You’ve got choices for how to delay, distort, mangle, spectrally transform, and meddle with audio. But Tom Erbe’s legendary SoundHack stands out – and it’s free. And now it’s Apple Silicon ready.
News came this week that Tom has finished off the latest Max/MSP port of unique SoundHack effects – v 0.0.10 – with Apple Silicon support. That brings the full SoundHack library to Apple Silicon Macs. (Plug-ins arrived late last year.) The free SoundHack stuff is now available as AU/VST/VST3/AAX plug-ins and as externals for Max and Pure Data, for Mac and Windows. (There’s also Linux support in Pd and via Windows VST wrappers for Linux.)
The plug-in selection is the broadest, but you’ll find all these effects in external form, too:
- +binaural
- +bubbler granular delay
- +chebyshev polynomial distortion
- +compand compressor/expander
- +decimate bit depth and sample rate reduction
- +delay with variable modulation
- +matrix mid/side – left/right encoder/decoder
- +morphfilter
- +pitchdelay with crossfading
- +spectralcompand
- +spectralgate
Some of these are fairly common, but having them as externals means no need to hunt around forums trying to find someone who’s already patched them into Pd and Max. Some are a little more exotic, and I find too often commercial plug-in developers make everything a little too nice and well-behaved. You miss out on some retro, classic, and harsher/glitchier possibilities, depending on the effect. Developer Tom Erbe teaches this kind of music programming, and what you get is pure classic and sometimes destructive sounds. So whether you grab the plug-in or play around in your own Max, Max for Live, and Pd patches, there’s a ton of fun here.
As for platform support, the current state of affairs is this:
- 64-bit macOS Apple Silicon: plug-ins, externals for Max/MSP
- 64-bit macOS Intel: plug-ins, externals for Max/MSP, externals for Pd
- 64-bit Linux: Pd externals (and you should be able to use the plug-ins with a wrapper)
- 32-bit Linux: Pd externals
- 64-/32-bit Windows: plug-ins, externals for Max/MSP, externals for Pd
- 32-bit Macs (Intel and PowerPC): Original SoundHack application – works only on macOS versions with Carbon support, so macOS Mojave 10.14 and earlier
(Note that source code only appears available for the original SoundHack; the rest are free as in beer.)
I asked about Pure Data, too; the binary download is Intel only (just tried it), but Tom tells me there should soon be deken compatibility again (for automatic builds for your platform inside Pd) and ARM/Apple Silicon compatibility.
Seeing 1991’s SoundHack still alive is amazing; it was my first entry into experimental music production because of its unique convolution effect. And wow, there’s even a tutorial:
All the downloads:
https://www.soundhack.com/freeware/
Now having stocked up on the free stuff, there’s also a 50% off “back to school” sale on for the month of August on all Tom’s excellent paid stuff. Use code “Gjekstad” at checkout. (Is that a reference to the Norwegian handball player?!)