Developer XNULLX has released five free donationware plugins covering granular processing, saturation, wavefolding, spectral smear, and beat slicing.
I will be honest right away. I like the tools themselves, but I am getting tired of the current wave of AI-generated plugin websites, where everything starts to feel like the same blocks of text in the same layout with different screenshots.
I never thought I would say this, but I miss the old days a bit. We are getting some interesting tools now, and that is great, but the hyper-production of plugins also means that a lot of this stuff feels disposable.
That said, I am trying to handpick only the good stuff for BPB. Nowadays, I get at least twenty new plugins in my inbox every week. I probably discard more than half of them, and I will have to get even more strict about it.
This XNULLX bundle goes through the filter because the plugins are cool and they do not feel like one-prompt throwaway tools, but I would still like to see more attention to detail and more character in the areas where AI coding shows up (website, product descriptions, and interfaces).
The five plugins share a dark visual style and focus on different areas of sound design.
GrainBrain is a stereo four-band multiband granular processor. Each band has its own 8-voice granular engine, with controls for grain size, scatter, pitch, spread, drive, reverse playback, freeze, and tempo-synced grain sizes. It also has per-band stutter gates, cross-band bleed, and an LFO system so you can really go crazy with the modulation. This is my favorite one of the bunch.
O2 is a three-band saturation and width processor where each band can use a different saturation type, including diode, op-amp, transformer, tape, and tube-style curves. You also get several variants per type, as well as hiss, drift, stereo width, phase flip, and a mono-compatible widening mode for opening up mono sources.
Foldspace is the weirdest of the bunch, but in a good way. It combines phase modulation and wavefolding, with three fold points inside the signal path. It can use the input audio directly, an internal carrier oscillator, pitch tracking, or MIDI notes, which makes it especially interesting for bass design and more chaotic textures.
Halide handles the ambient side of the family. It uses a grain cloud feeding a Paulstretch-style spectral smear engine, so the effect can turn incoming audio into a soft and blurry layer. There is also a freeze function, musical pitch mode, feedback, motion, and a 16-second rolling buffer.
Bunka is a beat-slicer instrument, and I always enjoy such tools. You load a loop, let it detect transients, and then re-sequence the slices using a 12-slot pattern bank. It supports host sync, pitch-preserving time stretch, MPC-style repitching, reverse playback, MIDI triggering, shuffle, randomization, and per-pad locking.
All five XNULLX plugins are free to download and use, with optional donations. The product pages list Windows VST3 installers and macOS VST3/AU installers. The Windows installers are not code-signed yet, so you may see a SmartScreen warning during installation.
Download: XNULLX plugins (FREE/donationware)
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Last Updated on July 12, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
