It’s been a great week for free plug-ins! We’ve got a semi-modular polyphonic synthesizer, a filter for removing those gnarly sub bass frequencies and an awesome tape degradation effect for NI Reaktor. Check out Tonetta Blue, Clean Shave and MRX90!

As always, you’ll find many more free plug-ins in our archives!

Flandersh Tech Tonetta Blue

Tonetta Blue is a polyphonic, semi-modular synthesizer. The front side is fairly straight-forward: You get two oscillators with 19 waveforms each, two filters, a bunch of envelopes and LFOs and a reverb. The back side is where the fun starts. A virtual patching environment that looks a bit like the back of Reason Rack allows you to connect the various modulation sources and destinations in any way you like. This looks like one of those free plug-ins that you end up spending way too much time with.

Tonetta Blue is a VST3 plug-in for Windows 8.1 or higher (64 bit).

Get Tonetta Blue here

Moonlab Clean Shave

Clean Shave is a filter plug-in that helps you to clean up your audio tracks to prepare them for mixing. Unwanted subsonic energy can become a huge problem in the mix. Clean Shave provides a razor-sharp digital high pass filter to get rid of it. Besides cleaning up your low frequency range, you can adjust the behavior of the filter with the Blades knob and add air and freshness by applying some ‘Aftershave’. An essential tool to get your tracks ready for mixing!

Clean Shave is available in VST3 and AU versions for Windows and macOS.

Get shaved here

James Peck MRX90

The Reaktor user community is still one of the most exciting places to hang out if you’re looking for interesting effects and virtual instruments. MRX90 by James Peck adds some vintage cassette tape goodness to your tracks. It only has two knobs: one for adding noise and one for ‘aging’ the tape with compression, high cut filtering and wow/flutter. Make your tracks sound like they came straight from an 80s mix tape that’s been played way too much!

MRX90 requires Native Instruments Reaktor 6.3.0 or higher.

Get MRX90 here

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The best sample packs this week include Led Zeppelin drums recorded by Eddie Kramer at one of London’s most famous studios, winter in surround sound, melodies inspired by the world of Manga, and retro pack that brings back the glory days of 80s synth tones.

Toontrack Classic Rock EZX

This is an expansion set for EZdrummer 2 that offers two kits and a few extras for creating the grandest, in-your-face rock tracks. All samples were recorded by legendary engineer Eddie Kramer at the famous AIR Studios in London. Both kits are based off of John Bonham’s (Led Zeppelin), each with their own character. All samples include sticks, snares off, and mallet variations, and some of the extras include a gong, timpani, and other various kit pieces. At only $89 there is no reason not to add these legendary sounds to your toolset.

• More information and pricing

BOOM Library Seasons of Earth: Winter

This is the kickoff installment of BOOM Library’s Seasons of Earth series displays the sonic majesty of our planet. Sounds include wind textures, water, storms, animals, and snow all recorded at various distances. Everything was captured in 24-bit/96kHz using the Schoeps ORTF3D Surround Set making this ideal for surround sound formats. Included are 8-channel recordings built for surround sound, but the stereo versions are available at a reduced price. It’s on sale for $281 until October 1^st, normally retailing for $351.

• More information and pricing

Prime Loops TAKESHIDO: Manga Melodies

Directly inspired by manga’s dark side, this pack includes more than 320MB of melancholy melodies. There are instruments like pianos, pads, analog basslines, synths, even a Fender Rhodes electric piano! Once captured, all sounds were then run through analog hardware to add additional character and grit. With 13 construction kits across 56 loops, as well as 52 MIDI loops, so you can customize your sounds even further. All tempos range from 90-160bpm. It’s on sale right now for $10.95, but normally retails for $22.95. All sounds come in 24-bit WAV format and are royalty-free, well worth it for this distinctly unique library.

• More information and pricing

ADSR Sounds Retrowave for Serum & Cthulhu

Drawing inspiration from classic cinema and television, this sample pack brings the glory days of 80s synth to your library. There are 60 Serum and 40 Cthulhu items including presets, MIDI, loops, and one shots. The Serum presets offer basses, chords, leads, and pads and the Cthulhu presets include major and minor progressions as well as a number of other harmonic items. It requires the latest versions of both software to run, but at just $24 it’s an interesting set of sounds to have in your arsenal.

• More information and pricing

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The UK’s largest synthesizer show SynthFest has announced that they are planning a 48 hour weekend of content and happenings from the 10th to the 12th of October.

SynthFest UK

SynthFest is usually held at the Sheffield Octagon Centre for a day in October and pulls in manufacturers, modular makers, retail stores and of course loads of synthesizer enthusiasts. They usually also run a series of seminars and and performances throughout the day. It’s an awesome day of synthiness and is certainly an annual pilgrimage for me. This year, of course, it can’t be done.

However, don’t despair, Sound On Sound (the people behind SynthFest) has decided to throw something together online to give us a taste of what it might have been to go along. SFUK will set itself up as a portal for a kind of self-service event. The idea is that manufacturers and content makers can send in demonstrations, articles and videos about their latest releases and it will all be available to watch over the weekend. Retailers are invited to offer up some special deals and promotions for the event. They also hope that the synth community will generate some Fringe Events in terms of performances, discussions and live streams to tie in with SynthFest and get featured on the site.

If you want to get involved in any capacity then you need to get in touch by the 1st October.

The event is completely free because it’s essentially a hub for other people’s content. Hopefully, if manufacturers and the community jumps on board then it could be a great weekend of new and interesting products to see and content to enjoy in one convenient place.

More information

• SynthFest UK website.

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UVI has released Shade, a new creative filter and EQ plug-in with a massive modulation engine. Combine dozens of filter types with a bunch of modulators for all sorts of swirling, rhythmic filtering effects.

UVI Shade

UVI calls Shade a “Swiss Army knife filtering tool”, and looking at the plug-in’s features, I think they may be onto something. If you’re into creative, rhythmic filtering and modulation, you definitely need to check this one out. But let’s take it from the beginning.

Shade offers a total of 35 filter shapes. You can choose from various high pass, low pass, shelving, peak and notch filters with different options like resonant, multi-resonant and EQ-ing. There’s also a bunch of comb filters and phasers for more experimental stuff. This alone makes Shade a very capable filter and EQ plug-in.

Modulate any parameter

But the modulation engine is where the fun really starts. There are nine modulators, including XY, Macro, Spread, Random, LFO, Envelope, Figure (an XY LFO), Multi-step Envelope Generator, and Follower. You can map these to any parameter by dragging and dropping. In addition, modulators can be routed and cross-modulated in a couple of different ways. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that this opens the door to pretty much any kind of rhythmic, modulated filtering you can imagine.

Shade can also react to the input signal and/or controllers in a number of ways. The Follower modulator can follow the input, an external sidechain signal or the spectral band of individual filters. By using the Follower, any parameter in Shade can react to the dynamics of the input signal, which makes the plug-in a powerful dynamic EQ, as well. The envelope offers host sync interval, audio threshold and MIDI triggering options. The Macro modulator lets you set up macros for controlling several things at once. And the X/Y modulator can be controlled with an external joystick.

That’s a lot of possibilities, and to me it seems like UVI Shade is a must-have for anyone into creative filter effects. If you like rhythmic, modulated effects like Output Movement or Cableguys Shaperbox, this one looks like it’ll fit in nicely.

Price and compatibility

UVI Shade is now available from the developer’s website for USD 79 / EUR 79. This introductory offer expires on October 31st, 2020. The regular price will be USD 129 / EUR 129.

The plug-in runs on macOS 10.9 or higher and Windows 8 or higher in VST, AU and AAX formats. You need a free iLok account for activation (dongle not required).

More information

• Developer’s page
• More from UVI

Videos

Audio demos

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