TDminator 2 adds a built-in 303-style bassline engine, allowing musicians to create and play acid patterns with or without a Behringer TD-3 connected.
discoDSP’s TDminator 2 is an iOS music app designed to program, edit, and perform patterns for Behringer’s TD-3 and TD-3-MO synthesizers.
Version 2.0 adds an internal bassline sound engine modeled on the TD-3-MO’s Devil Fish-style voice, turning the app into a standalone acid instrument as well as a hardware editor and sequencer.
Features:
The pattern editor uses a piano-roll-style grid that displays notes, accents, and slides alongside a 16-step sequence layout. Musicians can change notes and performance articulations while a pattern is playing, with edits taking effect on the next pass.
A random pattern generator creates 303-style acid lines using scale constraints, octave changes, groove density, accents, and glides. Tempo, step count, group, and section controls support variations for different patterns and song sections.
The new built-in bassline engine provides 13 programs and a hardware-style control panel with parameters including cutoff, resonance, envelope, decay, accent, tuning, waveform, and volume. Additional controls include accent decay, soft attack, slide time, filter FM, filter tracking, sweep speed, sub oscillator, overdrive, and muffler. This lets users create and audition acid basslines without connecting a physical TD-3.
A factory bank of 64 patterns provides ready-to-play material. MIDI Program Change messages or notes on MIDI channel 16 can select patterns, allowing a DAW or other MIDI source to switch sequences during a performance. Pattern changes made while playing wait for the current pattern to finish.
When connected to compatible TD-3 hardware, TDminator supports MIDI System Exclusive communication for editing and transferring patterns. Users can back up patterns from the synthesizer, send patterns to the device, import and export Synthtribe SQS banks, and export MIDI files for use in other sequencers.
TDminator operates as a standalone app or as an AUv3 plugin in compatible hosts such as AUM, GarageBand, Cubasis, and Logic. It can function as an instrument using its internal bassline engine or as a MIDI effect to control a TD-3 or another compatible synthesizer, with tempo and transport following the host.
TDminator 2.0 is available now for $9.99 USD for iPhone and iPad, and can also run on compatible Apple Silicon Macs. The US App Store lists it for $9.99.
AcusMagic’s Figura transforms incoming audio into real-time cymatic patterns, liquid waves, and three-dimensional curves for live performances and audiovisual production.
AcusMagic’s Figura is a new audio visualizer, available as a plugin and standalone application for macOS and Windows.
Rather than relying on generic animations that pulse to a beat, it analyzes the incoming audio and uses its frequency content to drive simulated physical models, creating visuals that change with the sound.
Musicians can use it to build custom visuals for synthesizer performances, electronic live sets, DJ performances, livestreams, and music videos.
Features:
Figura offers three visualization modes.
Sand simulates grains gathering along the still points of a vibrating plate, producing Chladni-style patterns.
Liquid generates Faraday-wave patterns, caustics, and reflections on a simulated liquid surface.
Lissajous traces the stereo signal as a three-dimensional curve that can be rotated and viewed from different angles.
In Sand and Liquid modes, Figura analyzes up to 32 prominent frequencies from the incoming audio to drive its visual simulation. Users can change the plate’s shape and physical properties, or adjust liquid characteristics such as viscosity and depth, producing different images from the same sound. Sand can be displayed with textured grains, a smoother classic appearance, or as ink-like nodal lines.
The Lissajous view represents the relationship between the left and right audio channels. Users can adjust the appearance of the curve, including its color, thickness, glow, and trail, and automate parameters from a compatible host. This makes it possible to arrange visual changes alongside synthesizer parts, transitions, and other events in a performance.
For live use, Figura Live provides a dedicated projection window that can be moved to a second monitor or projector and displayed full-screen. The visual continues running even when the main plugin editor is closed, allowing performers to send visuals to an audience-facing display while keeping their music software available for control.
Figura can also save still images as PNG files at resolutions up to 4096 × 4096 pixels and record performances as MP4 video with audio, with export options up to 4K at 30 or 60 frames per second. Recorded takes can be exported again at different sizes, making the software useful for creating performance footage and visual assets for music releases.
The standalone application can visualize audio from an input device without requiring a DAW. As an audio effect, Figura can be inserted on an individual synthesizer track, an instrument bus, or the master output. Its default settings leave the sound unchanged, allowing the visuals to respond to the music without altering the signal.
Figura is available for macOS 11 or later and 64-bit Windows 10 or 11. Figura Studio costs €59 and includes the visualization modes, plugin and standalone versions, and image and video export. Figura Live costs €75 and adds the dedicated projection window for a second display or projector. A free demo is available without an expiration date, allowing users to test the visualizer and projection feature before purchasing.
Behringer’s upcoming RD-765 combines vintage-inspired drum sounds with user sampling, analog filtering, and a feature-rich 64-step sequencer.
Behringer has introduced the RD-765 Rhythm Designer, a new hardware drum machine that brings together the sounds of several classic 1980s Roland drum boxes with sampling and updated sequencing and sound-mangling capabilities.
Rather than copying a single vintage instrument, the RD-765 features a collection of built-in drum sounds, along with the ability to record and tune user samples, shape individual voices with an analog filter, and build patterns using an extended sequencer.
Features:
The RD-765 includes a collection of built-in library of 176 drum sounds associated with classic rhythm machines.
The integrated sampling function allows users to record external audio and assign samples to individual instrument channels. Samples can be tuned across a range of two octaves in either direction, providing options for incorporating original percussion, found sounds, and other audio sources into drum patterns.
A dual-mode analog filter offers low-pass and high-pass operation. The filter can be assigned to individual voices, allowing users to shape selected parts of a kit rather than processing every sound in the same way. Filter cutoff movements can also be recorded into patterns.
The Wave Designer section provides attack shaping for adjusting the initial transient of a sound. This can be used to emphasize or soften the impact of kicks, snares, and other percussion.
A bitcrusher reduces sample bit depth to introduce digital distortion and lo-fi textures. Used alongside the filter and transient shaping, it gives users additional ways to modify the built-in sounds and recorded samples.
The sequencer supports patterns up to 64 steps, with both real-time and step-based programming. Swing, per-voice probability, and recorded filter movements provide additional ways to vary patterns and introduce movement into repeated parts.
Additional sequencing functions reported for the RD-765 include microtiming, flam, note repeat, and polymeter, allowing individual drum parts to use different pattern lengths. These features can support grooves that move beyond a conventional repeating pattern.
The hardware provides hands-on controls for working with its drum voices and patterns.
Connections include main stereo outputs, individual voice outputs, a sampling input, MIDI In/Out/Thru, USB, sync connections, and assignable trigger outputs. The connections support integration with external instruments, sequencers, mixers, and modular or semi-modular setups.
Behringer has listed the RD-765 drum machine, but an official price and release date are still to be announced.
