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Baby Audio’s new Beat Slammer plugin makes punchy, parallel compression easy and you can have it for free

Christmas is not just about eating, drinking and Santa. It’s also about free music software giveaways! And Baby Audio has just announced its regular seasonal freebie Beat Slammer, and it’s a Christmas cracker.

This year, Baby Audio isn’t alone in its plugin generosity; in fact it’s been a bumper year for Christmas plugin giveaways. We’ve had a free soundscaping instrument called Noctua from UVI, Native Instruments has given us its free Glaze plugin, Cherry Audio has its free SEM synth module, and Rhodes’ has given away its V-Pan vibrato effect. Like we said, that’s quite a line-up of software titles not to spend a dime on.

Baby Audio certainly has form in the plugin game. The developer has released some exceptional music production tools over the last few years, becoming one of the best out there, with titles that don’t look traditional but more often than not, sound stunning.

The company’s Taip plugin (above) uses machine learning to create incredible tape emulation sounds, while Crystalline is a fantastic algorithmic reverb. Baby Audio has even got into the synth game more recently with the wonderful BA-1, based on the cult Yamaha synth, the CS-01.

Baby Audio also has a lot of form in the free plugin sphere, regularly dropping free gifts at this time of year. Previous free releases include Magic Dice, Pitch Drift and Magic Switch, all of which you can still download from Baby Audio website by signing up to its newsletter.

This year, Baby Audio has dropped another festive freebie, and if you fancy slamming some beats this Christmas, this is the plugin for you. Beat Slammer is a compression plugin geared towards applying heavy dynamic control to drums and mix buses, giving you a “pumping and bouncy compression sound that slaps you in the face”.

We know Christmas can get a little rowdy, but we weren’t exactly banking on a slap in the face this festive season. Nonetheless, Beat Slammer looks like a superb tool for lending a super-squashed, impactful style of compression to any signal.

Based on the compression algorithm from Baby Audio’s paid-for IHNY-2, a plugin Baby Audio describes as “the industry’s hardest-hitting compressor”, Beat Slammer delivers the same punchy compression without the majority of IHNY-2’s controls.

Both plugins are parallel compressors, which means that you can take advantage of a technique where a heavily compressed ‘wet’ signal is blended with the original, uncompressed ‘dry’ signal to produce a hybrid sound that benefits from aspects of both.

While Beat Slammer lacks much of the tweakability of its bigger brother, it still features controls for the dry/wet mix and compression amount, which can be handily manipulated on a XY grid, alongside sliders for make-up gain and output level.

All you’ll need to do to access Beat Slammer (and several other free plugins) is sign up to the newsletter on Baby Audio website.

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“It’s the original synth on steroids”: GForce AXXESS, a vintage ARP AXXE emulation with a 21st century blade.

GForce delivering some big news to unwrap for Christmas. The company has announced its new soft synth, AXXESS. This is an emulation of a 1975 vintage synth, with 21st century extras, and very much the younger sibling of the company’s award-winning Oddity 3.

Vintage Synth describes the original 1975 ARP AXXE as ‘a budget-proof version of the popular Odyssey’ which we all agree with, because it could be seen as a single-oscillator version of that instrument.

Of course, GForce’s new version adds some solid, modern extras, all while retaining the original’s sonic character, a new/old balance the company has so brilliantly achieved with products like the award-winning Oddity 3 and Minimonsta2.

The original synth boasted a simple but classic oscillator/filter/amplifier left-to-right signal flow, and AXXESS retains that, but extra features mean you can either enjoy that original sound, or take it into completely new realms should you wish.

This is largely thanks to GForce’s X-Modifier technology, which adds dedicated LFOs and ADSRs to most of the synth’s parameters. This huge extra modulation potential means that “AXXESS is the AXXE sound on steroids”, according to GForce, but the extras don’t end there.

Other new features include a sub-oscillator, an arpeggiator and a 16-step sequencer (see screen above) plus effects in the form of distortion, stereo delay and reverb. There’s a Vintage knob to bring in more of the classic analogue imperfections we used to moan about back in the day, and a Pan Spread option for extra wide sounds.

There are 350 presets included, said to be ideal for synth-pop, dance, hip-hop, cinematic and prog rock, and programmed by the likes of Zardonic, GEOsynths, Christian Laffitte, Richard Veenstra and Ramon Kerstens (K/V).

GForce Axxess demo by Crazik:

AXXESS is available now with intro price of £33 + tax (normally £66 +tax). It’s available in standalone, AU, AAX, VST and VST3 formats, and you can get more info from the GForce website.

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A new free Rhodes plugin for you to download… but it’s not an electric piano. V-Pan pays homage to the iconic vibrato stereo panning effect and is free until the end of January.

It has become a bit of a tradition for developers to give us free music software during the festive season, but this year software industry are truly pampering us.

We’ve already mentioned about UVI’s free Noctua Cinematic Soundscape synthesizer, Native Instruments’ free Glaze plugin, and also Cherry Audio’s free SEM synth module. That’s your synths and vocals sorted for Christmas, then, so how about some classic stereo vibrato courtesy of Rhodes?

It’s been quite a year for the revamped Rhodes. The company is on a mission to deliver all sorts of classic electric piano goodness and announced its top-end MK8 a while back. But 2023 has seen it make significant ‘in-rhodes’, with a software version of the MK8 landing back in January.

This new V-Pan limited-time freebie is essentially the Vari-Pan section from Rhodes’ V-RACK multi-effects plug-in, and also emulates the Vari-Pan effect found on the hardware Rhodes MK8.

You can adjust V-Pan’s rate to create varied synth and ring mod effects. There’s a Depth control for added drama, and Waveform Slew and Smooth controls to customise the panning waveshape. A BPM Sync option keeps everything in check, so you can go wild with rhythmic effects.

V-Pan will cost $39.95/£29.95/€34.95 after 31 January, but until then you can grab it for free from the Rhodes website.

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