Plogue has updated their sforzando instrument to include a new free synthesizer called Tablewarp2 that can perform PWM, FM, and other fun warptable wavetable esque mod tricks!  The free release was part of Plogue’s 15th anniversary celebration.  Congrats to Plogue to 15 years!  Wishing the developers another great 15 and beyond.

Download TableWarp2

TableWarp2 is part of sforzando, to install simply head on over to the Plogue downloads page and grab the latest installer of sforzando:

http://www.plogue.com/downloads/#sforzando

sforzando comes in both OS X and Windows flavors of popular plugin formats, with a very nice standalone mode as well.

Plogue says the following about Tablewarp2: “Blend the classic sounds of PWM, FM, PD and subtractive by selecting a base wavetable and then warping it using a warptable!”

The new sforzando features include a new Snapshot Presets Options Menu!  So now you can save any custom settings with sforzando banks as your own custom presets. 

After updating sforzando you will also see a new Effects tab which includes Reverb and Detune style effects.  There is a send knob (MIDI CC91) for balancing the right amount of reverb and detune for your instruments. 

You can also select pitch bend ranges from none up to two octaves. 

Here is an 80s-tastic demo song using the new TableWarp2 synth curtusoy of @MrMadbrain. 

Just in time for Halloween, Karoryfer has released the free Scarypiano sample library. If you were looking to add some scary, weird, and odd keyboard sounds to your tracks check out this free open source piano. The Scarypiano sample library comes in .sfz format and is ready with a custom GUI for Plogue sforzando.

The piano samples from this sample library were sourced from the free IOWA sample collection, then creatively processed using Krotos Dehumaniser.  The user interface is a Halloween inspired control set with bloody eyeball knobs.  Automate them even if the piano isn’t playing for an extra fun effect.

Scarypiano Download Specs:

• Three voices, each processed in a different way.
• 430 16-bit WAV samples.
• 340 MB download size.
• GUI for Plogue Sforzando.

MIDI CC control assignments:
100 – withering (amplitude envelope release length)
101, 102 and 103 – volume controls for the three different voices

Download Scarypiano here:

http://www.karoryfer.com/karoryfer-samples/wydawnictwa/scarypiano

To Install Scarypiano into sforzando

To register, drag the Shinyguitar.bank.xml file onto the Sforzando interface. Once registered, Scarypiano will be available in the Sforzando loading menu.

Make sure you have the latest version of sforzando!
http://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando/

Enjoy your free Scarypiano sounds! Weird odd textures can be created by automating the controls in realtime. 

1975: The first speech synthesizer IC was born.

In 1974/1975 Dr. Forrest S. Mozer licensed his unique voice compression technology to Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI).

Encoding words was a very complex and time consuming process. Something only he and a few of his colleagues could do. Most of the TSI/Digitalker-using consumer devices of the late 70’s and early 80’s used Dr Mozer’s own voice, compressed by a factor of 100. 

This is the voice you are hearing in the video.  Last year we’ve obtained his authorization to use his voice for our ‘chipspeech’ project. Thank you infinitely Dr. Mozer!

chipspeech will be availible this week!  From this KvR post:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6006393#p6006393

Find out more here:

http://www.plogue.com/

Plogue has recently updated their R&D Blog with a new post covering their new voice synthesis project chipspeech.  If you haven’t seen their Developer Blog yet head on over to this link here:

http://ploguechipsounds.blogspot.ca/2014/09/chipspeech-diary-part-1.html

Check out all of those cool retro voice synthesis devices!

we take hardware research and emulation very seriously here at Plogue.

Read on and don’t miss the full article along with updates:

http://ploguechipsounds.blogspot.ca/2014/09/chipspeech-diary-part-1.html

A voice groove demo from Plogue’s YouTube Channel:

Also the previous Plogue chipspeech teaser was posted here:

Plogue chipspeech Teaser!

Plogue chipsounds and chipcrusher are phenomenal plug-ins!  Really looking forward to the development and release of chipspeech as Plogue always delivers the best instruments and effects!

Bass City – Free Synth Bass Samples!

Proudly presenting Bass City – A Free Synth Bass Sample Library by 99 Sounds and PatchArena. Bass City is a free collection of vintage bass synthesizer samples, availible in Kontakt .NKI and .sfz Sforzando format. Designed for any type of electronic music production. EDM, old school, Electro, House, Dub, Techno, you name it.

This sample pack started as a collaboration between 99 Sounds and PatchArena. We started by sampling a few bass sounds from our favorite vintage synthesizers. We kept on sampling more and more custom bass patches. It started with our favorite raw FM Bass sounds from the one and only TX81Z 4 op FM rack mount synth. Then sampling excellent juicy tones of the Korg Poly800 and EX800. The stacking oscillators of the 800 series going thru the analog filters sound perfectly sweet. The built in chorus on these two units is absolutely superb. After months sampling and playing these bass instruments we selected our favorites and combined them into Bass City.

Special thanks to Tomislav Zlatic from 99 Sounds for all of his effort on this collection. The cover art and the custom NKI programming is top notch. You should check out some of the other quality sample collections being curated by Tomislav here:

http://99sounds.org/

Also check out Tomislav’s blog BedroomProducersBlog news on electronic music production and free developer goodies. You can also find a few nice sample packs there already such as the Cassette 909 Pack, as well as the BPB Mini Analogue Collection.

http://bedroomproducersblog.com/

The KORG EX800 on the “Chopping Block”.

Bass City Contents and Details

This Free Synth Bass Library is available in Kontakt and SFZ formats, so these instruments will load/import in just about every available sampler. The NKI files have a custom GUI with LowPass, HighPass, Attack, and Release controls. If you load up the SFZ instrument files in Plogue sforzando you will also have the same controls! Pretty sweet!

Bass City in Native Instrument’s Kontakt.

Bass City in Plogue’s Sforzando.

Bass City – Free Synth Bass Samples Contents & Stats:

• 399 audio samples
• 26 instrument patches
• Kontakt 5 support
• SFZ format support
• 24-bit WAV format
• 44.1 kHz Stereo
• 581 MB size on disk
• 336 MB download size (RAR archive)

Download

Bass City is available for free, head on over to the 99 Sounds page to download:

http://99sounds.org/bass-city/

Send over any comments or music you make with the Bass instruments!  Enjoy!

Presenting the Plogue chipspeech Teaser.  Faithful and Legitimate emulation of classic speech synthesis chips!

From Plogue:

We are proud to announce the third member in Plogue’s ‘chip’ series, Plogue chipspeech.
A faithful emulation of all major classic speech synthesis chips of the early 1980s, and a few surprises.

Its a synthesizer, not a Vocoder.

The demo sounds pretty amazing.  Can’t wait to find out more and hear more about chipspeech.  If this is going to be anything like chipsounds and chipcrusher, it is going to be nothing short of amazing. 

For more info visit:

http://www.plogue.com/

A couple of weeks ago you may have seen posts of a new world record for the longest echo ever recorded.  Later on the impulses from the recording were posted to the audio engineer’s website.  I’ve taken one of those impulses and saved them as Presets for ARIA Player’s Convolution Reverb Effect.  You can now play your orchestral and sfz instruments in this amazing space!  I imagine these files will also be useful in your DAW’s convolution reverb, things like Perfect Space in SONAR, or Space Designer in Logic.

Trevor Cox’s blog featuring download links and details of the impulse recordings:
http://acousticengineering.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/the-worlds-most-reverberant-space/

Some nice images of the space and details on it’s construction in this article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-25757937

Screen shot of ARIA Player with the new convolution reverb preset:

The download includes one Preset from the full echo over 1 min and 20 seconds long.  It also includes one special effect with the same impulse in reverse (shortened to be more usable).  Enjoy!

Download the Convolution Presets

Download includes a txt file with installation/copy instructions. 

We wanted to take the time to look back at the most popular synthesizer related downloads here at PatchArena for 2013.  It’s been a great year for virtual instrument releases, updates, and downloads.  The same goes for Hardware based synthesizers and samplers. You should be able to utilize the sfz samples here if you don’t have them already.  Top downloads include presets for CronoX, Alchemy, Toxic Biohazard, Guitar Samples, String Samples, A freeware download pdf list, and More.

The first list that we’ll go through is the Top 10 2013 download list ordered by download hits. 

Number 10

Contact SPACE Kalimba- SFZ Instrument

Preset Design: PatchArena
Total Download Hits – 3330

– Kalimba recorded with homemade contact microphone plus SPACE reverb!  Intended for film-score percussion and other textures.  Use with your favorite SFZ player or sampler.  Special sounds can be achieve by either exaggerating or cutting out the reverb decay on this sample set.  Enjoy!

Download – Contact SPACE Kalimba

Number 9

Studio Strings Nebula – SFZ Instrument

Preset Design: PatchArena
Total Download Hits – 3360

Free Sample Pack of synth string samples sampled from the strings preset of a vintage Siel analog synth!  9 samples recorded 44.1k 16bit, weighing in at just less then 30MB compressed in zip.  Use as SFZ sample food for your favorite SFZ based virtual instruments, or drag and drop the samples into your other samplers!

Download – Studio Strings Nebula

Number 8

Universe Trance Volume 1 & 2 For Image Line Poizone

Preset Design: CHE
Total Download Hits – 3995

2 Collections of Trance Presets, 79 Sounds Total.  FXP, FXB, and FL Studio Formats. 

Download – Universe Trance Vol 1 & 2

Number 7

Rainbow Spectrum 54 Presets For Camel Audio’s Alchemy

Preset Design: CHE
Total Download Hits – 3997

The Rainbow Spectrum Soundset for the Camel Audio – Alchemy VSTi.  Format in ACP, AAZ, and .WAV.  54 Experimental Presets in 8 Categories. 

Download – Rainbow Spectrum Soundset

Number 6

Collection Of 24 Banks of Korg M1 Patches

Preset Design: Korg Users Shared
Total Download Hits – 4058

24 Banks of M1 sounds from various sources over the internet. Check out the modified dates for their creation or last edit times.

Download – Korg M1 Collected Presets

Number 5

Toxic Planet 100 Presets For Image Line Toxic Biohazard

Preset Design: CHE
Total Download Hits – 4715

100 Free Presets for Image Line – Toxic Biohazard.  Includes 100 FXP and 600 waveforms. 

Download Toxic Planet

Number 4

Oderions Guitar Steel Chords – SFZ Instrument

Preset Design: Oderion
Total Download Hits – 5015

Acoustic steel string guitar by chords in sfz format.  Sampled chords from my steel stringed guitar into a sfz file! First octave gives you the chords in major and second in minor. If you hit the notes hard its a down stroke, and softer gives an up stroke. 

Download – Oderions Guitar Steel Chords – SFZ

Number 3

Virtual Software Synthesizer Freeware Index PDF

Download Author: CHE
Total Download Hits – 5430

This PDF includes All Free Virtual Software Synthesizer for Digital Audio Workstation’s & Sequencer’s.  (No MIDI Apps & Standalone’s) As Example :

– PRESONUS – STUDIO ONE
– IMAGE LINE – FL STUDIO
– STEINBERG – CUBASE
– CAKEWALK – SONAR
– ABLETON – LIVE
– MORE

EASY TO READ PDF with Color Images, Short descriptions, and Manufacturer Links

Download – Freeware Index PDF

Number 2

E-lec-tro Sounds – For Image Line Harmor VSTi

Preset Design: CHE
Total Download Hits – 6560

Harmor Soundset with 100 Single Presets in FXP Format. Including Arps, Leads, Pads & Bass.  Excellent use of Timbre mixing and combinations.

Download – E-lec-tro Sounds

Number 1

TAKAMINE GUITAR VOL 1 – For LinPlug Crono X

Preset Design: Philippe Favré
Total Download Hits – 12649

A piezo electro acoustic guitar. Sampled and programmed for LinPlug Crono X.  Featuring 34 RealGuitar presets.  Metal an rubber hammers, Plectrum, thumb, pizzicato actions,
Background noises.

Download – TAKAMINE GUITAR VOL 1

Special thanks to everyone for sharing their sounds this past year.  Looking forward to a wonderful and exciting 2014.  Special tip of the hat goes out to CHE for making the top 10 list multiple times!

If you are interested check out more download statistics here:

http://patcharena.com/downloads/misc.php?action=toplist

Wishing you a happy and musically productive 2014!

Here are 6 free Sample Chains for the Elektron Octatrack:

Using Generated Game/Chip Sound Samples, they were processed with Plogue Chipcrusher.

Assembled into 16 slice sample chains for the Elektron Octatrack, Enjoy!

These sample chains have been aligned so that they are evenly spaced and ready for importing and auto Slicing via the Octatrack’s Audio Editor. Each sample contains 16 notes, so you’ll want to use the 16 Slice Grid.

Download here:

Chipcrushed Sample Chains

Download Cuckoo’s Piano

More info and link here:
http://www.patreon.com/share?hid=135617

This freebie SoundFont works well with the wonderful Plogue Sforzando virtual instrument: