Happy new year, one and all! A little bit late, due to the holiday break, but here are our favourite bits of new music technology from the final month of 2021.
AudioThing get the Gong
A collaboration between composer Hainbach and acclaimed plugin developer AudioThing, Gong Amp is a plugin effect that emulates Eowave’s not-long discontinued Resonator Metalik hardware, itself a modern reimagining of the ingenious ‘metallique’ amplification system that gave voice to electronic music pioneer Maurice Martenot’s seminal Ondes Martenot keyboard instrument. Martenot’s setup involved the placement of a gong behind the amp to create a characteristically scintillating sound, and Gong Amp recreates this via a combination of physical modelling and convolution processing, all based on analysis of Hainbach’s own Resonator Metalik.
The interface keeps things up-front and simple, with controls for mixing mono and stereo mic feeds, plus the ear-catching Resonate feedback circuit, and the option of laying thick and/or thin chains over the gong for shimmer, or damping it with a cushion. Other highlights include an overdrive control, high and low Pitch settings, and an LFO for modulating the mic and Resonate channel levels.
As you would imagine, Gong Amp sounds quite unlike any other reverb you’ve heard before, and with its focused but manipulable vintage character and colouration, and ability to take reverberation to strikingly dark places, it’s well worth checking out by retro fetishists and sound designers alike.
Signum Audio triple down on dynamics
Scottish developers Signum Audio first caught our attention a few years ago with the superb mastering-orientated Bute Loudness Suite metering and limiting plugin, and their latest island-named release sees the company’s impressive dynamics processing expertise applied to the realisation of a more overtly mixing-specific brief.
Skye Dynamics brings together a compressor, an expander and a limiter in a multi-stage design, all three built – as with their Bute sibling – to be as transparent as possible. Adaptive auto-release and five processor-specific preset envelope shapes take the legwork out of timing adjustment, and independent sidechain inputs for each module facilitate all sorts of contextual possibilities. There’s also a surround version for multichannel configurations up to 7.4.1, with channel linking; and the resizable interface can be collapsed down to a convenient compact view to save on screen real estate.
With Bute Loudness Suite already holding a spot in our list of go-to dynamics plugins, we couldn’t be more excited about the prospect of a more versatile and ‘creative’ adaptation of its supremely transparent core algorithms. The Skye is indeed the limit!
Klevgrand shake it all about
It would be fair to say that, despite initial industry-wide excitement, the dream of serious music production applications on iPhone has proven to be something of a damp squib. Although an army of developers have come at the platform from all kinds of clever angles, ultimately, it’s become apparent out that it can’t ever compete with the good old laptop when you want to get serious work done. However, that’s not to say that Apple’s amazing pocket computer doesn’t have anything to bring to the musical table, as Klevgrand’s latest app ably demonstrates.
Rassel is a free shaker emulation app from prolific Swedish developers Klevgrand that turns your iPhone into any of four particle-filled percussion instruments: a regular shaker, an egg shaker, a tambourine and a set of sleigh bells.
By exploiting the hardware’s built-in gyroscope and accelerometers, Rassel delivers a phenomenally realistic sound and feel though the dynamic interpretation of your rhythmic movements, with a choice of Loose, Normal and Tight settings for sonic variation. Great fun and genuinely useful – go get it!
SSL go Big
Essentially a doubling up of their diminutive SiX mixer, SSL’s Big SiX provides 12 channels (four mono mic/line, four stereo line with dual mono switching) of that famous British console sound in a desktop format, complete with a compressor and three bands of EQ per channel, a master section with one-knob G-Comp bus compressor, dual headphone outputs, and even the legendary 4000E Listen Mic Compressor. That on its own would be enough to garner the attention of any in-the-box producer looking to expand their horizons, but the brilliantly implemented and super flexible 24-bit/96kHz USB audio interfacing takes things to another level, facilitating direct multitrack recording and powerful stem mixing.
Quite literally an SSL desk in miniature, for those who covet that particular sonic flavouring, the Big SiX makes for a truly knockout package at a very reasonable price.
Wave Alchemy bring that beat back
(Yes, this one actually landed in the opening days of January, but we’re, er, taking all those bank holidays into account.) With previous releases Revolution, Drumvolution and Bassynth showing just how far the limits of Kontakt scripting can be pushed, Nottingham-based soundware house Wave Alchemy kicked off the new year with Triaz, a virtual groovebox for Kontakt Player that sets a new benchmark for the sort of thing that can be done with Native Instruments’ ubiquitous sample playback engine in the percussion arena.
Three years in the making, Triaz draws on a library of more than 10,000 samples captured from a vast array of electronic, acoustic, environmental, foley and other sources, and enables up to three sample layers to be loaded into each of its 12 channels. Extensive sound shaping comes in the form of filtering, envelopes, EQ, modulation and copious per-layer and master effects, and a powerful randomisation system conjures up complete kits at a click. And yes, you can import your own samples if – somehow! – you can’t find what you need in the library. The sequencer, meanwhile, features independent lane lengths and rates for polyrhythmic programming, as well as step-programmable velocity, note repeats, start position offset and playback probability, and pattern randomisation.
Head-spinning in its scale and versatility, Triaz certainly feels like the last word in Kontakt-powered drum machines, and with Wave Alchemy offering a 7-day refund if you just don’t dig it, this is one that every electronic and dance music producer should take a look at and listen to.
Did anything catch your music technology eye as 2021 drew to a close? Let us know in the comments.