"I always lusted after a Technos Acxel from 1984, but they didn't really exist. There were only about 4 ever made and those barely made it into public view. But there were pictures of them, and I had my imagination.
So, 30 years later, I made it myself, and then I made it better.
Every partial, hand-drawn.
Modeled after the Technos Acxel — a Quebec-built additive synthesizer from 1986-1992, with somewhere between 30 and 40 units ever made. Two engine slots share one wave bank, one Grapher, and one mod bus: Slot A is the Acxel's additive and sinusoidal resynthesis engine, Slot B is a wavetable machine, and you can run either or both at once.
AXCEL plugin GUI
- Acxel-accurate additive engine: up to 32 partials per voice, each independently addressable on the Grapher for amplitude, phase, and detune
"The bassline from @nineinchnails The Becoming has always haunted me. Originally done on a borrowed 'OberMoog' prototype [matrix note: see prior posts here], the original synth underwent massive engineering changes, management, and versioning until it finally became the OB-Mx, which was a "better" synth, but didn't quite sound the same. I know this, because I owned an OB-Mx.
Anyways, our Ober-Moog VST gets pretty close, and goes beyond. Plus, it's got 500+ presets, an EZ button for randomization, and Hand Of God for impossible automated modulation. Available now at store.denversynth.com
How close does this get?
I guess only TR can say for sure.
The synth that wasn't.
A 1:1 recreation of the Oberheim OB-Mx panel, voiced as the ‘Ober-Moog’ — the pre-production prototype Trent Reznor borrowed from Richard Bugg and used for the bassline of Nine Inch Nails’ The Becoming. Never officially released, barely documented, and rebuilt here from every source that exists, contested claims included.
- Full OB-Mx architecture: dual VCO per voice, MM-VCF and SEM-VCF in series or parallel, four-stage envelopes with free-run and repeat
- Voiced specifically as the Ober-Moog prototype, not a stock OB-Mx — the one unit with its own name, its own history, and no official spec sheet
- Unison/spread/detune matching the OB-Mx's card-based voice architecture, mono or up to full polyphony
- Modulation matrix covering breath, pressure, velocity, note number, wheel, and pedal across twelve assignable destinations
- Built from every documented source on the instrument, with the honest gaps left as gaps rather than guessed at
EZ button gets you into a usable patch in seconds; the panel underneath goes as deep as the original hardware did
Zero-input mixer. DIY noise artist's playground.
A digital no-input mixer: four channels, two effect returns that are full mixer channels in their own right, db-cell running as the board's own noise floor, and a live patch bay — everything you hear starts as the board's own hiss going round a feedback loop until it finds a mode. CASCADE feeds each channel into the next, wrapping channel four back to channel one; CHEAP/SOLID decides how hard the shared power rail sags and lets every channel modulate every other one through it.
ZEROBOY plugin GUI
Four mixer channels, each with seven selectable circuit topologies and Mackie-style 3-band EQ, plus a CASCADE that feeds straight into the next channel — channel four wraps back to channel one
Reverb and delay aren't send effects — they're two more full mixer channels with their own gain, EQ, and aux sends, already wired into a two-node feedback loop with each other
"INFIDEL shown here put through its paces.
This is an intentionally non-musical demo to show the power and sound of INFIDEL. It gets loud. If you don't like it, good.
The point is, you've never heard a VST sound like this, ever.
What we make hasn't existed before.
So, stop chasing other people's sound, and make something that's your very own for a change.
With roughly 1/3rd of the available modules shown here, you can tweak until morning.
Just make sure you get some sleep sometimes!
"INFIDEL is a full modular synth built around one idea: every module runs its own cheap sign-magnitude DAC, at its own sample rate and bit depth, so the whole rack can sound exactly as broken as you want it to — on purpose. You don't have to earn that sound with a soldering iron or a twenty-minute boot sequence. Hit INIT FULL and you've got a working 47-module, 81-cable patch across four buses — lead, drone, texture, drums — before you've turned a single knob. Hit EZ on any module and it rolls a new setting that's checked to never go silent. Cables snap to the nearest free jack, drop onto an existing cable to insert a module inline, or swap one module for another while keeping every cable that matches by name. It's fast to get a sound out of, and it stays deep — a 53-module library and KEY-locked lo-fi clocking mean there's always one more place to take it.
- 53 user modules across Sources, Filters, Effects, Drums, Utilities and Logic — including an 8-model VCF BANK (CS-80, IR3109, SSM2044, CEM3320, SSM2040, STEINER, EMS DIODE, WASP) and effects ported from SpringBoy, BucketBoy, Thermion and Ironwall
- Every module runs its own cheap lo-fi DAC — RATE 1–32 kHz, BITS 2–16 — and KEY locks a module's clock to the last note played, so the grit tracks pitch instead of just buzzing underneath it
"This distorted acid lead is not a sample: Profligacy emulates the Korg Prophecy, the synth behind that Prodigy sound.I tested the plugin by Joe Landers in Ableton Live. CPU usage stays at just 5–8%.In this video: The Prodigy-style sounds, the automation behind them, and more presets.
🎹 What you'll get in this video:
• Profligacy: a free, open-source Korg Prophecy emulator
• CPU test in Ableton Live: 5–8% usage
• Prodigy-style acid leads and their automation
• More presets demos
• Honest limits: ROM required, alpha status, monophonic
⚠️ What you need to know:
• You need your own ROM of the original firmware. It is not included, and I don't provide or link it.
• The plugin is an early alpha version, so bugs are possible.
"My free Roland D-50 Editor Librarian is a browser-based Web MIDI tool for backing up, browsing, importing and editing D-50 sounds without sending your patch data to the cloud.
In this video I show the full workflow from the YouTube transcript: connecting the D-50 over MIDI, enabling SysEx, reading the current edit buffer, opening a patch library, sending sounds to the synth, receiving a full bulk dump from the D-50, saving a library backup, importing SysEx banks, and editing classic D-50 patches such as Fantasia. The editor also makes it easier to work with the D-50's upper and lower tones, partials, PCM and synthesis structures, ring modulation, filter and amp envelopes, reverb, tuning and patch management.
The aim is to give the Roland D-50 a modern librarian/editor workflow: build a large library of card sounds and custom patches, search for sounds quickly, send patches to the edit buffer when recording, and avoid constantly swapping cards or managing small internal banks by hand.
NerDie is an 8-bit noise synthesizer and sequencer. Four oscillators, four LFOs, a summing tree with eight algorithms, a resonant low-pass filter and a one-bar sequencer. The whole engine runs in whole numbers at a fixed chip rate, so the overflow, the wrap and the quantisation you hear are not effects added at the end: they are the signal itself.
It runs as a plugin on Mac and Windows, and as an app on iPad and iPhone. Presets (.ner files) are the same on both, so a patch saved on the iPad opens in the plugin, and the other way round.
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GET IT
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15-DAY FREE DEMO. The demo is the full plugin: every feature works, nothing is switched off. Use it for 15 days and buy it only if you keep it. One license activates it on 2 computers."
Utterly Terrifying Choir - WALKTHROUGH video upload by CROW HILL
Press release follows:
The Crow Hill Company announces availability of CHILDREN’S CHOIR, crafting terrifying sounds from school-age children to deliver broad spectrum of timbral possibilities
EDINBURGH, UK: The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of CHILDREN’S CHOIR — crafting terrifying sounds from a school-age troupe of boys singing with just the right amount of ‘beautiful menace’ and an ability to be creative while working with the Edinburgh-based enterprise in support of delivering an instrument based around an expertly curated sample-set with a broad range of timbral possibilities designed by media composers with other media composers in mind — as of September 21…
Asked about the task of crafting CHILDREN’S CHOIR, The Crow Hill Company co-founder and media composer Christian Henson has his tongue not entirely out of his creative cheek in response, resurrecting the famous showbiz warning usually credited to American comedian W.C. Fields, effectively, by way of opening: “Never work with animals and children! So what’s this going to be like? Getting kids to be slightly demonic, evil, scary… they love it! And they totally seem to get making it so pretty that it’s scary. So we thought we’d try and nurture that spirit in a children’s choir library designed particularly for media composers — people who write for film, TV, and computer games. Why are these guys going to be wanting to use a children’s choir? Maybe there’s something set in a boarding school, maybe there’s something slightly choral and religious, but, more times than not, something unsettling is needed, and that’s where we’ve gone with this one. There are limits to how long children should be asked to perform. So, we thought we’d use the time thoughtfully, curating a selection of singing styles that capture this spirit. As opposed to giving you yet another library with ‘AAs’, ‘EEs’, ‘Ahs’, ‘Ohs’, and ‘MMs’, etcetera, AHOH, OHEH [and many more singing styles are available using the EXPRESSION wheel]. There’s some lovely WAVERING stuff where the pitch centres change. They sound great and scary when you cluster up, but on their own — or just a couple of notes — they have all sorts of childlike menace. There’s terrifying RISES and FALLS. And we’ve got a whole bunch of SHORT [singing styles].
"What if you could run an Elektron Monomachine inside your computer? 👀
In this video I’m testing Gearmulator MM, an emulation of the legendary Elektron Monomachine developed by Joe Landers as a fork of the Gearmulator project.
No talking — just the interface, some factory patterns and the sound of the emulation in action. 🎧
⚙️ Gearmulator uses low-level hardware emulation to run the original firmware rather than simply recreating the synth behaviour.
Joe Landers’ gearmulator-md-mm fork adds support for Elektron Monomachine and Machinedrum.
"RAVIK is an eight-voice drum synthesizer from VÃ¥ld Labs, built for everything from focused electronic drums to metallic, resonant and unpredictable percussion.
Every channel has its own synthesis engine, VEKTE-based algorithmic sequencer, pitch settings, modulation and effects. Build a kit, give each voice a rhythm, then explore how the parts interact.
Its 24 engines cover familiar drum sounds alongside FM, physical models, and uncoventional engines such as resonators, SID, bytebeat, GENDYN, VOSIM and more.
SEM and proprietary Polivoks-inspired filters provide another way to shape each voice, while SNAP controls the impact at the start of a hit.
Added preset saving, sysex exports, just a ton of stuff i dont feel like writing down
Added Monomodule FX as a standalone FX bus plugin
NEXT RELEASE WILL BE OPEN SOURCE!!
Shnolk Monomodule — beta
A chip-level emulation of the Elektron Monomachine. This installer puts the plugins in the system plugin folders (Audio Unit and VST3) and the Library app in /Applications:
• Monomodule One — one Monomachine track: every synth and FX machine, the three LFOs (instrument)
• Monomodule Six — all six tracks in one instrument: MIDI channels 1-6, one stereo output per track, the hardware's routing (multitimbral instrument)
• Monomodule FX — the FX machines (THRU, REVERB, CHORUS, DYNAMIX, RINGMOD, PHASER, FLANGER) as an audio effect for any channel, with the same pages and LFOs (effect)
• Monomodule Library — a standalone app: import your Monomachine sysex dumps, browse their presets, kits and patterns, hear them with the play glyphs, and drag them into the plugins or the DAW
Requires Windows and macOS 12 or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel.
Thanks to @halftoneworld for making this Monomachine Emulator"
"The hardware R2R Ladder Eurorack module is now available as a free virtual module, marking the first release in VAEMI’s expanding software line.
Istanbul, Türkiye – September 2026 – Istanbul-based electronic musical instrument manufacturer VAEMI – Volt Age Electronic Musical Instruments has released its first plug-in and first software product: R2R Ladder for VCV Rack.
The new virtual module is a software adaptation of VAEMI’s physical R2R Ladder Eurorack module, preserving the original hardware’s bidirectional architecture and core musical concept. The plug-in is available free of charge through the official VCV Library.
Inspired by the fundamental architecture of an R-2R digital-to-analog converter, R2R Ladder uses eight weighted connections representing eight binary bits. Together, these provide 256 possible binary combinations, opening up a wide range of applications for audio, CV, gates, modulation and waveform processing.
"What if you could run an Elektron Machinedrum inside your computer?
In this video I'm taking a look at Gearmulator MD, an impressive emulation of the legendary Elektron Machinedrum, developed by Joe Landers as a fork of the Gearmulator project.
There is no talking in this video — just a quick look at the interface and a selection of the original factory patterns, so you can hear the emulation in action.
⚙️ ABOUT THE EMULATION
Gearmulator is a low-level emulation project that recreates the hardware used by several classic digital synthesizers and runs their original firmware.
Joe Landers' gearmulator-md-mm fork extends that work with emulations of the Elektron Machinedrum and Elektron Monomachine.
The result is not simply a software recreation inspired by the Machinedrum: it runs the original machine firmware on an emulated version of the underlying hardware.
At the time of making this video the project is still in alpha development, so expect things to continue evolving.
"A walkthrough of the oscillator slot sequencer in Partials & Discrepancies, including the different ways it can control movement through the additive oscillator’s partial structures and parameters.
The eight slots can store different partial shapes, harmonic and disharmonic settings, and FM parameters, while each of the eight synth voices can move through those slots independently.
In the video I go through the main non-clocked and clocked ways of using it, including:
