Developer Oliver Greschke (MoMinstruments) built an AUv3 iOS synth around the DSP from Emilie Gillet’s legendary open-source Mutable Instruments Plaits VCO. Elastic OSC gives you unique touch-based controls, plus new features that let you use Plaits’ sound palette as a complete mono/polyphonic instrument.

Unity offers a powerful alternative to Unreal Engine for artists, with some unique features and broader device support, including the Web. And while pricing caused some heated discussions a while back, the important thing to know is that students, personal users, and educators can all use Unity for free. So let’s check in with Unity, which has just branched into stable and latest-and-greatest branches with Unity 6.1. Here’s what’s new.

Nasko, the prolific and imaginative software developer, is back with a new one – and it’s completely free, running in Plug Data (Pd) on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s a convolution-based spectrum disperser. Say what? Well, you get a powerful, precise, fairly rare method for generating impulse responses for convolution tools, like Kilohearts Convolution (now on sale), the one just added to Serum 2, and more. Or just play it live, because that also sounds kind of awesome.

Naarm/Melbourne’s own Nitecaller is making dreamy sounds- and now has the home-built dreamy synth to match. Meet the T-16 semi-modular synth, recreating and expanding on the analog circuits of classic ARPs, built by Nitecaller and his brother.

No collection of DSP models for work, pleasure, and creative abuse would be complete without the Chowdbury DSP collection. You might know about the plug-in, but it’s also worth noting that these are available in VCV Rack and Cardinal, where you can patch them at will.

Pigments 6 is available now. With a new synth engine, a vocoder, and expanded filters, modulation, and granular capabilities, Arturia’s sound design playset is deeper than ever. But it’s never overwhelming, and this release is the most refined yet. Here’s a review.

It’s “yo dawg”/Inception time to the max. Not to be outdone by 4ms MetaModule, Autodafe has put all of VCV Rack (specifically its Cardinal fork) into a Eurorack module. Along the way, you’ll learn how to set up Cardinal on Raspberry Pi for any hardware project you might imagine.

It’s what VCV Rack users have been waiting for. Instruō has Apple Silicon-native support for its software module clones, plus, for all platforms, the cèis envelope generator and powerful øchd modulation expander. And it’s all freeware.

There’s a critical new feature in Ableton Live 12.1 if you’ve been frustrated in the past by tracks recorded with unwanted lag.

From full free and open-source software to proprietary favorites from other platforms, the plug-in options on Linux have quietly come into their own. linuxdaw.org has a visual, searchable catalog – and it’s a reminder of just how spoiled for choice you are even without Windows or macOS.