otophon is a plug-in to play tones inside your head

This one’s for the heads, literally. Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) are sounds produced by your ear, ghostly tones emitted from inside the cochlea itself. The phenomenon has been employed in experimental music (and medical applications), but it has been hard to explore on your own — until now.

VST is 30 years old, and Steinberg is giving away some of its earliest plugins

It’s the format that changed software music making forever: the VST plug-in format turns 30 this year. Steinberg is giving away updated versions of Neon, CS-40, Karlette, VB1, and LM7 — some of its earliest plug-ins — to celebrate. And that means you can run these vintage instruments (plus one tape delay) on your modern Mac or PC.

Peter Kirn - August 4, 2026

D16 PunchBox 2 is a surprisingly deep sequel to the brutal kick plug-in classic

D16’s kick plug-in PunchBox was already a legendary drum weapons development laboratory, full of layers of crunchy, cruel, wonderful sounds. The Polish developer isn’t messing with that formula, but they’ve packed more than just a few extras into the long-awaited V2 update. It’s just in time for us to work out any aggression with kicks.

Peter Kirn - June 29, 2026

Sequential Prophet-5 gets an official software remake by GForce — tested

Peter Kirn - June 16, 2026

Free: Minimal Audio Hybrid Filter, and some tips on how to use it

Peter Kirn - May 19, 2026

Spring cleaning: free up space by deleting duplicate plug-ins

Peter Kirn - April 27, 2026

Free emulations of 80s Alesis MIDIVERB II, MicroVerb, in plug-in form

Peter Kirn - April 27, 2026

Find whole worlds inside samples: Baby Audio Grainferno deep dive

Peter Kirn - March 11, 2026

Poly Flanger: a guide to Minimal Audio’s new tunable 8-voice FX

Peter Kirn - February 18, 2026