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Open your mind, because Recluse Audio has made all of its plugins available for free: “What is frequency? What is pitch? What is rhythm? They’re kind of the same thing”

Recluse Audio has sprung best surprise by making all of its plugins available for free so, indulge your experimental side with the Stockhausen-inspired Pulsar 2.0, and download free reverb and flanger effects and a simple sampler, as well.

Pulsar 2.0 is the pick of the bunch, an experimental noise maker that promises “the highest level of spectral precision that synthesis can offer”.

Said to offer “all the transcendental tools of Curtis Roads, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many more,” it is probably best if you watch the explanation video above to understand how this works.

“We’re going through the waves of time to that scientific, instantaneous moment,” says the developer. “This is why I think it has to do with free will… nature around us being the wave that pushes us in the directions, the frequency of the fundamental, but the formant is the characteristic of the individual.”

Ultimately, we’re asked: “What is frequency? What is pitch? What is rhythm? They’re kind of the same thing.”

Pulsar 2.0 looks like a lot of fun, and the original Pulsar is also still available.

Other plugins on the Recluse roster include the Reflections reverb/delay, a Flanger and Rompler, a simple sampler that enables you to drag and drop audio files onto its interface and tweak them with ADSR envelope controls. The Auto Visualizer Max4Live device is now free, too.

You can do your downloading over on the Recluse Audio website.

Sonible’s AI-powered smart:gate plugin promises to trump its rivals by being ‘content-aware’. You can choose what kind of material you want it to target.

Sonible has expanded its range of smart, AI-powered plugins with the release of a gate. Unlike similar processors, which are triggered purely by input level, this is content-aware, and comes with a wide range of instrument and sound profiles.

These can be selected from a drop-down menu, and cover the likes of vocals, electric guitar and piano. The result, is a gate that delivers even if the target source varies in level, or if a competing signal is louder than the one you want to keep.

The level of the detected target signal is displayed in smart:gate’s visualiser, which should aid parameter tweaking. The Instant Replay feature predicts the impact on the entire signal when those tweaks are made.

You can turn off the content awareness and use the plugin as a standard gate if you wish, in addition there’s a content-aware ducking mode that will reduce the selected target signal. The gating can be tailored across the frequency spectrum using the three-band suppression control.

smart:gate runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats and is available now for the introductory price of €89 (as of 21 August the price will be €129). Find out more and download a demo on the Sonible website.

Expressive E have updated Imagine, their “acoustics-infused software synth”.

The update includes native compatibility with Silicon Macs (M1, M2…) and adds 40 new presets and instrument layers.

Along with this update, they’ve released 2 expansions. Dusk is focused on film scoring duties, while Nightdream is dedicated to EDM/Trap sounds.

Find out details on the Expressive E website.