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Moon Bounce Simulator

A free new plugin from AudioThing and electronic musician and Youtuber Hainbach captures the sound of “moon bouncing”, a technique in which sounds are transmitted into space via radio telescope, bounced off the moon and captured on their return, only to be warped by the process.

In the video above, Hainbach visits the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands and experiments with moon bouncing, reflecting the sound of a soprano vocalist and double bassist off the moon to create a spooky, lo-fi-sounding delay effect coloured with some interesting sonic artifacts.

In collaboration with AudioThing, Hainbach used these recordings to develop a free delay plugin that recreates the effect produced by moon bouncing, producing “crunchy and lively” echoes that sound as if they’ve been reflected off the moon’s cratered surface.

Like any other delay plugin, Moon Echo offers controls for delay time and feedback, along with a few controls you probably won’t recognize. Tweak the Doppler dial to introduce a modelled Doppler effect, which mimics the changes in frequency produced by the difference between the earth and moon’s movement as the delay returns to earth, like the pitch change heard when a vehicle sounding a horn approaches and recedes from a listener.

Moon Echo has accurately modelled the sound of the moon-bouncing process, right down to the specific types of noise introduced by the vintage radio equipment, which can be dialled in via the Moon Dust control.

Use Moon Echo in Duplex mode, and it’ll act like a conventional delay, but switch over to Simplex mode and you can recreate the unidirectional transmission Hainbach experimented with at the Dwingeloo Observatory, hearing a single copy of your transmission bounced back to you. Hit Ping Moon and the plugin will even pull accurate data from NASA regarding the moon’s distance and use this to adjust the delay time – pretty neat.

Moon Echo is available free for macOS, Windows and Linux in VST/AU/AUv3/AAX/CLAP formats.

Download the plugin at AudioThing website.

Muse Group has announced upgrades to Muse Hub and Audacity, making it easier for users to preview and use new sounds, loops and FX plug-ins. As before, both of these are free to download.

Audacity 3.6 has been given a visual refresh, and the software also gets a new master channel. New compressor and limiter effects have been added for you to put across it. We are informed to expect more “major improvements and features” in the upcoming Audacity 4.

Muse Hub has partnered with developers — including Solid State Logic, Baby Audio, ACE Studio, WavTool and others – to offer a variety of production tools, including:

• Standalone Apps: From accessible Muse Group favorites to AI music composition and podcast production tools. These include apps that transform MIDI into vocal parts or split recorded samples into MIDI stems for projects.
• Plug-ins: Compatible with Audacity or any third-party DAW, Muse Hub plug-ins range from virtual instruments to easily-tweaked effects.
• Muse Sounds: Designed for effortless, beautiful playback within notation apps MuseScore Studio, find unique editions of prestigious sample libraries from iconic sound designers Spitfire Audio, Orchestral Tools, Vienna Symphonic Library and more.
• Loops & Samples: Royalty-free and ready-made samples, sound effects, tracks and kits to drop directly into productions to create instant hits.

New apps in the updated Muse Hub include Ace Studio, Samplab and WavTool, all of which are powered by AI.

Ace Studio enables you to automatically turn MIDI and lyrics into a complete vocal track, which sounds impressive, while Samplab can change an audio sample’s key or break apart the stems.

WavTool is an “AI-powered DAW” that can generate audio and separate stems. It also comes with a library of presets.

On the plugin side, Muse Group’s own AmpKit guitar amp//effects studio is now part of the Muse Hub, and Baby Audio’s Crystalline has also been added. The inclusion of SSL’s VocalStrip2 also catches the eye.

Finally, there are new sounds: a special edition of Spitfire Audio’s Symphony Collection, cinematic sounds from Cinesamples and orchestral ensembles and soloists from Orchestral Tools.

Audacity 3.6 has also been updated to support the Muse Hub changes.

In addition to a long-awaited visual refresh, the free desktop app now includes a new master channel for adding production and effects to tracks.

Both Muse Hub and Audacity are both available now as free downloads.

Find out more about all of these products and more on the Muse Group website.

Developer Geert Bevin (Moog Music, LinnStrument, the MPE Specification) has released a new tool, ShowMIDI 1.0.0, that turns MIDI information into beautiful and easy to understand visuals.

Most MIDI tools display the protocol’s messages as essentially a ‘firehose’ of data, which can make it challenging to understand. ShowMIDI parses and visualizes the data, translating the stream of details into concise charts and visualizations that make it much easier to understand.

“Instead of wading through logs of MIDI messages to correlate relevant ones and identify what is happening, ShowMIDI visualizes the current activity and hides what you don’t care about anymore,” explains Bevin. “It provides you with a real-time, glanceable view of all MIDI activity on your computer.”

Best of, it’s free and available now for iOS, Linux, Mac + Windows.

ShowMIDI is designed to be always on. Using the spacebar or play/pause button, you can pause the flow and focus on a data snapshot with the latest state of any MIDI entity.

ShowMIDI can be run as a standalone application that automatically detects all your MIDI devices, or as an AUv3 plugin in your DAW or host to visualize MIDI data in your sessions.

ShowMIDI visualizes:

• MIDI ports
• channels
• program change
• note on/off
• channel pressure
• polyphonic pressure
• continuous control change
• pitchbend
• RPN and NRPN
• MPE configuration and channel modes

In addition to being free, ShowMIDI is available as open source via Github.