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Waves teased Cosmos a sample management tool comes with 2,500 free royalty-free one-shots and loops.

Waves Cosmos is a free sample management tool that organises all your loops and one-shots and then lets you search for the sound you are looking for.

Cosmos is designed to bring order to your sample collection, putting all the loops and one-shots on your hard drive into one easy-to-search place. Waves says that its Neural Networks technology can analyse, auto-tag and sort your samples, leaving you with a single unified database where you can easily find everything you have.

You can ‘see’ your samples in three different views: Waveform, List and Cosmos. All of your one-shots and loops can be filtered and searched by instrument, BPM, key and sonic characteristics, and WAV, AIFF, OGG and FLAC files are supported.

Once the analysis has been done, the theory is that (for example) you can then find a distorted kick drum simply by typing the words ‘distorted’ and ‘kick’ into the search bar, regardless of how your sounds are named. Files can be previewed within Cosmos, and then dragged and dropped into your sampler or DAW.

Cosmos runs as a standalone app and also integrates with Waves’ CR8 creative sampler plugin. You can download it now from the Waves website.

The new powerhouse MIDI step sequencer plugin breaks free from Ableton Live to work in other DAWs, as well. This is developed by Devicemeister, and was previously only available as a Max for Live device that runs in Ableton Live.

You may think you know what a step sequencer can do for your music-making, but a new StepicVST may be enough to make you think again.

StepicVST burrows deep down the step sequencing rabbit hole: it is polyphonic, and offers eight additional modulation sequencers for sound shaping. These can automate any parameters you fancy on your synth and effect plugins, and the fact that you can assign different tempos and sequence lengths should make polyrhythmic pattern creation a breeze.

And your sequences can be connected and stored in up to 16 patterns, and you can keep your grooves in key using the preset scale system. The chord editor, enables you to set individual chords for each step.

In addition, you can set the probability of each note playing, giving you an easy way to introduce variation, and there is a note repeat mode and more than 200 randomisation functions. Copying sequences between sections and patterns is said to be made easy thanks to the clipboard view.

StepicVST works by generating and then sending MIDI CC messages, and is confirmed to work with the likes of Logic Pro, Cubase, Bitwig Studio, Studio One and Reaper.

If you are Ableton Live user, Stepic for Live is still available.

StepicVST is available now as a VST/AU plugin for PC and Mac. It costs €39.

Find out more on the Devicemeister website.

Waldorf, the synth manufacturer has kicked off a teaser campaign by placing the words “Working. Under. Pressure.” This image has been released on the company social media platforms. And we assume is a new keyboard of some sort or it’s something else?

We do not have any detail at the moment but, the word ‘pressure’ is bound to lead to speculation that we could be looking at some kind of expressive keyboard, possibly compatible with MPE and offering polyphonic aftertouch. And this is something that has already been explored by ASM with its Hydrasynth.

Waldorf most recent release was the wavetablely M synth, and it has also won praise for several years for its Quantum and Iridium instruments.

Superbooth 2022 from 12 to 14 May is a possible launch platform but, it remains to be seen what the company is updating us next. Does Waldorf want to sustain a teaser campaign for that long?

Let’s keep an eye on the Waldorf website for more.