Forever 89 is a creative studio and music tech company founded by Svante Stadler and Rikard Jönsson, two developers formerly of Ableton and Teenage Engineering.
Last year, the company released its first product, Visco, an innovative software drum machine with a endearingly unique interface based around a squishy 2D blob. The follow-up to that plugin has arrived, and while, this time around, there are sadly no blobs to speak of, Forever 89 has designed another imaginative product that boldly explores uncharted sonic terrain - in more ways than one.
A combined saturation and speaker simulation plugin, Topos is described as an "all-terrain tone explorer" that lets you "explore the personality of classic studio gear", thanks to a topographically styled interface that can be used to blend between multiple amp and speaker models using waypoints on a map.
Topos is built around two main sections preceded by an input filter. The Amp section features 35 saturation models based on an array of hardware that covers vintage tube amps, distortion pedals, tape machines and classic preamps. Forever 89 says that the emulations here can be deployed for everything from subtle mixing tasks to expressive sound design.
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Next in the signal chain is Topos' Speaker section, which emulates a variety of speakers and their acoustic characteristics through physical modelling; among the 41 presets are models of a number of classic guitar and bass cabinets alongside recreations of studio monitors, car stereos and even vintage phone speakers. These can be fine-tuned using a number of settings that adjust cabinet size, fidelity, presence and internal reflections, and more.
As mentioned, Both Amp and Speaker sections have their own Map View, which enables you to blend between up to three speaker or amp simulations by dragging a node across the map; as you drag, the node will attach itself to the three presets closest to it, and the thickness of the connecting lines indicates each preset's influence on the overall tone.
Following this is Topos' Mix section which, along with the obligatory Wet/Dry mix dial, offers controls for Flux - which introduces subtle movement to Topos' parameters - and Dynamics, a control that restores some of the natural dynamics dampened by the plugin's saturation. A separate panel opens up further controls for mid/side processing and Flux modulation.
Available in VST3/AU formats for macOS and Windows, Topos is currently priced at an introductory price of $/€79, but if you're short of cash, Forever 89 has generously made a stripped-back version of the plugin available for free.
Though it lacks some of its sound-sculpting controls, Topos: Play features many of the same amp and speaker models as its paid-for counterpart and is well worth downloading.
Find out more on Forever 89's website.
