Autor: Producer Gang

Developer DAWJunkie has released Knobs, a free random-effects processor for macOS and Windows. We’ve been featuring DAWJunkie regularly for a little while now, and over that time, there are a few things we’ve come to expect from every release. The first thing we’ve come to expect is seriously usable sounds wrapped up in a playful interface, often with a quirky name. Another thing we’ve come to expect is user-friendly freebies that overdeliver, and part of that comes from the quirky character of some titles. But the main thing we’ve come to expect from DAWJunkie is something different. For example, if…

Dezert Audio has released PolyFreq, a free analog modeled synthesizer plugin for macOS and Windows. You may recognize Dezert Audio from Freq-2, the premium Kontakt instrument we covered previously, built from recordings taken from Dez Wright’s personal collection of over 20 analog synths. PolyFreq is a different kind of release. It’s a synthesis engine rather than a sample library, but the focus on vintage analog character is just as present. I loved the interface design straight away, particularly the filter section. The cutoff frequency and resonance controls appear as horizontal bars that you adjust by dragging, rather than the standard…

Developer Rob Kor has released ChugMate, a free zero-latency VST3 doubler aimed squarely at tight, heavy rhythm guitars. Broadly speaking, generic doubler plugins tend to get the job done on clean tones but fall apart on palm-muted rhythm tracks. You usually end up with smeared transients, and the result pretty much collapses into a washed-out phasey mess when someone listens in mono. The developer noticed this issue and made ChugMate try to solve it. And this is the second stere-related plugin we’re featuring today, along with PanBlur. What I liked here is the focus on mono compatibility. A lot of…

Brainworx and Black Box Analog Design’s HG-2 tube saturation plugin is currently 76% off at Plugin Boutique. The regular price is $125, and the deal brings it down to $30 until May 31. HG-2 is the official emulation of Black Box Analog Design’s hardware tube processor. It’s a unit that retails for around $3,000 (yikes!) and shows up on many professional mix sessions. The plugin includes four emulated tube stages along with modeled input and output transformers and costs a whopping 100 times less than the hardware during the sale. The signal flow here is pretty interesting, compared to most…

MousePlugins has released The Trick, a free passive program EQ for Windows and Linux. The “trick” in the name is the old Pultec move. You boost and cut at the same low frequency at the same time, and instead of the two canceling each other out, you get a resonant low-end lift followed by a scoop just above it. This results in a bigger bottom end and tighter low-mids. It’s a classic studio move, and we also tried recreating it in our free BPB Bassaturator plugin. That said, most EQ plugins start from a target curve, but The Trick is…

Kojima Audio has released PanBlur, a free mono-to-stereo spatial enhancer for macOS and Windows. The same developer behind the BandMatrix multi-band dynamics plugin we covered in March is back with something quite different (although I highly recommend giving BandMatrix a try!). PanBlur takes dry mono sources and gives them an ASMR-like stereo image while keeping the apparent source position stable. So, definitely not what we’re used to getting from typical widening tools. I had a brief play with PanBlur today, and my first impressions are good. It sounds more natural than the basic mono-to-stereo widening plugins I’ve tried in the…

“No lyrics. No excuses. Just sound that speaks.” These 10 instrumental songs made it to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Dave “Baby” Cortez — The Happy Organ (1959) Santo & Johnny — Sleep Walk (1959) Percy Faith — Theme from A Summer Place (1960) Lawrence Welk — Calcutta (1961) The Tornados — Telstar (1962) Mr. Acker Bilk — Stranger on the Shore (1962) Paul Mauriat — Love Is Blue (1968) Hugh Masekela — Grazing in the Grass (1968) The Edgar Winter Group — Frankenstein (1973) MFSB — TSOP (1974)* Herb Alpert — Rise (1979) “Wipe Out” –…

Ewan Bristow has officially hit 10k followers on Twitter/X, and as promised, his UZU frequency domain phaser is now free. The plugin normally sells for $17, and you can grab it from the developer’s website for free. We covered the initiative back in October 2025, when Ewan announced that UZU would be made free for 48 hours if and when his X account reached 10,000 followers. The window has stretched to a full week this time, which is even better news. If you missed the original announcement, UZU is a frequency domain phaser inspired by Image-Line’s Harmor. Conventional phasers work…

Minimal Audio is giving away its Hybrid Filter plugin for free for a limited time. Hybrid Filter normally costs $49, and you can claim it by adding it to your cart and completing the checkout on the Minimal Audio website. It’s worth noting that this is the first time Hybrid Filter has been offered as a standalone freebie. Back in March 2024, it was bundled free with any purchase on Plugin Boutique, but this time, you don’t need to buy anything else. I’ve been a fan of Minimal Audio for a while. I used a lot of their sample packs…

Tuva, the standalone sample and project manager we covered earlier this month, has just been updated to version 1.4. The update is focused on workflow customization, with new left bar views, tab-based navigation, and pinned items. As a quick recap, Tuva is a desktop app that helps you organize, classify, and search audio samples, MIDI files, and DAW project files from a single interface. It uses on-device machine learning to tag files by instrument, detect tempo, and classify one-shots vs loops. Everything runs locally with no internet connection required. The headline feature in 1.4 is the ability to create multiple…