller with the Main signal, but all the input sources are available in the mixer, which has level sliders, mute/solo buttons and high‑/low‑pass filters, so you can create and shape a blend of any of the inputs and the Morph.

On one axis of the X/Y control matrix, the engine starts with the Main In signal at point A and blends in the character of the other signal as you move towards B. On the other, it’s the other way around, but as we’re not mixing audio here, but rather creating a new signal, the results on each axis could be broadly similar or wildly different, depending on the sounds you’re working with. You can also choose from 11 morphing algorithms. Six are new to v3, and both Fusion and Sonance are unique to the Pro version. There’s ‘method behind the madness’, but I can’t claim to truly understand what these do — yet they deliver different results and I tended to just audition them and choose the best‑sounding one. Either side of the algorithm selector are an algorithm‑dependent knob and a Detail control; both help to finesse your Morph.

Finally, there’s a global output limiter and a handful of effects that apply only to the Morph: a transient processor, a ±2 octave formant shifter and a fairly basic (in terms of controls) but appealing and huge‑sounding reverb.

Play Time

I had a whale of a time feeding signals (sometimes very similar sounds, sometimes strikingly different) into Morph Pro 3. Initially, the results ranged from woeful to wonderful, but after a morning’s experimentation I found I could consistently achieve interesting and engaging sounds. The results are always a bit unpredictable (it really is all about experimentation) but you soon get a feel for what sounds might work well and how to shape the result.

You soon get a feel for what sounds might work well and how to shape the result.

With similar sounds (two synth pads, say, or vocal oohs/aahs and an evolving pad), you tend to be greeted with a wider range of musically useful results, and I found that the formant shifter was very handy: blending a Morph I’d ‘deepened’ with the formant shifter with the Main signal often rewarded me with a dark, moody and interesting texture. Dragging the dot around the X/Y pad then generally gave me some useful control over the timbre.

With more contrast between the sources (eg. pads with percussion, voices with samples of engine noises, or drones with ambient chatter) the results were less predictable, the useable area in the X/Y pad usually smaller, and the sonic contribution of the secondary signal more obvious. But I found I could create some incredible soundscapes that way or, for example, liven up a repetitive drone or pad to sustain interest over time — some creations were vaguely reminiscent of The Orb’s 'Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld' but that’s probably a story for another time! Used with subtlety, such combinations can be a great route to soundtrack‑friendly moods and tension.

Hopefully, I’ve given a sense of what this uniquely creative plug‑in is all about. There’s way more to it, but so much depends on the source sounds, so you’d be better off experimenting with the free 30‑day demo than reading more of my words! Oh, and if the price is an obstacle, note that there’s a more afordable non‑Pro version based on the same& tech.