From the extraordinary first digital breakthroughs of the 70s, when lightbulbs stood in for LEDs, to what may have been the first use of the word “plug-in,”* we the inventors of Eventide’s classics – who now have a Grammy nod of their own.

Envelop began life by opening a space for exploring 3D sound. But today, the nonprofit, directed by artist Christopher Willits, is also releasing a set of free spatial sound tools you can use in Ableton Live 10. We’ve got an exclusive first look.

It ran natively in MS-DOS, then died by the end of the 90s. But now it’s back: one of the greatest chip music trackers of all time has been cloned to run on modern machines.

Maybe it’s time for the idea of a “commons” to get a new boost. Whatever the reason, BBC’s 16,000 sound effects are available to download – but with strings attached.

LayR 1.2 packs a huge punch of new features to this massively polyphonic synth which is capable of delivering up to 256 voices of rich, multi-layered and textured sounds

Volt synth 1.1 brings even more goodness to this fully featured MPE enabled synth app that has already gather a great deal of support and appreciation in the mobile community

In the late 1970s in China, one inventor created a futuristic take on traditional instruments – and it easily still inspires today.

There’s a big push among software makers to deliver integrated solutions – and that’s great. But if you’re a big user of both, say, MASCHINE MK3 and Ableton Live, here’s some good news.

Vulse, the gestural guitar FX app brings additional effects and control modes and plenty more besides in version 1.5 which really is a bumper update to the app

Serendipitous collaboration can be magical. Combine an eccentric high-tech guitar company from Switzerland with some high-powered nerds from the USA, and you get some spectacular ways of adding sub octaves and picking apart and modulating sounds.