We’ve been using Output’s Rev since its release — we did a Hands On review of it when it first hit the market. Now Output has released Exhale, which the company calls the first truly modern vocal engine.
Rev was built around manipulating reversed sounds. Output’s other engine, Signal, worked as a pulse-based tool for rhythmic textures. Exhale applies the same idea to the human voice: real singers and a full choir were recorded, then reworked over six months by a team of sound designers using tape machines, vocoders, and vintage gear to build a library of processed vocal material.
The plugin runs inside Kontakt or the free Kontakt Player, split into three modes. Notes maps vocal sources chromatically across the keyboard for playing melodies or chords. Loops assigns thirteen looping vocal phrases to individual keys, each with its own tune, pan, and playback controls. Slices works similarly with cut-up vocal fragments. Four macro sliders, carried over from Signal’s interface, let a producer reshape a preset’s core character without digging into the full effects chain, which covers pitch, distortion, compression, tone shaping, delay, and reverb.
In speaking with music makers, Output found the biggest frustration with existing vocal instruments was that none of them sounded modern, or in line with the vocal processing already common in current records, film scores, and sound design. Exhale was built to close that gap, and it’s held up: the plugin is still sold today, and Output later folded it into One, a bundle with the rest of its instrument line, alongside follow-up releases like Movement.
