Polyend’s beloved Tracker finishes out the year with a pitch-perfect update – and homebrew gaming. And there are updates for their Preset module for Eurorack and the brilliant Medusa synthesizer hardware, too.

It’s one of the all-time great chorus effects – and now you can bite off just the chorus of the Roland Juno and use it as an effect, for free, with this giveaway from Arturia. We’ve got that – and one competing free chorus, for good measure!

Modular Santa Claus is here, just in the Nick of time. Boutique Scottish Eurorack maker Instruo is dropping a big range of modules in virtual form on VCV Rack – for free. Here’s what’s inside and where to get started.

Let’s put all the gear news aside and consider – people are doing wonderful things with sound live. Consider the duo of Giant Swan, whose intense multi-layered performances seem to fuel the same transcendent energy of their releases.

The OP-Z’s ultra-minimalist, candybar form factor hides some serious synthesis, sampling, and audiovisual powers – and now new live visual/VJ functions, too.

We’ve seen plenty of efforts to make it easy to build song ideas from samples and loops on mobile. With a Mac launch, Endlesss now does what it set out to do – make those sound materials connect everywhere.

Bitwig’s new 808 freebie is massively multisampled and uniquely integrated with Bitwig Studio – which opens up the possibility of playing bass lines on it or integrating it with modular patches in The Grid.

NVIDIA’s Omniverse is in open beta. Even saying what it is is hard to do because something like this hasn’t really existed before, but now working together on 3D in real-time got way easier. And if 2020 demonstrated anything, it demonstrated how much creative technology needs that collaboration to progress.

When arguing merits of vintage synth reproduction, invoking a “plug-in” is often a derogatory slur. Not here – this high-end boutique hardware is made to work with software alone.

If you didn’t get to live-stream Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Festival – or you’re ready for more goodness for Kampala – you’re in luck. There’s great music from “across the continent and the wider African diaspora.”