United Plugins caused a stir when it launched in June – three different effects built by three different developers? That’s different, we thought. There’s a strategy at play of course and if the coming together of several big brains from the audio industry results a world with a greater net total of cool audio plugins,…
Ahh, sibilance. Crucial for intelligibility, but lethal in high doses. And if you’re stacking your vocal tracks, that goes triple. The battle may be a little closer to won with the Tonmann De-Esser, a great little free plugin from Tonmann. Check out the spiel from the website: “Tonmann DeEsser is a basic high frequency dynamic…
We love the team at Kuassa. They’re cool cats and they build some of the best guitar-centric plugins out there (the Amplifikation Creme is a particular favourite). So we decided to track them down (to Indonesia) to find out more. Chairman and CTO Arie Ardiansyah and CEO Grahadea Kusuf were kind enough to answer our…
Tracktion is excellent software for those looking to get into home recording. Everything you need is here: a simple drag and drop interface, full mixer functionality (with plugins) and an unlimited number of tracks available for creating that rock opera epic. Here’s the spiel from Tracktion: “This is no ‘Lite’ version, we do not impose…
Check out these free Marshall guitar cabinet impulse responses from Laptop Guitarist! We decided to test the tone of each of the four speakers loaded into our trusty Marshall 1960 Lead cabinet. We were amazed at the diffence between speakers and decided to capture the unique tonal characteristics of the whole cabinet and put it…
I don’t know why, but whenever I hear the news that Mercuriall has released a new plugin, I just about stroke out – in a good way. Actually, I do know why I do that – their plugins are amongst the baddest-ass of any on the market. Now they’ve gone and done the unthinkable, creating…
I sometimes catch myself wondering these days: just how useful are these vintage emulations of classic hardware? Surely, with all the tech tools at our disposal these days we don’t need to stay stuck with designs from the 50s, right? Wrong! Audio junkies love vintage emulations and this one’s pretty cool. Now this free plugin…
There are few compressors more coveted than the legendary LA-2A compressor by Teletronix. The electro-optical compressor is famous for its gentle transparent compression, making it the perfect choice for pristine vocal levelling, bass and drums, or anything that requires gentle dynamic reduction or additional warmth. Free plugin versions are rare, so this is a sweet…
Good quality, free drum kit VSTIs are few and far between. We’ve covered a couple in these pages, but none compare to the thoroughly excellent free SSD5 demo from Steven Slate Drums. It’s a full working kit, free of limitations, except one: the free version comes with just one kit, instead of the myriad instruments…
The cool cats at Audio Assault are pretty good at making kick-ass plugins that don’t break the bank. From smashing metal amps to distortion and compression effects – to the recent release of the mighty HellBeast – we like their style, so we thought it was time to interview them. We’re in New Zealand however…
LAPTOPGUITARIST.COM 