Seven plug-ins for macOS,
as VST3 and Audio Unit.
Four instruments and three effects, for Logic, Cubase, REAPER or any other Mac host that loads VST3 plug-ins or Audio Units.
All seven are free to download.
Instruments. ForTran builds sounds from ten sine partials under a sweepable spectral filter — additive synthesis you shape harmonic by harmonic. FilterDrum makes drums with no oscillator at all: noise ringing through a model of the Korg MS-20 filter, with a sixteen-step sequencer that follows your bars. Project6 is an 8 × 8 grid of audio and MIDI loops that come in on the bar, for building a track as it plays. SampleDrum is a drum kit you fill by dropping in your own samples: a column for each drum on the General MIDI map, and a row for each level of velocity, so harder hits can play a different sample.
Effects. SpaceDub is a stereo dub delay whose repeats spread across the stereo field and can feed back through a resonant filter for siren sweeps. SpyBand is a vocoder with a patch matrix, so any band of one sound can drive any band of another. VocalFilter makes anything talk, shaping it into five vowels in a male or a female voice.
Where they came from and how they were built: about this project.
Universal 2 · Apple Silicon and Intel · signed with a Developer ID and notarised · macOS 10.13 or later
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ForTran
InstrumentAdditive / formant synthesiser
Ten sine partials per voice, each with its own level, phase, invert switch and ADSR, under a sweepable spectral filter with four switchable shapes. Sixteen voices, 145 parameters, and a Moog ladder on the way out.
v1.2.1.0 · 1.9 MB Details & download for ForTran → -
FilterDrum
InstrumentTwo MS-20 drum voices, struck together
Noise through a model of the Korg MS-20 lowpass into a VCA, twice over, blended by a constant-power crossfader. There is no oscillator: the filter's own ringing is the drum. A sixteen-step sequencer rides the host's bar lines, and MIDI still triggers it.
v1.1.1.0 · 1.7 MB Details & download for FilterDrum → -
Project6
Instrument8 × 8 bank of looping sample pads, launched on the bar
Drag a .wav or a .mid onto a slot, click to arm it, and it comes in when the transport crosses the next grid line. Each pad picks its own division of the bar, a box above each column launches the whole column, and nine output buses carry the mix and eight per-row direct outs.
v1.2.0.0 · 1.9 MB Details & download for Project6 → -
SampleDrum
Instrument8 × 4 drum sampler: a column per drum, a row per velocity
Drop a .wav on a cell and it plays. Each column is a drum on the General MIDI map, so any GM pattern plays the right sound with no setup, and each row is a velocity band, so a harder hit plays a different sample. A level under every cell, closed hi-hat cuts open, and your samples are saved inside the project.
v1.0.0.0 · 1.8 MB Details & download for SampleDrum → -
SpaceDub
EffectFive-tap stereo dub delay with a ladder filter in the feedback path
An eight-second delay line per channel, read at five taps panned by index so repeats spread across the image as they decay. Tap 5 can run through a four-pole Moog-style ladder and back into the line — which is where the dub-siren sweeps come from.
v2.0.1.0 · 2.2 MB Details & download for SpaceDub → -
SpyBand
EffectBand vocoder with a 22 × 22 patch matrix
Nine, twelve, eighteen or twenty-two bandpass filters on the carrier, an envelope follower on each band of the modulator, and a full matrix between them — so any band can drive any other band, not just its own. The diagonal is an ordinary vocoder; everything off it is why the plug-in exists.
v1.0.1.0 · 1.9 MB Details & download for SpyBand → -
VocalFilter
EffectThree-formant vocal-tract model
Three bandpass resonators per channel in parallel rather than cascaded, so each formant carries its own amplitude. Five vowels in an adult male and an adult female voice, with the frequencies taken from Peterson & Barney's measured means and the levels derived from them.
v1.0.1.0 · 1.7 MB Details & download for VocalFilter →
Installing
Every plug-in ships as a single signed, notarised .pkg.
Open it and the installer offers the two formats separately, so you can
take the VST3, the Audio Unit, or both:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/<Name>.vst3/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/<Name>.component
The installers for ForTran and FilterDrum also offer factory presets as a third choice.
Quit your DAW before installing — a running host holds the old copy
open. Logic rescans Audio Units on its next launch; to force it, quit Logic
and run killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar.
Formats and hosts
The Audio Unit is Steinberg's AUv2 wrapper around the same VST3 bundle, so
the two cannot drift apart. Both have been run through Steinberg's
validator and Apple's auval. The instruments
appear as aumu and the effects as aufx, all under
the manufacturer code AECo.