Baby Audio’s Smooth Operator Pro delivers powerful ways of dynamically sculpting sound and applying spectral processing. To round out the offering, here are some CDM-exclusive presets. You can try them out alongside the factory presets in their free trial.

Just when you think you’ve had enough granular effects, Imaginando’s GRFX does everything right. That includes fine-tuned harmonies (including microtuning), per-grain effects, and drag-and-drop modulation from four LFOs.

Unity offers a powerful alternative to Unreal Engine for artists, with some unique features and broader device support, including the Web. And while pricing caused some heated discussions a while back, the important thing to know is that students, personal users, and educators can all use Unity for free. So let’s check in with Unity, which has just branched into stable and latest-and-greatest branches with Unity 6.1. Here’s what’s new.

It’s just as dark, just as blistering and powerful, but with sharper details, nuanced rhythms. Arabic-speaking techno from mnjm in Berlin reinvigorates the genre by shedding some of its cookie-cutter repetition and making it come alive all over again.

Arturia’s latest refresh of their sprawling V Collection is here today. In addition to updates across the Augmented line and the inclusion of the latest instruments, there are two surprises: a layered “lo-fi” synth and an instrument of the Roland JP-8000. Yes, really, the JP-8000: sometimes you want the 90s and 2000s and not only, like, the 70s and 80s.

If you don’t know the hyperfuturist post-anthropocene duo* MIRA新伝統 aka Honami Higuchi and Raphael Leray, you need to. But now for three bucks – $3!! – you can drop their absolutely addictive Max for Live mayhem into your Ableton Live set. Should you? You should.

Hip hop, new wave, techno, and house are inseparable from funk history – and any discussion of funk in the 1970s demands a conversation about Black liberation. Emmy winner and MacArthur Fellow Stanley Nelson and Grammy-nominated producer Nicole London have produced a full-length history.

OXI ONE MKII is inbound, with preorders about to start. OXI Instruments is taking their packed grid sequencer and adding more of everything, while keeping the compact size. (Missed opportunity not to call this the “one two,” though!)

Nasko, the prolific and imaginative software developer, is back with a new one – and it’s completely free, running in Plug Data (Pd) on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s a convolution-based spectrum disperser. Say what? Well, you get a powerful, precise, fairly rare method for generating impulse responses for convolution tools, like Kilohearts Convolution (now on sale), the one just added to Serum 2, and more. Or just play it live, because that also sounds kind of awesome.

Built in Swift, now extensible with JavaScript plug-ins, IINA is the free media player that macOS needed. Hey, everybody: play with a fresh, minimalist player that handles local files, music, and streaming with aplomb. (Hey, old people: it’s like QuickTime Pro is back!)