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Universal Audio is renowned for its well-regarded software emulations of vintage studio gear.

Today, Universal Audio is giving the $199 PolyMAX synth plugin away for free – but not for long.

Launched back in 2022, Universal Audio’s PolyMAX synth isn’t based on a single instrument, but instead draws broader inspiration from the “golden age of polysynthesis”, an era that brought us iconic synths like the Jupiter-8, OB-X and Prophet-5. Until now, PolyMAX has been priced at $199, but Universal Audio must be in a particularly generous mood, as they’re giving it away for free until June 30.

Universal Audio says that PolyMAX delivers the “organic, subtle beauty and musicality of classic analogue polyphonic synthesizers”, cherrypicking features, circuits and sounds from the developers’ favourite vintage instruments and “mixing, matching and modelling” these to create a “modern synth with retro roots”.

PolyMAX has a classic subtractive architecture: its dual analogue-modelled oscillators are equipped with continuously variable waveforms spanning triangle, sawtooth, square and pulse waves, and it has linear FM and osc sync, along with a noise oscillator.

PolyMAX’s resonant filter has low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and notch modes, giving you a choice between 4-pole and 2-pole slopes, while its mod envelope and tempo-syncable LFO can be used to modulate pitch, filter cutoff, FM amount and sync amount.

The synth features a healthy selection of effects: two effects slots provide a choice of phaser, flanger and chorus, along with delay and two types of reverb, including the “Hall B” algorithm from UA’s Lexicon 224 emulation. There’s also a multimode arpeggiator onboard.

It’s a solid, straightforward poly with a pleasantly intuitive interface that makes designing basic patches quick and relatively easy. If there’s space in your digital studio for another vintage-inspired subtractive synth, this one’s worth a download.

Find out more on the Universal Audio website.

Fender has announced Fender Studio, a new beginner-friendly recording app that you’ll be able to download for free. Available on Mac, PC, iOS, Android and Linux, key features include one-tap recording, Fender amp models and effects and editable Jam Tracks.

Fender Studio is the product, Fender CEO Andy Mooney’s desire to have an app that you can record into with a single action. In fact, there’s literally a big red button there as soon as you open it: click/tap this and, providing your device’s mic is enabled or your guitar is hooked up via a compatible audio interface, your playing will immediately be recorded.

“I’ve always said to the team, anyone should be able to just hit a single button on their phone and be able to start recording,” says Mooney now. “We’ve built exactly that. We believe Fender Studio will enable more music creation than ever before by serving the needs of today’s creators and that will drive sustained growth for our company and our industry. I’m proud of what the team has created and can’t wait to hear what gets recorded in Fender Studio.”

Once you’ve registered the app for free using your Fender Connect account details you get six additional amps and effects, too.

And then there are those Jam Tracks for you to play along with. These 20 multitrack audio sessions come in a range of styles, and each part can be transposed, muted, soloed, sped-up or slowed-down.

The maximum number of tracks you can record is 16 (you get eight when you download and eight more when you register), and there’s no mention of MIDI or plugin support. As such, the only effects you have are the built-in Compressor, EQ, Reverb, Delay, De-Tuner, Transformer, Ring Modulator and Vocoder devices.

With full support on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, Fender Studio works seamlessly on everything from iPhones and Chromebooks to PCs, Macs, and more.

Find out more on the Fender site

Developer Dr Schlange has introduced Nallely, a MIDI companion, designed to help you map MIDI controllers/instruments together, create/use virtual devices (LFOs, EGs) and more.

“About a month ago, I started writing a small Python abstraction to control my Korg NTS-1 via MIDI, with the goal of connecting it to any MIDI controller without having to reconfigure the controller,” notes Schlange. Things quickly got out of hand. I began extending the system to introduce virtual devices—LFOs, envelopes, etc, which could be mapped to any MIDI-exposed parameter on any physical or virtual device. That meant I could route MIDI to MIDI, Virtual to MIDI, MIDI to Virtual, and even Virtual to Virtual. Basically, everything became patchable.”

“It’s now turning into a kind of organic meta-synthesis platform—designed for complex MIDI routing, live-coding, modular sound shaping, and realtime visuals. “

Features:

• Programmatic seemless API to your MIDI Device
• Vvirtual devices (LFOs for example) you can connect to your MIDI devices (as source or target)
• “Introspective API” for auto-adaptive virtual modules
• Links are formally defined and are entities of the domain
• “Bouncy links”: links can trigger target port associated link to have reaction chains
• Python API code generator for your device if it is listed by the MIDI CC & NRPN database project
• Bind/unbind control/pad/key of your MIDI devices between each other or virtual devices, converting the CC between source and target if required
• Bind/unbind the velocity of the pad/key of your MIDI devices to any CC control
• Bind/unbind pad/key individualy to any control, note, parameter of MIDI devices or virtual devices
• Bind/unbind a key/pad to another one (even if not the same note, you can map a note to its octave on the same device or another one)
• Scaler for the values that goes from a source to a target: you can restrict the range of values that will be sent to the target,
• Auto-scaling: if you want the source to adapt to the range of the target without setting the range yourself
• Websocket-based bus on which external services can auto-register and expose parameters to which you can bind your MIDI/virtual devices in a seemless way
• LFOs composition with mathematical expressions
• Envelope Generator
• A web interface relying on a websocket protocol (named Trevor) which allows you to do graphically what you would ask Nallely to do in normal time (map devices, parameters, scalers)
• Interactive code playground in the browser (through Trevor UI) inspired by Smalltalk playground
• Small web-based widget oscilloscope integrated in the web interface
• Save/reload preset for any MIDI device
• Save/reload patch for full connection between MIDI devices and virtual devices
• Random preset generator for MIDI devices and virtual devices
• Full random patch generator (basic at the moment) with auto-generative capacity as virtual device (you can control it from MIDI devices or other virtual devices)

Nallely is free, open source and available now