Autor: Producer Gang

When VATRA launched, it finally stopped living in a vacuum of my own ideas. I knew v1.0 wasn’t the end, but after almost two years of development, it felt like the plugin had finally left my hands as the thing I wanted it to be. Then the customer feedback started coming in. People liked VATRA, which was obviously a huge relief. It currently has a 5.0 rating on Gumroad, and I am very thankful for that. I believed in the plugin, but this was my first major software release, and I had no idea how people would react once they…

Morphoice has released WingMen, a free chorus plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux. We have covered quite a few Morphoice synths lately, including the EightySix Juno-6 emulation and the more recent EightyTen JX-8P/SuperJX-10 emulation. WingMen takes the chorus sections from some of the developer’s full synth emulations and offers them as a separate effect. The plugin has eight algorithms modeled after the chorus circuits of three classic Roland instruments. The EightySix section covers the Juno-6-style ensemble chorus, including Mode I, Mode II, and the “both buttons down” setting. The EightyTen section is based on the JX-8P chorus, while the EightyFifty…

Developer Robin van Soelen has released gesture.live, a free browser-based instrument that you play with hand gestures through your webcam. This is not a plugin, and there is nothing to install. It’s pretty cool, though. You open the website, allow camera access, keep both hands inside the webcam frame, and start controlling the instrument with your movements. I tested gesture.live in Chrome, and it worked great here. There is a learning curve, though. You need to spend some time with the gesture animations on the homepage and learn what each hand position does before it starts feeling natural. Once it…

Immanent Audio has released IA De-Esser, a free de-essing and resonance suppression plugin for macOS and Windows. IA De-Esser does things a bit differently. Instead of a single module, it has four filter slots for taming sibilance, harshness, and resonant peaks. Each slot can work in De-Ess mode, where it automatically responds to sibilance, or in modes designed for broader harshness control. It’s a cool idea. You can take away just a little bit of harshness with every module and get a compound result that sounds more natural than just slamming a single de-esser. Auto Mode lets you set the…

  Two DAWs. Two Different Producers. REAPER and Ableton Live can both: Record. Edit. Produce. Mix. Master. But they feel completely different. REAPER feels like a recording studio you can customize. Ableton Live feels like a musical instrument you can create with. So which one is better? That depends on what kind of producer you are.   Quick Summary 👉 Choose REAPER if you primarily record bands, edit audio, mix, work with lots of tracks, or want maximum flexibility for minimum cost. 👉 Choose Ableton Live if you make beats, electronic music, write songs with MIDI, perform live, or want…

HD Instruments has released Spectdrum, a rhythmic spectral gate plugin for macOS and Windows. The tagline is “Make it Pulse.” Spectdrum listens to an incoming sound, splits it into four frequency bands, and turns those bands into a moving groove built entirely from the original material. Spectdrum is not a drum machine, and it does not add drum samples or synth voices. Every hit comes from the audio you feed into it, so a pad, drone, vocal, string patch, or field recording keeps its own texture while gaining rhythm, pulse, and movement. It splits the signal into four bands named…

Max Styler’s minimal, bass-heavy sound is built for the dancefloor: groovy, powerful, and engineered to keep the energy high all night. This breakdown takes his bass work apart into five layers, each with a different timbre and role: the main bass, the accent pluck, the response, the phase-distortion refresh, and the wow fill. Keep it minimal and let the bass do the work. Step 1: The Main Bass Line The core groove, a simple phrase with a semitone twist and an end-of-phrase figure for movement. The rule of thumb: amp straight, filter plucky. Key settings: Amp envelope (ENV 1): straight…

quietformat has released SURVIVE, a free clipping processor plugin for macOS and Windows. To get SURVIVE for free, you need to enter your email address on the product page and agree to receive the quietformat newsletter. The newsletter signup is not optional, but the plugin itself is free once you complete the form. I have mentioned before that clippers are probably one of the most widely available plugin types right now. There are many excellent free ones already (we recently featured Beheader), so a new clipper needs to do something beyond the usual input/ceiling workflow to stand out. SURVIVE is…

Dusk Audio has released Tape Echo 2, a free three-head tape delay and spring reverb plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux. I am a massive fan of tape delays, especially when there is a spring reverb involved. This one is clearly going for the classic Space Echo-style workflow, which has been emulated many times already. I own a few commercial takes on this kind of hardware echo, including the Arturia, Universal Audio, and AudioThing versions. I enjoy using all three because each has a slightly different vibe, and I use delays a lot for sound design work, so I am…

NoirSonance has released Decompressor, a free/pay-what-you-want upward dynamics plugin for macOS and Windows. We have covered NoirSonance several times on BPB, most recently when the developer made all 12 NoirSonance plugins free with optional donations. The catalog has been reorganized since then, and Decompressor is the newest freebie in the lineup. Decompressor is designed to bring some movement back into audio that has become too flat as a result of, you gest it, overcompressoion. Now, of course, it is not a time machine, and NoirSonance is clear that it cannot reconstruct information permanently removed by clipping or hard limiting. But…