New Software Review: PUNISH by Heavyocity

The abrasive user interface of PUNISH, built around its featured central “PUNISH” knob.

Heavyocity is not known for making mixing effects.

Until now, this 11-year old software company has made its name by  designing creative virtual instruments, used by composers and sound designers all around the world.

Most of those instruments have been geared toward creating rhythmic and tonal soundscapes, but what really made Heavyocity stand out from the pack was the central “Punish” knob found on most of them.

This satisfyingly simple knob is used to distort, mangle, or completely alter the sound of a given instrument. It is a feature that has become so popular that Heavyocity decided to create a dedicated plug-in around it, aptly titled “PUNISH“. It lets you go much deeper under the hood, and apply these kinds of creative effects to any track.

Features

PUNISH is a truly unique beast. While still maintaining the large (and beautiful) central knob design, Heavyocity has managed to implement an entire channel strip around it, allowing you to take full control of the sound.

The signal chain features Compression, Saturation, Transient Designing, EQ (which can be placed either at the beginning or the end of the chain) and finally, a limiter to contain any clipping.

Each of these modules is modeled after Heavyocity’s analog processing chain, which is used to create the sounds featured in their instruments. There are also global In, Out, and Mix controls to help tame whatever beast you’ve created.

Not to my surprise, the most interesting feature is still the big knob in the middle. This “Punish” knob is not an effect by itself, but is instead used to automate all (or some combination of) the 26 parameters of the channel strip within user-specified ranges.

With this setup, I was able to control the entire channel strip with just a single knob, making it a breeze to give each section of a track its own character.

In Use

If you’ve ever used anything made by Heavyocity before, it should come as no surprise that PUNISH sounds pretty amazing right away. It is extremely versatile, and capable of creating sounds ranging from subtle harmonic enhancement all the way to crushing distortion. Because of this, PUNISH is not just for sound designers, but is also a useful tool for mixing and mastering engineers.

A closer look at the central “Punish” knob, the feature upon which Heavyocity designed the unique distortion plugin.

The first place I set up PUNISH was on an entire 2-track mix, completely destroying it, to see and hear just how this plug-in functions.

After tweaking a few parameters (and backing off a bit with the very handy Mix knob), I quickly came up with a sound that didn’t totally destroy my source, and instead just added some overall excitement, giving the track a unique flavor that was lacking before.

But this plugin wouldn’t be much fun if I just limited myself  to subtle effects. The real meat and potatoes of PUNISH is revealed when it is used just as the name implies—to truly punish audio. Used in this way, the plug-in performs equally very well, completely transforming sounds from dull and boring to booming with vibe.

My next test was to try PUNISH on an (admittedly boring-sounding) 808 drum loop, composed of only kick and snare. While the groove was fine, the sound simply wasn’t cutting it, lacking sustain to fill out the spaces between the hits and punch to give energy to the track.

PUNISH came to the rescue here, allowing me to transform my source until it sounded like it came out of an entirely different drum machine. And, of course, the handy Punish knob allowed me to automate the plug-in to deliver more or less aggression depending on the part of the song. Achieving your vision by automating a single parameter as opposed to several may be worth the price of admission alone.

To Be Critical

Each section on the channel strip provides a huge amount of flexibility. However, I found that each of the elements may not fare as well if used on their own outside the context of PUNISH. For instance, the compressor, while very nice-sounding, is not quite a workhorse compressor that I would reach to use on individual tracks.

While the plug-in is extremely flexible and can adapt to almost any situation, it is best used in broad strokes, whether they are subtle or extreme. This is a plugin that truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

Summing it Up

PUNISH is a pretty awesome and unique offering. Only iZotope’s Trash could (maybe) compete with what it does. This is a solid entry into Heavyocity’s existing lineup, and a fantastic first step into the world of audio effects for the company.

While PUNISH can be used in a variety of applications, perhaps it will probably find the most use—unsurprisingly—in sound design. While it can be used to add a bit of excitement to dull mixes, this feature alone may not justify the $249 price tag. Admittedly, there are plenty of other (and much cheaper) plugins that can do that.

However, when it comes to sound design, it is hard to compete with Heavyocity’s range of plugins, and PUNISH is no different. With intuitive automation, the ability to create a wide range soundscapes, and such in-depth tweakability, that same price tag could make PUNISH seem like a steal for any professional sound designer.

Jacob Roach is a writer, producer, and engineer from St. Louis, Missouri.

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