TapeEngine, Colony, edgeRunner retrograde: Free Plugins of the Week
TapeEngine, Colony, edgeRunner retrograde: Free Plugins of the Week · Source: PhotonDSP, 13X Audio, Variety of Sound
TapeEngine delivers tasty tape saturation and lo-fi sounds, Colony is a vintage-style multi-effect with heaps of energy, and edgeRunner retrograde breathes analog character into modern productions: Free Plugins of the Week!
Free Plugins of the Week
PhotonDSP TapeEngine: Advanced Tape Simulator
TapeEngine by PhotonDSP is a free tape simulation plugin designed to bring the character and personality of analog tape to your digital productions. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel (there are plenty of other plugins that do roughly the same thing), TapeEngine offers an unusual degree of control.
In addition to Tone and Saturation, TapeEngine offers a Tape Motion section that lets you add Wow, Flutter, and Drift. In the Stereo & Damage section, you can go wild with Skew, Crosstalk, Dropouts, and more. And the Noise & Texture section lets you add hiss, rumble, hum, and buzz to bring back memories of worn cassette tapes.
What’s great is that all of these things can be adjusted independently, so you have plenty of control. That said, you can also simply slide the main character control (the cassette tape at the top) across to adjust all parameters simultaneously and dial in anything from brand-new tape to a completely broken machine.
TapeEngine is a VST3 plugin for Windows.
13X Audio Colony: Multi-Effect with Heaps of Energy
Colony by 13X Audio is a very cool multi-effect with six cells that can be controlled individually or together. Each cell specializes in a certain type of effect. Everything combined is something of a one-stop shop for adding character, color, space and motion to your tracks.
The Drive module offers five types of overdrive, ranging from warm tube saturation to hard clipping. Pump is a sidechain compressor that lets your tracks bounce with the kick drum. Width houses chorus and ensemble effects for stereo widening, with mid-side processing and a high-pass filter to keep the bass centered. Color offers nine tone-shaping styles and an additional noise layer. Space lets you choose from six styles of reverb, and Motion is an LFO and step modulator that can do anything from rhythmic filtering to pitch wobble.
The central Energy knob controls all six cells together, and you can define how far each cell travels in the Build view. Once you get the hang of it, Colony is loads of fun and can deliver some pretty wacky sounds!
Colony is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux in VST3, AU, and standalone formats.
Variety of Sound edgeRunner retrograde: Instant Analog Character
It’s always a great day for freeware aficionados when Variety of Sound releases another one of their great-sounding free plugins. And edgeRunner retrograde is no exception. Designed to bring the depth and character of analog gear to digital productions, it combines multiple analog stages in an easy-to-use plugin.
The Color stage adds texture, warmth and depth, while leaving the original character of your tracks untouched. Saturation simulates analog processors to add punch and glue. And Distortion introduces nonlinear behavior to add audible distortion, all the way to complete destruction.
edgeRunner retrograde is available for Windows in VST and VST3 formats.
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