Audio Damage ShinRonin, now free, is a throwback to 2003 plug-in design

You wake up. It’s the year 2003. Some upstart software developer called Audio Damage wants to let you patch a combo filter-delay however you like, including ways that will break your ears. Ronin is reborn as ShinRonin, from a time when software developers let you run with scissors and do strange things. This is one […]

Pac-Man, Befaco RANDOM8, and more free modules of VCV Rack

Your sequencing gets upgraded — including cameos by Pac-Man and the LOGO turtle. You get even more secret weapons for drum synthesis. You get the hot new RANDOM8 collab from Befaco and Mylar Melodies, cloning their new hardware. There’s just so much goodness in VCV Rack that covering the free stuff has me dizzy. Here’s your June update, with some sound examples.

Peter Kirn - June 18, 2026

Make Noise and Tom Erbe have made a mighty morphing spatial Plexiphon

Soundhack creations endure years and decades, and now we get a new one. Think mighty morphing modeless modulation. Plexiphon is neither reverb or echo. It’s both, simultaneously, for spatial textural sounds you can shift fluidly. And in my quest to avoid being consumed by a sea of modules, this one just rose way up the list.

Peter Kirn - May 7, 2026

MSteppySnap for Ableton Live makes modulation playable, maleable

Peter Kirn - April 24, 2026

Absynth 6.1: Audio modulator, LFO retrigger, sound content, more

Peter Kirn - April 17, 2026

Intellijel made Swells a playable reverb with faders, rise, fall, ebb, and flow

Peter Kirn - April 14, 2026

Electro-Harmonix pedal classics are now available in plug-in form

Peter Kirn - March 31, 2026

Elastic OSC, Plaits as an instrument app, now supports Android, MPE

Peter Kirn - March 26, 2026

The developer of Tweakbench wants to remake the DAW without linear time

Peter Kirn - March 4, 2026