Big Man Labs has released Bigulator, a circuit-level model of an obscure analog mastering clipper taken off the schematic and fitted to measurements of the unit. The original is a VCA driven at audio rate by a peak-skimming rectifier. There is no detector, so the shape of the waveform is doing all the work. Big…

Mutagene has released 1.0.0-beta.1 of Xoradora, a resynthesising drum machine that analyses and then resynthesises each drum (or other) sample using one of 7 parametric models for high flexility in timbral flexibility. For everything from subtle timbral variations to extreme FSU, the sampler builds on an old warped lattice stack but with a lot of…

rncbc.org has announced the (northern) Late-Summer’26 release of Qtractor version 1.6.3, and the Vee One Suite version 1.4.3 of old-school software instruments, for GNU/Linux. Changes for this Qtractor release: Fix incorrect audio clip offset after tempo change and Automatic time-stretching is in effect. VST3 Plug-ins: make sure initialization and setup are done in correct order;…

ukdf has announced the release of GrainCharlie, a free granular synthesizer plugin. For about a year, we were looking for an affordable granular synthesizer that didn’t have anything unnecessary. We wanted a tool that could be opened and used immediately — something intuitive that would let musicians focus on making music instead of reading manuals….

The story of The Gallery in Leeds, from Coconut Grove and Ricky’s to Steve Luigi, rave, Sasha, Utah Saints and the venue’s rebirth as The Pleasure Rooms. Read the full story

Initial Audio has released Difro Melody AI, a standalone AI melody generator that runs entirely on the user’s machine. Unlike cloud MIDI tools that send notes to a remote API, Difro uses a local VAE + Transformer model to generate and re-imagine MIDI in real time on CPU, or on GPU when a compatible card…

Benjamin Guerrero has updated Sympiano, the free sympathetic string resonance reverb that turns the inside of a piano into an effect, to version 1.0.4. This is a bug-fix and compatibility release that improves how it behaves across DAWs and hosts on both macOS and Windows. Offline bounces now capture the full reverb tail instead of…

Golden DSP has released Silkbrush Reverb, a ducking reverb plugin for macOS and Windows, priced at $39 during launch. Silkbrush is designed for vocals and other lead sounds that need ambiance without being pushed back by the reverb tail. It combines a modulated hall-style reverb with built-in ducking, so you do not need a separate…