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GForce Software delivers another dose of seductive ‘70s sounds with Virtual String Machine 4, ‘the perfect solution for creating the sound bed of your next track’. So, prepare to be beguiled by these classic instruments all over again.

GForce Software is back with another update to one of its existing synths – version IV of VSM (AKA Virtual String Machine 4) – which it’s calling “the perfect solution for creating the sound bed of your next track.”

This features sounds from 46 classic string machines, including models from the likes of Solina, Elka, Logan and Korg. This is significantly more than the 17 that VSM started with in version 1, and you can create hybrid patches thanks to the twin layer architecture. You get in excess of 1,900 presets, more than 200 of which are new, and 11.5GB-plus of sample data.

In addition, there are new features – a fully scalable UI and new patch and instrument browsers that are designed to make it easier for you to find the sound you’re looking for. Undo, redo, copy and paste functions are included.

Alongside these practical enhancements, you’ll find new ways to shape your sounds: wow and flutter; an alternative state-variable filter and ensemble effect; new LFO shaping possibilities; a chorus; and a matrix reverb. The poly aftertouch and velocity controls have been expanded, too, for even greater levels of expression.

VSM IV runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats, and has an introductory price of £84. The regular price will be £120. Find out more on the GForce Software website.

Forever 89, the new company from Teenage Engineering and Ableton alumni, has released Visco, a flexible sample-modelling drum machine.

Having teased it earlier this year, former Teenage Engineering and Ableton staffers Svante Stadler and Rikard Jönsson – now operating as a new company called Forever 89 – have released their first product, a sample-modelling drum machine known as Visco.

This is designed for “fluid and fast transformations of any drum sound,” and can model any sample you feed it. As such, it promises to “free you from the usual limitations of working with recorded audio.”

Whichever method you use to design your drum sounds – sampling or synthesis – there are pros and cons, but Visco is designed to give you the benefits of both. We’re promised the speed that comes with using existing audio, plus an easy workflow that simplifies the synthesising process.

This is thanks to the blob, a malleable 2D representation of your sound that appears in the middle of Visco’s interface. This can be grabbed, pushed and pulled using a variety of tools, giving you a tactile, intuitive way of making realtime tweaks.

Thanks to the blob, you can bend and stretch samples across frequency and time, merge the qualities of two samples and fine-tune your sounds to fit your mix. Every sound can use a mixture of two samples, and as well as blending them, you can also create sounds that start with one sample and end with the other.

Visco isn’t just a drum sound designer, though – it also enables you to sequence its eight voices, and has its own beat generator to provide instant inspiration. There’s a mixer and effects section, plus a set of performance-friendly macro controls that are designed for live use. Don’t worry if you don’t want to use your own samples, either, as a preset and sound library is also included.

Forever 89 describes Visco as “a novel, capable, and playful way to engage with creative sound design and performance to make your music sound more like you.”

Visco is available now for the introductory price of €99 (regular price €139) and runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU formats. Find out more on the Forever 89 website.

Native Instruments’ Pro-53 synth returns for free as Pro-54, but only in your web browser.

Much to fans’ disappointment, Pro-53 was one of a long list of products that Native Instruments discontinued in 2020, but those who’ve been hoping that this Prophet-5 synth emulation plugin might return have new hope thanks to the release of Pro-54.

The good news is that this is free and open-source but, at the moment, you can only use it in your web browser.

This new port is programmed in Cmajor, a language that’s designed “for writing fast, portable audio software”. The Cmajor project was started in 2021 by Julian Storer and Cesare Ferrari in collaboration with Native Instruments. NI has been using it in its “production code” since 2023.

Storer has serious pedigree in the music software industry, having previously created both the Tracktion DAW and JUCE, a cross-platform audio app development framework. Cesare Ferrari previously worked at ROLI.

Together, the two men founded Sound Stacks, a company that fell under the Soundwide umbrella brand that has since been replaced with the Native Instruments name. Their brief here was to “drive development of new audio platform technologies for improving productivity and performance for developers” but it seems that the two are now focusing on their Cmajor endeavours.

Apparently, Pro-54 has been created with NI’s blessing, though; it’s a direct port of a “never-released” internal C++ port of the original synth, and has a GUI that was recreated in HTML/javascript using “mostly salvaged low-res bitmaps for that authentically vintage feel”.

For fans of the 2002 original – and anyone who loves the juicy sound of the Prophet-5 – it’s fun to be able to play it again in your browser, and programming types can check out the source code, as well.

Will we ever see a Pro-54 plugin, though? The Cmajor homepage says that any Cmajor ‘patch’ (of which the Pro-54 is an example) can be converted to a native C++ JUCE project and then compiled into any audio plugin format you like, so a VST/AU/AAX version is technically possible.

We’re told that native support for Cmajor patches themselves could soon be coming to a DAW near you. Tracktion Waveform is confirmed to be getting this soon, and Storer and Ferrari hope that others will follow in due course.

For now, though, you can play the Pro-54 for free on the Cmajor website. Other patch examples on there include an electric piano, an 808 and the CompuFart.