Manifest Audio has released Sonification Tools v3, a bundle that turns real-world data into music. It contains three plugins, Data Path, Data Synth, and Data FX, available as AU, VST3, and CLAP for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It also includes Data Map, an Ableton Live Extension, and Data Tap Pro for iPhone. Sonification Tools v3 follows Manifest Audio’s previous Max for Live Sonification Tools (a 2024 MIDI Innovation Awards finalist) and now runs in any major DAW for the first time.
Along with many other new and novel features, each plugin fetches data itself without ever leaving the DAW. Built-in data sources include weather, ocean, space, biodiversity, economics, sustainability, and much more – all as a raw source for creative expression. The plugins also transform spreadsheets, images, text, audio, video, typed numbers, and hand-drawn shapes into sequences, waveforms, modal banks, and more. They also come with 47 generative math algorithms to explore raw mathematical data as creative material for synthesis, sequencing, modulation, and processing.
Data Synth
Data Synth is a 16-voice, MPE-enabled synthesizer with four data slots. Its four oscillators each read a data slot as one cycle of a waveform or as an additive partial bank, both with a wealth of cross-modulation options. The same data can be used to drive its four dynamic LFO modulators or the built-in polyphonic sequencer.
Data FX
Data FX applies data to processing across four data effect slots, each one of seven types: convolution, granulator, multi-tap delay, resonator bank, spectral filter, spectral morph, and wavefolding distortion. Data sets a resonator bank’s tuning, a granulator’s spread, a delay’s tap pattern or a spectral filter’s mask, while data-driven modulation and four additional global effect slots add further dimensionality.
Data Path
Data Path plays a data set as a host-synced MIDI sequence, shaping pitch, velocity, note length, probability, and rhythm, with built-in Euclidean and count-based pattern options. It supports Scala microtuning over MPE and generates up to eight polyphonic voices. It can also send the data out as OSC and MIDI CC.
Data Map
Data Map is an Ableton Live Extension that transforms or generates MIDI or audio directly in Live, with a variety of unique processing algorithms. It requires the latest beta of Ableton Live 12 Suite, currently 12.4.15 beta or later.
Data Tap Pro
Data Tap Pro sends an iPhone’s sensors to Data Path and Data Synth over OSC: motion, touch, proximity, the microphone, the camera, hand pose, face tracking, depth, and GPS. A free version is available now with limited features, but the Pro version is included with the full Sonification Tools Bundle.
Pricing & Availability
For accessibility, all three plugins can be operated with a screen reader. Data Path, Data Synth, and Data FX all offer a demo mode that can be trialed for free. The bundle also comes with Max for Live VST Wrappers, Push 3 Standalone devices, and a Modulator to harness the OSC emitted by all the plugins as modulation data to control any parameter in Live.
The Sonification Tools v3 Bundle is available now at the introductory price of $169 until November 8, 2026, with each plugin also sold individually on sale too. Upgrade pricing is available for owners of Sonification Tools v2.
Requirements: macOS 11 or later, Windows 10 or later, or 64-bit x86 Linux with glibc 2.35 or later. Data Tap requires iOS 15 or later.
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