After 20+ years in professional audio: live sound engineering, studio technical direction (Deep Forest, Pierre Jacquot), head of digital marketing at Playback.fr. A first-hand witness to the analog-to-digital shift, I track the whole audio landscape and break it down here — no fluff.
Audio Damage releases Tessera, a 12-voice tuned resonator plugin: 11 physical models, 5 motion engines, no DRM, and Mac/PC/Linux/iPad builds. From $39.
Behringer is shipping the JT-2, an analog paraphonic synth packing one Roland Jupiter-8 voice into an 80 HP Eurorack module that also works standalone. Dual VCOs, switchable filter and arpeggiator, around $189.
Soyuz is adding a third member to its 017 series, the brand’s flagship range. The…
Doppler shapes any source into a kick, snare or hi-hat via a delay-line pitch engine. Its real trick: swapping firmware by dropping a physical overlay onto the panel, no computer needed. 6 HP, €270, shipping now.
The Lexicon Vortex, that 1990s morphing-effects oddball, is back as a plugin. Temecula DSP calls it VEXT and prices it at $25 — alongside DEEP/Z, its dual-engine multi-effects, on the same day.
Five oscillators, 60 voices, 3 GB of waveforms and a 120-knob front panel: Tom Horn’s SinTH2 carries the Roland JD-800 spirit into a fully hand-wired boutique instrument.
Mystic 2 packs three tube preamps, a four-band EQ and an opto limiter into a single plug-in. The new part is NOVA, a hybrid modelling approach that marries Volterra kernels with neural networks.
The TempoKEY K32 Play tucks a sound module, a battery and a speaker into a compact MIDI controller. The pitch: make music anywhere, laptop-free, for under $150.
RCF makes the EVOX V15 official, a new pinnacle in its range of portable active…
Jamstik has launched Loon, a software instrument that stacks three fully independent sound layers — virtual analog, four-operator FM, multisamples and filters — inside a single patch. Aimed as much at MIDI guitarists as at MPE keyboard players, it leans on playing expression as hard as it does on sound design. Launch price: $49.99 (rising to $99.99), and free for anyone who owns a Jamstik MIDI guitar.