Ableton Certified Trainer Madeleine Bloom has released the Sonic Bloom Drift Live Pack, featuring 64 new presets for the Drift synthesizer in Ableton Live 11:
“Sonic Bloom Drift contains 64 carefully designed presets and Instrument Racks for the versatile Drift synth. It covers a wide range of sounds from bass, leads, pads, to experimental. “
Sinevibes has released four new effect plugins for Korg Prologue, Minilogue XD and NTS-1 synths: Hollow, Isomer, Luminance and Vibrant.
Hollow is billed as a ‘space reverb’. It features a feedback delay network comprising up to 64 connections and promises a “lush, almost three-dimensional sound.” Tail times can reach 120 seconds with all settings maxed out, and there’s unison-style modulation via three phase-shifted sine oscillators.
Isomer is an ensemble delay. There are two main stereo delays that feed into four additional ones – these have their own individual feedback lines and can have their times modulated by four separate LFO signals.
Luminance is another reverb, this time of the ‘shimmer’ variety. Its tail gradually pitchshifts itself upwards or downwards, and the plugin is based on a feedback delay network which incorporates a granular pitch shifter and chorus-style time modulation. Luminance follows the musical content you feed it, so you can use it to create a background sound layer of string- or organ-style ambience.
Lastly, Vibrant, a classic analogue-style phaser that connects six two-pole all-pass filters in series and has a global feedback loop. This produces three deep notches in the incoming audio’s spectrum, and there’s a built-in triangle LFO that sweeps the centre frequency between 800 and 3200Hz (exactly two octaves)
Hollow, Isomer, Luminance and Vibrant cost $19 each, and are also available in a bundle of all 21 of Sinevibes’ Korg effects. This costs $229, which is 43% cheaper than the cost of buying them all separately.
Cherry Audio brings back The Cat to Plugin version.
The Cat came back – Cherry Audio gets its claws into a ‘70s synth classic as it releases a plugin emulation.
Released in 1976, the Octave Electronics Cat was a biting analogue synth in the vein of the Arp Odyssey, but came at a significantly lower price. Now Cherry Audio has collaborated with Carmine Bonanno, the instrument’s original designer, to release a plugin version, Octave Cat.
The software emulation replicates the Cat’s dual-oscillator design, and also brings you its aggressive resonant filter, flexible modulation system, oscillator cross-mod and oscillator sync. Enhancements include expanded 16-voice polyphony – the original was duophonic – sample and hold glide, built-in effects and a dual-step sequencer.
You also get MPE support, more than 300 presets and extensive MIDI mapping features. There’s more than one way to skin this Cat, as well: you can make it look like either the Mark 1 or SRM version of the hardware.
Carmine Bonanno says that, as well as sounding just as good as his original synth, the new plugin “goes way beyond what a hardware CAT is capable of.” Explaining further, he adds that “on a hardware Cat, you can’t save a patch, you can’t control modulation with an external MIDI controller, you don’t have full polyphony, etc.” Cherry Audio’s enhancements, he believes, make the plugin “incredibly more versatile than a hardware Cat.”
The Octave Cat plugin runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats and is available now priced at $49 (regular price will be $69) and a free 30-day demo is available. Find out more on the Cherry Audio website.
