Ardour 8 has arrived with easier editing, automation, improved tempo mapping, arpeggiators, Launchpad Pro controller support, and more. The DAW is a workflow powerhouse – and it’s free and open source for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Our friends in Vermont have shared this video tour of their SuperPlate reverb plug-in – the unique, five-plate reverb with some extra options. The key: listen to pick up the differences in each of those plate models.

Communities inside and outside Morocco are still reeling from the earthquake last month. Berlin-based art Artist Znzl, whose name literally means “earthquake,” has pulled together threads across international lines and genres, techno to industrial to ambient, for a gorgeous and moving charity compilation. It’s a musical message you won’t want to miss – plus, crucially, direct giving resources here for those who can. And we have a premiere by artist Maze DK from the compilation.

Here’s another freebie for you from Italian plug-in maker HoRNet, if you act fast. Graffio is 3-band (or fullband) distortion and saturation with switchable excited and bitcrusher.

Bandcamp United, the staff union recently organized and Bandcamp, is sending out a petition to see that the union is recognized by the company’s new owners, Songtradr. They also describe some alarming conditions at outgoing owner Epic, with a threat of job losses looming and workers locked out of systems – just as October’s Bandcamp Friday is about to arrive.

If you’re ready to make visuals for music using Bitwig Studio and powerhouse dataflow 3D/generative tool TouchDesigner, we’ve got free videos and a free workshop today. Yo dawg, it’s a modular tool for your modular DAW that connects to your modular visual tool so you can modulate mod makings with your modules while you modulate.

Our friend DeafMan is back with another retro take on the Ableton Live color scheme. This time, the idea is making Live look attractive and legible in low light – even extreme low light. So get set for that late-night session, light a couple of candles, and travel back to the screen aesthetics of the 80s and 90s.

Few instrument designs have ever come as close to science fiction as Synplant – and the alien breeding lab for sound has gotten more otherworldly in this update than ever. Replace those knobs with a double helix and start genetically engineering new paths from any sound you want to load. Here’s a first hands-on.

Korg’s drumlogue has a killer app: the incredible-sounding Sinevibes Nano dual-oscillator synth, with all the extras. And that app gets a ton of new stuff in a free system refresh. Add that to the separate, 3rd-party synth based on Mutable Instruments’ Braids macro oscillator, and … drumlogue is like two shampoos in one!

Crises are a given; resilience is a given – to slightly bastardize the author’s words on Beirut’s Underground Scene, Hajar Ibrahim’s portrait of a musical world. But in this book, released this summer, what you get is more personal. It’s the underground telling its own story, rather than having one framed for it.