Category: Review

  • Jiffy – a 16s looper for Monome Norns

    I released my first script for the Monome Norns audio computer today. Jiffy is a 16 second audio looper inspired by pedals like the EHX 16 Second Delay. Basically, I wanted to make something that was immediate and fun to use and utilised the super ace softcut engine. You can check out the script at…

  • Review: Brainworx – Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor

    The Shadow Hills gear definitely has a visual aesthetic of it’s own. Always noticeable when in a rack, especially when alongside more vintage pieces, it’s got a kind of death star technology vibe going on. I’d be lying if I said I had tried the hardware counterpart of the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, but I…

  • Spaced Out Sounds with Spitfire Audio: Kepler Orchestra

    Spaced Out Sounds with Spitfire Audio: Kepler Orchestra

    Complex poly rhythms? Cyclical scales? Inspired by Terry Riley and Philip Glass? That was more than enough to get me interested.. Along with the Johannes Kepler title reference, it felt like this sample library was made specifically for my own tastes! Spitfire Audio’s KEPLER ORCHESTRA — like many of their top tier libraries (such as the…

  • Audified DW Drum Enhancer

    Audified DW Drum Enhancer

    Czech plug-in developers Audified, known for their meticulous recreations of rare outboard equipment, have teamed up with DWe (Drum Workshop Electronics) to create a new drum-focused processor. Designed to speed up your workflow when processing drums, the Drum Enhancer has specifically designed parameters designed simplify and speed up working with drum and percussive sounds.

  • Eventide Anthology XI

    Eventide Anthology XI

    Absolutely ridiculous! I can’t actually believe we are living in a time where all these Eventide effects are available in-the-box, happy days indeed!

  • Buchla 259e Twisted Waveform Generator

    Buchla 259e Twisted Waveform Generator

    I first learnt about Don Buchla and his synthesiser designs when studying the work of Morton Subotnik whilst at university in 2003 and the alien timbres of ‘Silver Apples On The Moon’ (1967) has stuck with me ever since.

  • Get Mangled With Eventide!

    Get Mangled With Eventide!

    Eventide return with another one of their great algorithms lifted from the H9 effects pedal. I first came across the MangledVerb in their Space pedal. It combined nice distortion with strange modulated reverb tails, I actually always preferred this algorithm to the more famous ‘Black Hole’ setting also on the Space and H9 pedals. This…

  • Newfangled Music Elevation!

    Newfangled Music Elevation!

    I wouldn’t call myself a mastering engineer by trade, although I have mastered a lot of tracks for different labels and artists over the years and continue to do so. I also taught audio mastering for a number of years at a higher education college. So I have a fairly good handle on what sounds…

  • Spectral Soundscapes, with SpecOps

    Spectral Soundscapes, with SpecOps

    Glitch plugins. To be honest, I cant stand them and I’ve used most of them over the years. From SupaTrigga and Buffer Override, to dBlue Glitch and Reaktor patches like ‘The Finger’ etc. They all provided  instant “wow” sounding FX, however they are so obvious, it’s like putting a time-stamp on your track saying “this…

  • NUGEN Add Nu Encoding Flavours

    NUGEN Add Nu Encoding Flavours

    If you are in the business of producing audio, in the majority of cases this will be consumed online in some form or another. Even vinyl or cassette only releases will most likely have an online streaming preview uploaded somewhere. The trouble with streaming music online, is there is a myriad of services, many of…