What if an integrated plug-in instrument could rival even full-blown modulars? That’s the question posed by u-he’s Zebra 3, out now at long last for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It’s unlikely any other soft synth takes on just this much synthesis territory, or with this much depth. From spline-based morphing oscillators to physical modeling and […]

Skip the laptops and loads of proprietary hardware with an ultra-simple, portable, affordable add-on that turns any turntable into a digital vinyl turntable. That’s the pitch from NAP Works for crowdfunded, compact hardware built on open-source tech. It might do more than just impress digital vinyl DJs: this has the potential to win over even the CDJ crowd.

What if you could remake Ableton Move to do anything, using Max — the audio engine, I/O, every pad, button, encoder, and even the display? That’s RNBO support on Move. It’s labeled “experimental alpha,” but I’ve been testing RNBO Takeover Mode on Move, and it’s already really usable. There’s even a lot you can do without patching at all, like running Robert Henke’s now-iconic Granulator III. Here’s a first look.

Pikimov 5.1.0 is now available as an offline app, bringing all the browser-powered video editing and motion graphics powers of this tool to a standalone tool — no internet connection required. The browser version is free forever; for offline capabilities, you need to pay $6 a month (no commitment). Pikimov is not free as in […]

Recent updates for the visual programming environment plugdata (a wrapped for Pure Data) and the powerful object library cyclone are keeping the goodness going. Whether you’re looking to do patching and development in a graphical tool or just enjoy the free stuff people are making with Pd, that’s great news.

Move Everything is a hack for Move that lets you run custom synths, effects, and controllers alongside stock Move functions. But the truly momentous development is that its creator has added screen reader support, which makes Move the first truly standalone groovebox open to blind and visually impaired users.

Prolific as always, Sebastian Tomczak (aka littlescale) just dropped this gem. What do you need nine times out of ten from an audio editor? Visualize, check levels, trim, gain, fade, reverse, normalize, export — now you can do all of that with one handy index.html file and any browser, free.

Enter an organic sound machine that will take you to an imagined sound world somewhere between a temple garden and a half-awake dream. ENDOGEN is a dazzling tool, built in Max and SuperCollider, that explores notions of lowercase synthesis. There’s a lot to cover as far as what it can do — but you should also feel empowered to play and get lost.

Digital preservation is the new challenge for synths, just as it is in areas like games. And the Roland JP-8000 got a big leg up with a free and open source release from The Usual Suspects available this month, the JE8086. It’s one of several recent emulations, so let’s talk about why the 1998 synth […]

In its bones, Eterna for monome norns returns to some of the original success of monome: doing imaginative, intuitive, musical things with slices. A single audio file transforms via 6-voice sampler/sequencer and 12-page interface into everything from delicate ambient textures to detailed grooves.