ProVocative is a micro pitch shifter and delay plugin full of features beautifully bundled in a small package. Loses a star because of the confusing purchase process.
We check out another plugin from the BozLabs team in our Boz Digital Labs Provocative review. This is a micro pitch shifting and delay plugin offering a lot to the audio producer by using only a few control knobs.
Contents
History
This plugin has been around for a little while, originally released around 2018, but still being championed by the main plugin dealers around the globe. I’ve taken a look at some of the other plugins in their range and personally have used them numerous times in my music productions.
I must admit the plugins from Boz Digital Labs do draw me in with the graphical artwork that goes in to them, along with the names they come up with (Gatey Watey is a particular favourite of mine!).
Something that seemingly seems – for want of a better phrase – not very professional absolutely works wonders on sucking me in and making me want to use them to stick it to the man!
Boz Digital Labs ProVocative Review
Installation
The purchase process via Plugin Boutique was not the simplest as essentially from the third party you are buying a 100% discount voucher to use at Boz Labs website.
However all the links take you to the necessary place but it does feel a little unnecessary to go through the shopping cart experince twice. Once with Plugin Boutie and then the same again with Boz Digital Labs.
Having said that, once the purchase process was completed at Boz Labs’ site, then the instaler was available in my portal along with the product key.
A simple case of next next next for the install process. All expected options for plugin formats are there, VST2, VST3, AAX, RTAS and AU. 64 and 32 bit variants are available too.
Once the plugin installation is complete, I loaded it into my DAW (Bitwig Studio 4.01) and then all was needed was to input my username and product key to activate the software. There is of course a free 14 day fully functional trial for anyone who wants to try it out first.
Overview
First impressions for my Boz Digital Labs Provocative review are good, with a familiar look and feel to both the Boz Labs software and also how I expect a pitch shifter plugin to look.
Features
There are plenty of features in this plugin giving you a lot of bang for your buck. Some of the features I discovered while doing this Boz Digital Labs ProVocative review include:
- Instant thicker tracks
- Micro pitch shifting
- Apply to specific frequency range
- Wet/Dry dial
What Is Micro Pitch Shifting?
As much as it says micro pitch shifting, this is still a noticeable pitch shift utility when applying to a vocal track. However the main use for this technique is to add width and thickness to a sound wave frequency. The micro offset of the pitch will move the frequencies out slightly so that the waves forms are expanded to either side of where they originate, resulting in a phatter sound.
Presets
As regular readers may know, I pick out the presets available as a way of the plugin provider demonstrating the best features of a product. My Boz Digital Labs ProVocative review is no different and I can see that Boz Labs have offered a nice range of presets for all different areas of a mix.
Most are relating to vocals (hence the ProVocative casing in the name) but also there are some bass functions, such as “Bass Chorus” and “Full Bore”.
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Does It Work?
This plugin was tested for the Boz Digital Labs ProVocative review by swapping it out with the Waves Maserati VX1 on my track In My Soul from the album Wonderful Things Are Still Possible. This plugin improved on the Waves vocal enhancer due to the fact that I was able to tweak the frequency that the plugin affects.
Dialling in the vocal spectrum to only apply between 500Hz and 2.1GHz meant that other areas of the vocal were not affected.
I didn’t want sub 200Hz frequencies getting micro shifted because that would cause more mud and down the bottom end, something which really should be eliminated (find out more about that in my post Making Room In The Low End).
This option to split by frequency is not available in Waves Maserati VX1 and would require additional plugins to manage this using the Waves plugin.
Final Thoughts
As an advocate of this plugin provider, the Boz Digital Labs ProVocative review would have to show that this product was seriously flawed in order for me to drop points.
This is not the case here. For value for money and features, this is as good as it gets but I have to drop a star for the purchase process.
This might seem a little harsh, but to the non regular plugin purchaser it might cause some frustration. Once that process is complete though, it is all plain sailing from there and an easy way to improve tracks awaits. Four stars out of five.
