Teenage Engineering and Magnus Lindstrom created the innovation of using a cow to illustrate a frequency-shifting delay. Now you can get that free in Ableton Live if you don’t own an OP-1 – and now is a good time to mention all the shifter-delay action around in general. First, there’s Johny Maandag’s own CWO clone. […]

Ever wished you had a tiny version of your favorite keyboard / organ so accurate that it would look at home next to the full-sized version of your favorite keyboard / organ? Well, apparently someone had that thought.

Now we’ve seen a first glimpse of what’s next from Soundtoys: massively expanding their reverb modeling to cover some nine massive electromechanical plate reverb units. SuperPlate is the long-hinted-at follow-up to the company’s terrific Little Plate.

After working eight years on its development, the retro-obsessed boffins have recreated the Binson Echorec. That’s the rare mid-60s echo box beloved by Pink Floyd and The Shadows, in all its magnetic disk delay glory.

Love the power of modular but want to go even deeper? Audulus, the modular platform we’ve already been eyeing, now lets you use easy-to-understand Lua script code to add your own custom signal processors with its new DSP node.

Semi-modular is the new modular. Intellijel is still in the business of making modules, but they now also offer the Cascadia desktop synthesizer. It’s one box, but packs loads of controls and 101 patch points.

Now that machines can employ their own scores, perhaps it’s a perfect time for scores that are imaginative, graphical, uncertain – human. Graphème is a new magazine celebrating these creations, and one composer is even making the process of printing part of musical creation.

As they promised, Polyend has made a handheld follow-up to their standalone Tracker hardware. It’s now in a handheld form factor, and includes enhancements to the original model.

Bitwig Studio 5 focuses on creating curves and envelopes and working with modulation. That includes new envelope generators – but works the new possibilities deep into the tool, from the ability to modulate more of the DAW to the Grid modular system underneath. There are some new ideas for what clips can do, too.

There’s now a bevy of mobile gear that runs on batteries – but how to mix it? That’s where Bastl’s new Bestie mixer comes in, with full stereo operation, mute switches with pre-listen, USB-C and battery operation – and the option to add distortion and even zero-input feedback. With summer coming to the northern hemisphere, this could be just the park / beach gadget we want.