"If you’re a fan of iOptigan, we’ve again partnered with Stefan Stenzel, this time to bring you the official Optigan Plugin for your desktop DAW environment!"
Features
Contains all 40 original discs and three prototype discs
Fifteen discs include multiple revisions
Can sync perfectly to DAW
Flex option for setting pitch independent from tempo
Chord detection to trigger chord buttons
Computer keyboard modes for chord and effect buttons
MIDI in and out for scale tones, chord and effect buttons
Panoptigon compatible
Upside-down disc loading
Spring reverb emulation
Optical metronome
The Optigan Plugin is now available! Click here to go grab it!"
Speak
Speak is a polyphonic Max for Live instrument that turns typed words into speech in the style of a 1980s Speak & Spell. It encodes each word into coarse chip-style LPC frames and decodes them live in eight voices. MIDI notes set the pitch, so any word can be played as a melody or a chord. It speaks six languages (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese), and it can freeze a vowel, stutter at any point in a word and apply a 10-point modulation curve. Vibrato has several shapes and a fade-in, and there are controls for tract size, tilt and intonation.
SpeakKeys
SpeakKeys uses the same voice engine, but each of 48 MIDI keys has its own word and its own pitch instead of speaking one word chromatically. You type a word and a semitone pitch for each key, and a note shows the note that plays it and the note that sounds, so you can program little songs and play them from a keyboard or a clip. The keys are laid out in four banks of 12 and are saved with presets. A pair of mappable Select Key and Select Pitch controls lets you edit all 48 pitches from a few Push encoders. It shares the language, vibrato, global pitch and tone controls with Speak.
Max for Cats crafts Software Instruments, Effects, MIDI devices, Sound Design and Samples for Ableton Live.
Today I am auditioning some of the presets I made with the ASYX virtual instrument plugin from Isla Instruments. ASYX is an emulation of the Andromeda A6 synthesizer. All of my previously released patches made for the Andromeda have been ported over to ASYX, and are included in ASYX with my expressed permission. This video exhibits previously unreleased new patches made on the ASYX during beta testing. It's been a dream to once again lose myself programming sounds - often times forgetting that it is a virtual instrument. As usual audio is recorded direct, no post FX except normalization, listen w/ quality monitors or headphones recommended, watch your levels - some sections have harsh noise and high-frequency content. In full disclosure no money has been paid to me for promotion, product placement nor sponsorship to this video content."
0:00 Headroom Eater
0:18 Glittering C-Beams
0:36 EVH Xa Stack
0:49 CYGNUS
1:02 Tremble Pad MW
1:26 Bell Tree in C
1:42 Tuned Metal
1:48 Space Time Discontinuity
2:04 H00V Lane
2:13 Ring Bass + HP
2:23 Runner
2:41 Final Boss
2:52 Gorgeous Pad
3:14 Deep SH Bass
3:23 Coeds
3:40 Think Tank + Brush
3:53 Amongst Yourselves Talk
4:03 70s Stringer
4:21 Soft Jam Stab
4:31 Phasey Pad
4:50 Slippy Stab
5:03 SEM BP Bass MW
5:16 Psycho Bass
5:27 ReXpander
5:50 Pulse Damaged
6:07 BP Groover
6:18 Bounce House
6:25 Chillout
6:43 Arc de Triomphe
Three different apps based on celestial mechanics. Above is RedtailWorks ORRERY Generative Modular posted just today. No additional details are provided.
Directly below is Recluse Studios' Orrery from about two months ago. You can find Kepler's Orrery in previous posts here dating back to 2007. As always, dig and explore.
"Orrery is a generative music environment where wires carry theory, not audio. You don't write every note — you set the rules, and the machine obeys them forever. Gravity becomes a tonal center. A wormhole becomes a canon machine. A supernova becomes structure.
This is the celestial canvas playing a real piece: three minutes born from a single brief — start in A minor, move to E phrygian, end in D lydian. Bells, soft pads, percussion. No supernovas. One wormhole. All sounds generated in-engine.
Orrery is deterministic by contract: the same file, the same seeds, the same performance — every time, on your machine, offline. No black box, no cloud, no subscription. The composer stays the composer. The machine does the paperwork.
This is the celestial canvas playing ouroboros — the first demo, and the one that shows what the clock really is. A single voice walks D, F, A, C, E while the tempo itself orbits: 40 bpm, up to 280, and back down, forever. Because the clock's own rate is fed back into the clock. The snake eats its tail.
3. Orrery - Canon in Em
This is Orrery's celestial canvas playing Canon in Em — a strict three-voice canon in E minor, doing exactly what the docs always promised. One theme, eight bars, an original line. It enters, and two wormholes swallow every two-bar phrase and return it unchanged, on time: the same melody at +2 bars, and at +4 bars, forever. Pachelbel's ground, translated — i, v, VI, III, iv, i, iv, v — in natural minor, where the dominant stays minor and the cadence stays modal. 80 bpm. Four minutes. No scenes, no supernovas, no shortcuts: the form is the canon.
4. Orrery - Undertow
One static texture, three rhythms braiding against a bar.
The piece: a Glass-style additive ladder climbs D5→D6, a tresillo thumps on the grid, and a 2-in-7 euclid pattern laps at the beat but never quite lands — the one voice that refuses the bar. The polyrhythm is the entire form. In the middle section the ladder learns to breathe — ties, rests, an accented held apex — before the machine returns, unchanged.
GRAVITY IS A CHORD.
WORMHOLES ARE CANON MACHINES.
You drop bodies into a sky and wire their ports together. A clock keeps time. A key holds the tonality. A progression walks the changes, a voice-leader smooths them, and a gravity well bends everything nearby toward its centre. Wire a body's output into another's input and the second one starts listening.
Beads sit on the wires and do the arithmetic — scale, offset, clamp, curve, lag — so a die roll can drive a filter sweep and a slow contour can nudge a whole section. The machine has no opinions. It has a clock.
"Imagine being able to sequence different effects blocks as you wish. Imagine being able to send to a delay only on steps 5 and 9. Imagine being able to slew between effects slowly. Imagine if these effects blocks had LFO's for parameters to modulate them automatically. Imagine if you could choose from 34 effects blocks of different types. Imagine if you could quickly randomize everything to spit out a new sound. Imagine if you could change opamps, diodes, capacitors, and component age without a screwdriver and popping open something vintage.
Imagine no more!
Here's OCTAL. An 8-block sequence-able effects rack that lets you lightly touch or completely mangle your audio input into something fresh. An effects playground, if you will. Chain things in any order, then re-order them freely, just to hear how it sounds. Cascade blocks into each other, stacking sounds that build and grow. Or simply hit the EZ button and let it choose for you. Then sequence all that for certain steps only. Assign LFO's to automatically swell, dip, crunch, or delay sounds so that its just how you like it. Or, do that all at once, times 8.
"Imagine sending audio to a delay only on steps 5 and 9. Imagine slewing a filter between steps. OCTAL is eight effect boxes in series with a 16-step sequencer underneath: pick what's in each box, then program which boxes switch on at each step and where their knobs sit. Every box is its own little pedal, with its own paint, lettering, and wear.
"Cinematic ambient created with the Prophet-10, reface CS, OP-1 field, and CP-88.
On the OP-1 field, detailed glitch beats and sustained synth pad sounds are recorded in advance. The MOTHER effect is used as the master effect to add gated reverb.
On the reface CS, the oscillator is set to FM while synth pads are performed. The output is processed through the MICROCOSM with deep reverb.
The Prophet-10 is connected to the blueSky and used to perform slow-attack synth pads.
The CP-88 is processed in the DAW with reverb from Native Instruments Raum.
"Partials & Discrepancies has just gotten an update, a new look and 42 new presets.
In this video I play through around 30 of the new Partials & Discrepancies 1.5.0 factory presets, played completely dry. No talking.
The on-screen text goes through the main additions in v1.5.0 while I play.
Partials & Discrepancies is an 8-voice additive synth built around up to 128 partials per voice, oscillator slots, voice discrepancies and a lot of movement between states.
Version 1.5.0 adds:
• Oscillator Detune
• Oscillator Smear, based on a tuned delay line
• Ring Modulator mode
• New self-oscillating filter
• Host-synced Mod Osc
• Key-reset and key-tracked noise for the Mod Osc
• Portamento and polyphonic legato
• Improved voice stealing
• New interface colors and layout
• 42 new factory presets
The video goes through around 30 of the new presets without external effects, so everything you hear comes directly from the synth - it was recorded straight from the iMac's output onto a Zoom H6 recorder.
"FAC Gravity AUv3 Plugin is a frequency shifter for creating Barberpole and Shepard style glissandos, spectral illusions, stereo rotation, chorusing, phasing, evolving echoes, infinite cosmic spaces, and all the combinations you’ll make.
0:00 Introduction
0:39 Presentation
1:39 Preset Demo: Shifted Space
1:57 Preset Demo: Ramping Tape Riser
2:15 Preset Demo: Synce Wobble Bass
2:30 Preset Demo: Frequency Shifter
2:49 Preset Demo: Synced Break II
3:09 Outro
"FAC Gravity AUv3 Plugin is a frequency shifter for creating Barberpole and Shepard style glissandos, spectral illusions, stereo rotation, chorusing, phasing, evolving echoes, infinite cosmic spaces, and all the combinations you’ll make.
• Dual Frequency Shifting, or Mono Shifting with Quadrature Stereo Widening
• Organic Spiral Loop, from gentle feedback to pure analog self-oscillation
• Integrated delay, diffusion blur, and independent low/high filtering
"Pine DSP have announced the availability of Blox Rack, a modular effects rack plugin in the "500-series" mould, that adds a horizontal panel for EQ, modulation and other fine details.
Blox Rack's six effects – EQ, Comp, Chorus, Reverb, Delay, Exciter – are also available individually as separate plugins to load and run in a DAW for license holders of Blox Rack.
Mixing with a rack of plugins is a mostly great workflow, but when it comes to EQ, the vertical format can't offer you a speedy way to edit bands precisely or a view of the frequency spectrum running through it. That's why we added a pop-out horizontal panel to the top of Blox Rack – it acts as a context-sensitive view, helping you stay in the moment for EQ, modulation and precision ducking.
"Recreating the iconic 'Tour de France' by Kraftwerk using modular synthesis in VCV Rack
I tried to rebuild the distinctive electronic sound of the track using VCOs, FM synthesis, envelopes, filters, drum synthesis, sequencing, and delay — all inside VCV Rack.
The patch runs at *130 BPM* and combines several synthesized voices with electronic percussion and rhythmic sequencing to capture that classic early-80s Kraftwerk aesthetic. The setup includes **Mutable Instruments Plaits, Bogaudio FM synthesis, VCV Fundamental oscillators and filters, drum synthesis, and Chronoblob2 delay**.
🎛️ *Kraftwerk – Tour de France recreated in VCV Rack*
A modular synthesizer recreation for fans of Kraftwerk, electronic music, synthpop, and vintage synthesizer sounds.
"Flock by SignalFunctionSet — generative granular synthesis in VCV Rack. 🐦🎛️
Inspired by bird murmurations, Flock creates evolving sonic textures, shifting pitches, and intricate patterns for generative ambient music and experimental sound design.
Explore the possibilities of organic, ever-changing modular synthesis.
NOODLERACK featured in the Molten Music Monthly June 2026 above is now available for the iPad with a different feature set. Note the thumbnail above is not it. Click play and it should start with NOODLERACK. If not jump to the nine minute mark.
Details follow:
"NOODLERACK is a modular synthesizer where users add modules and patch audio, pitch, gates and modulation with cables. The iPad app includes a standalone rack for offline use and a native AUv3 instrument for compatible hosts such as GarageBand.
Standalone supports MIDI, saved patches, Files export/import and WAV recording. The native AUv3 instrument includes 31 module types, host MIDI and clock, 16 automation macros and rack state saved with the host project. Standalone and AUv3 have separate module sets and patch formats.
"We make digital reverb and analog-inspired delay plugins for musicians, engineers and other audio artists. We're obsessed with creating powerful tools with simple interfaces. Our goal is to inspire you and help your work to flow."
"While waiting for the new HollowTone app to be released, take a look at the ExoSphere.
Endless variations of soundscapes, using your own samples or internal library.
ExoSphere is a creative tool for shaping continuous ambient and meditative compositions, based on five independent sound layers that merge into a seamless atmosphere. It provides an effortless way to create a foundation for ambient tracks or even a complete background piece with minimal adjustments. Designed with slow rhythmic structures in mind, it is especially suited for meditative music and calm soundscapes.
"A synthesis concept like no other. For macOS and Windows.
▶ Try it free for 9 days: https://www.blinksonic.com/holodrift/ ▶ Buy HOLODRIFT — €119 launch price with code L4UNCH, until October 30, 2026/ — Draft timbral scenarios with a wave-crossfading engine. Play a whole family of frequency-domain effects, live. On any sound.
A granular sampler. A spectral effects suite. One instrument.
EIGHT SLOTS. EIGHT MATERIALS. Each slot is a full granular engine. Load samples, loop slices, recordings, live input — or browse 1,360 sounds mapped by timbre, and fill all eight slots with a single lasso.
YOUR SOUND BECOMES A SCORE. HOLODRIFT listens to everything it plays, breaks it into partials and rebuilds it in real time. In WAVE mode, every partial becomes a wavetable: the sampler excites, the harmonics sing.
"In this video Christian walks us through his latest incatative invention made in collaboration with the entire Crow Hill team. Forest Harps is made up of a rare find coupled with medieval ingredients and his own very special and grotesque approach to sound design. If you're looking for a harp that isn't a harp, a classical guitar that isn't a classical guitar and some fully controllable shifts in darkness of tone for your next score, song or soundtrack it would be worth checking out"
Press release follows:
The Crow Hill Company continues investigating its Origins series of virtual instrument plug-in collectibles with FOREST HARPS incantatory invention
EDINBURGH, UK: The Crow Hill Company is delighted to continue investigating its Origins series of virtual instrument plug-in collectables with the release of its intriguing-sounding FOREST HARPS — being billed as an incantatory invention collectively crafted by the Edinburgh-based enterprise, effectively comprising a harp made from elk horn, conch shell, animal ribs, and fishing wire brought together with medieval psaltries fed through a slowly rotating Leslie cabinet to create a forest floor of plucks, textures, and atmospheres as a rare and grotesque approach to sound design — as of October 20…
Build a two-part MIDI pattern with PolyArp 1.4.0, then play it on a Moog Subsequent 37. Follow the English on-screen explanations from MIDI setup through Repeat Last, custom Draw rhythms and the final performance at 121 BPM.
The Moog is in Duo Mode for two-note paraphonic playing: two pitches share its filter. PolyArp generates MIDI; the Moog provides the sound.
The walkthrough covers Gate, octave range and shift, Direction, fixed velocities, and editing each hand's rhythm. Repeat Last with Count 2 plays the final note of the pattern twice in total. In Draw mode, notes are removed to create space in each part.
Chapters:
0:00 Performance preview and MIDI setup
0:20 Shape the rhythm and note range
0:42 Repeat Last and Count
1:14 Edit both rhythms in Draw
1:44 Live performance at 121 BPM"
