Never been a big fan of most Brainworx plug-ins but there are couple that punch through my reservations with complete ease, and one of those is elysia's Phil’s Cascade. I mention it because Phil’s is, for a brief time, on sale for … $9.99, which is, well, ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
Difficult to explain what the plug-in does — it’s a complex combination of enhancer, saturator, dynamic processor, filter, exciter and a few other analog/organic-sounding processes — and also rather challenging to get completely comfortable with it quickly — definitely not a plug-in you master on the day you buy it — because almost all the parameters interact with one another in some way or other, but if you persevere and spend enough time with it, you’ll gradually discover what a unique, powerful and versatile tool this really is.
I don’t use MODO without it. In fact, MODO through Phil’s Cascade gives you MODO UltraDeluxe. But it’s also great on drums — any Toontrack kit I’m familiar with sounds MUCH better when sent through Phil’s Cascade (with appropriate settings, of course) —, keyboards, vocals, … and there’s probably a good way of using it on mock-orchestral material as well though I haven’t tried that myself yet.
None of the video-demo’s do justice to the plug-in's powers in my opinion. The only way to get a feel of what it is capable of, is to spend some time with. Or, at its current price, simply buy the thing.
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