Software Effects

The perennially entertaining McDSP has gotten their stuff together all in one package -- the Emerald Pack 3.0. Featuring three new plugins (a de-esser, a lo-fi distortion and a hi-res filter), this bundle of joy will make any producer happy.  

de la Mancha releases sfilter, adding more and more plugins to their catalog at a rapid pace. It's adept at making gating, sweeps or rhythmic modulation of filter cut-off with an LFO for further modulations.  

Algorithmix releases K-Stereo, a plugin that they refer to as an ambience recovery processor. It's methods rely on a psychoacoustical process that renowned mastering engineer Bob Katz developed and patented.  

De la Mancha's dirtbox 3 audio plugin gives your tracks a figurative shower in rewind. If you want your tracks to sound like they just dug themselves out of their graves like an apocalyptic crop of sonic zombies, this is where it's at.  

The Eiosis E2Transienter might get insulted if you call it a transient designer. In truth, it is a much more versatile application that can perform multiple effectual functions on your attacks and non-attacks  

Clear Complex might sound like it makes skin products, but their first product, Transistor, proves otherwise. I'll never get rid of this adult onset acne.  

For the frugal producer, NUSofting's Groove Analogizer drops the $29.00 price tag and emerges anew as freeware. It's a pretty nifty program to check out, synthesizing a groove from source audio material instead of MIDI.  

TC Electronic has some good news for people who use Pro Tools|HD systems. Their new Tube-Tech CL 1B plugin is out and ready to emulate some fine analog compression.  

If you ask me, and by logging onto Gearwire you implicitly did, the world needs another VST plugin effect like it needs another morning rush-hour radio personality tag-team. That said, at prices like $10 and FREE, why the hell wouldn't you download SPC Plugins' new Wobulator and Gater units.  

PSPaudioware has taken five of their plugins and rounded them up into MixPack2. With a myriad of tools at your disposal including their brand new MixGate2, PSP has got you covered.  

Schwa, makers of the Olga software synthesizer, announces Oligarc, a collection of effects that will work in pretty much any host application you have. Don't worry. They've kept their Soviet lettering in tact.  

Sonnox's Oxford SuprEsser takes the process of De-Essing to an intuitive level. While it offers a Dynamic EQ just as well, the heart of SuprEsser is its no-nonsense elimination of frequencies that are up to no good.  

As Blind Melon preached before their lead singer overdosed on cocaine, "Three is the magic number." Blue Cat Audio takes that to heart with the releases of Stereo Triple EQ and Widening Triple EQ.  

Antares announces the release of AVOX 2, bringing more vocal plugin tools to your editing setup. The included functions can really stretch the capabilities of the human voice beyond its limits or simply fine tune subtle imperfections.  

For that old tape machine or classic analog synth sound, de la Mancha releases unstable. Users can bend pitch a little bit or break it into pieces by hitting the "insane" switch.  

Registered users of Native Instruments GUITAR RIG 3 are treated to a free to download update. Improved algorithms in GUITAR RIG 3.1 mean more gain with less noise.  

Engineer, producer and recording artist Flavio Maspoli of Zurich-based Merge of Equals discusses his studio and his ideas on recording.  

Due to the popularity of Waves' GTR series of modeling software, Waves releases GTR Solo. A more compact version of GTR software, Solo gives guitarists high-quality essentials that still offer a decent tonal selection.  

Audiffex announces their inTone series kicks off with inTone | Guitar. It'll be joined by inTone | Bass, inTone | Keys, inTone | Matrix and a number of dizzying capitalizations and punctuations that are kind of making my stomach turn.  

VirSyn releases TDESIGN, a no-nonsense Transient Designer that won't try to wine and dine you with quirks. Instead, you get powerful control over attack and sustain, plus a dynamically controlled lowpass filter for kicks.  

TC Electronic brings their new TapFactory delay / reverb hybrid plug-in to Musikmesse. It promises to deliver some sounds foreign to this blue and green rock we use to float through space.  

Version 2 of Celemony's Melodyne pitch correction software will be greatly enhanced with Direct Note Access. This enables individual notes within polyphonic chords to be accessed for tweaking, re-tuning and more direct control over every aspect of your polyphonic audio.  

zplane.development announces that version 2.0 of their Elastique time stretching and pitch shifting software is ready for show at MusikMesse. If the trade show is a success, zplane plans on stretching it past the original end date of March 15th.  

For those of us who love to do extreme tweaking during a live PA, Oli Larkin has developed yet another Max-developed tool. Get ready to effect like you've never effected before.  

Sugar Bytes Effectrix is to a plug-in what a Swiss Army knife would be to MacGuyver. Basically, users have a myriad of stunning effects that can be versatilely used in a range of applications from live performance to soundscape creation, every artist's secret aspiration.  

Numerical Sound releases Hollywood Impulse Responses, a collection of 600 reverberation impulses designed to give your tracks big, dramatic feel. The sounds result from the study of blockbuster films released over the past 30 years where the scores really evoked and played up certain emotions.  

Ask Angus Young -- all you need to know to write a song on guitar is three chords. In this video, Bill Holland tops that with a fourth chord, throws in some plug-in effects and demonstrates how to spice up simple strumming.  

VirSyn updates their REFLECT reverb plug-in to version 1.3. The new update makes REFLECT VST3 compatible and adds surround sound capabilities.  

Wave Arts TrackPlug LE is another one of the fine plug-ins that is included with the PreSonus FireStudio Project. Gearwire's Bill Holland overviews this equalization plug-in in this video.  

The Voxengo VariSaturator combines a valve saturator and their VariSaturator for boosted loudness with harmonic coloration.