Tool Much Fun 11
More suggestions noted and investigated. More ads tapped on. I brave the various social media sites that you may have deleted your accounts for to gather and cherrypick the items of interest.
This edition we have Mac, Presets, Graphics, Photography, Fonts, Music, Kontakt, iOS, Chat, Samples, Video, Animation, Social Media, AI, Cloud computing, and Filesharing.
Mac
A reverse firewall to prevent apps of your choosing from accessing the internet and thus phoning home for whatever reason they are trying to. Also available in a bundle with their other networky tools such as Murus Pro, Snail and Adsorb.
A free mac app cleaner with source files available for those who like to ensure the software is doing what it says so on the tin.
Self-proclaimed “most customizable window manager”. You had me at window manager though. Plus, clipboard history feature that saves items to iCloud for syncing! If I had a mouthful of coffee, it would be spitting out now.
Keep those pears clean
Mac admin
Enhance and improve Apple’s Keychain by adding multi-factor and multi-peer security so secrets aren’t stored on any single device - but spread across multiple devices and even multiple users. Currently in private beta.
Presets
Warp up to 16 segments of your audio with this add-on for the underrated Beam plugin. I’m all for interfaces to be pleasing but my only note is that there seems to be a large amount of space taken up with visuals just for looks rather than functionality. Compare with Cableguys.
Beam me up
No box included
Sonicspore Natura Chill Vibes for Vital
“75 Nature-Inspired presets for serene soundscapes” for the free Vital synth.
AAS is underrated. It’s been assembling this huge library of packs for its products, few of which overlap so you don’t need to worry much about doubling up.
100 “Ambivalent soundscapes” for Tracktion Myth.
Made a mystique in navigation — now lost in the forest
Graphics
Icon library for developers and designers. Mostly clean and modern rather than my old favorite skeuomorphic.
Photography
open source digital photo manager Supports libraries of over 100,000 images, supports raw files and XMP metadata.
Fonts
Looking for a refreshing break from Helvetica? Try this. I quite like it actually, but don’t get much work that needs that clean Swiss style.
It looks… a little better?
Swiss style
The design application that many love to hate just upped its game by signing contracts with a font company many also love to hate (but love their library) Monotype. Over 1355 fonts now available, once you let them charge your credit card monthly.
So tasty
A gorgeous rounded edge sans serif that will replace VAG Rounded in your font menu I hope.
Got my mojo risin’
Very attractive, modern fonts that go beyond workhorses and head into design for design’s sake.
14 open-source typefaces, mostly neat, phlegmatic faces that will give your piece a slightly European flavour.
Social Media
ICYMI - I found this in 2019 but didn’t have this blog then.
Automatically post to Instagram, Facebook Pages and Groups, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest & TikTok. No Threads? Bulk uploading and automatic image watermarking features available.
Music
Free suite of piano and synth plugins.
Mac/Linux coming soon. Programming is hard! Be patient!
Here’s a company so unmotivated to sell to Mac users that they haven’t bothered updating their site to say if it works on the latest version of macOS. So now we don’t know if it officially won’t work on anything past Catalina or they just haven’t bothered to have anyone test it. If you don’t own a mac you could at least give a licence to a reviewer who would gladly test it.
I like to move it move it
Strange because their other item coreFX suite is listed as officially working up to Ventura.
Seamlessly pan your audio sources in any speaker configuration, up to 16 in/out, plus Surround panning, mixing, routing, bass management and more.
They also make Cut-it and Boom-it, plus some sound packs. Not cheap, but Surround Sound stuff rarely is.
It’s called a wideband stereo compressor on their products page. Seems to be quite fully featured and even includes a little four band EQ to further complicate or simplify things. Not to mention a limiter, clipper, delta signal monitor and resizable interface. This company is one I would probably own more of if I had found out about them sooner in my plugin journey. They have 22 available.
It does impress me much
Free analog single core saturator. I don’t know what that means. It only uses one core of my CPU? I’ll grab this for later but I already bought Cyberdrive and have a couple other saturators that haven’t had much use either.
Free bass amp sim with “unique distortion”. A couple of warnings: as of press time. Audio Assault hasn’t renewed their domain certificate so Firefox warns you of this. If this worries you, run for the hills. They have been around a few years and I have bought a few ampsims from them. Other thing is they like many vendors have moved to a downloader app, so you have to install that first.
Keep it moist with BassTR
No confusion
It was tough back in NAM
Moar amp sims! For the guitarist who loves all the different tones and can hear the difference between them. Although the homepage is loaded with ads, I can forgive them because the market is “saturated” with amp sims and it's hard to make a buck. They also sell profiles for IK TONEX and make three plugins but their technology choices have made them Windows only.
Free. They also make the purchasable ToneSuite Ecocide and Amp Suite Rev F amp sims.
Plugin looks fine… the website needs work
Seems to be a synth tailored for making Bass in psyttrance style music. Includes a sampler which can import WAVs. They also do a range of other instruments and have some free effects I will never have time to try out. Note: This was the company that chose to make a website that basically won't let you view it on a mobile device, even if you choose “request desktop website”. I think it’s because of all the kooky animations in the menus and buttons. I don't feel this is a good idea— lots of amateur musos like to browse stuff on their phones on their way to or from their day jobs.
Being one of the larger companies I don’t really want to give them extra exposure, but their interface game is rather strong lately. This one is a reverb that has some of that sweet resonance unmasking technology to help give some space to the sound rather than muddying it up with the frequencies added by the reverb.
Where's Lyra Belacqua?
Rave Generation Rave Distortion
“inspired by various hardware devices, including distortion and overdrive pedals, synthesizer filters, EQs, mixing consoles, and filter banks”
They also do a few more plugins Sonic Sweep: a filter, and Sonic Spread for widening, Rave Station: a channel strip/multifx and a couple of sample packs.
She’s got it where it counts
ICYMI— Soundbridge
Here’s a DAW that seemed to have missed its place in the zeitgeist, never mentioned when people reel off lists of DAWs. The interface reminds me of a hybrid of Cubase and Tracktion. It appears to have all the usual features so I’m not sure if its a lack of marketing that’s holding it back.
You've heard of the Bridge of Sighs, this is the Bridge of Sounds.
The Loopademy could use a touch of color
Although this company is not from the Australian state that takes up a huge percentage of its landmass, we can forgive them for that. They have joined ADSR and others in releasing a sample librarian which offers you their range of samples.
A new challenger to Native Instrument’s ubiquitous Kontakt. This audio engine/ MPE-capable sampler itself is free, but comes with no free samples or tasters from what I can see, so you have to buy at least one expansion pack/instrument to get started. They have released three so far and they don’t seem too expensive. Hopefully someone will release a free one shortly so we can try it properly.
When you start work on a song you need to create a filename, and the date is saved of course, but what else do you need to know about what you should do next time you work on it? On macOS you can move the session to a folder and tag it, but what about parts inside the song? Is one bit too empty, the other too long? You can type in the inbuilt notes section. Logic Buddy lets you organize your in-song todo list by tagging individual parts of your song.
I was hesitant to include this because of Unison’s reputation of blowing big dollars on Youtube ads a few years back to try to persuade us to buy their Midi Chord Pack. There is something annoying about seeing the same ad repeatedly when it’s for something you don’t want — and for some people — think shouldn’t exist in the first place.
But the product wasn’t made to cause harm, they are merely making something for people who either can’t play or want a quicker way of getting ideas, without keying everything by hand. It’s not really that different from Suggester if you think about it.
In any case they started making plugins too and this is one for achieving the drum sound from the ubiquitous 808.
Rising audio company Mixwave adds to the vintage tube compressor market with Level, modeled on a Gates STA Level, which is OK if you’ve never heard of. Includes an age knob and vintage switch to add characteristics from well-seasoned hardware.
Craft your specs
Resonance suppression plugin. compare with Waves Equator.
The third tom is you
Tom Wagner’s Decidedly Indie Drums
Requires the free Decent Sampler, iOS version of which is here.
A PWYW (which could be nothing at all) plugin designed for vocals. There was no feature list I could see but the knobs are heat, drive, sheen, girth, cup, wash, call and pain. So before you chuckle to yourself, it is ostensibly aimed at people who like making music but haven’t yet learned about the traditional technical names of attributes.
A “spectral gate” plugin. I can’t immediate audialize what that sounds like so I have to try the free version. They also make a number of other effects plugins such as SunBurnt, a multi-curve reverb delay.
Samples
Neddie's Dubstep Essentials - THE EPIC DRUM KIT
25 Free Snares
Gotta have a mean logo
84 basses (good start), 20 kicks, 10 each of claps, hihats and FX.
Propacks Dark Cinematic Trap Loops
Over 140 melody loops for dark cinematic trap, consisting of synths, strings, 808-style drum loops.
Consisting of 50 Kicks, 60 Snares, 55 Claps, 25 Rims, 45 Hats, 10 Rides, 31 808s, 10 Clanks, 15 Basses and 6 “silly sounds”.
Not necessarily recorded here
106 one shots recorded with two mics. This one nearly eluded me because I lost the link and neither DDG nor Google understood my search terms. It doesn't help that the vendor name is only one character different to “ebay”.
A library of over 300,000 sound effects, in categories like Whoosh, Walla, Water, Weather and others not beginning with a W.
Dr Samples’ Modern Country Drum Samples
I’m not sure if drums in country songs technically sound all that different from rock, blues or jazz but I suppose you don’t want to be caught buying jazz drums if you’re a country player.
Includes 8-bit, hiphop, phonk, horror, atmosphere & liminal spaces, 90s retro and more.
Sixteen GB worth of 600 multisampled sounds including but not limited to drones, pulses, rhythmic beds, tonal impacts and effects.
Kontakt Instruments
Midiwood Instruments Black Lotus
African instruments, primarily percussion based. Includes Dundun, Frame Drum, Sticks, Reed Shaker, Bass Marimba, Reed Pipe, Bow, Bamboo Pipe plus Grooves and Effects. Compare with Psst Instruments and Loops de la Creme.
You think I should add more drums?
A range of drum stuff in Konkakt, WAV and Slate Trigger (rare). Free sampler is on the way if you sign up for more emails.
Stratum if you got ’em
Cinematique Instruments Stratum
A blending of genuine and synthesised strings. Over 70 sounds to mashup.
Free “world class” piano recorded with every string plucked using a “massively over-sized” nylon guitar pick. Taster for their Prepared Studio Grand piano, which isn’t free. Includes a range of their inbuilt effects. I like 8DIO. I think they offer good quality instruments and most of their range is a reasonable price.
100 presets for epic pads, textures and soundscapes using Infiltrator.
Rise and shine
Project manager with a focus on calendars. Allows you to protect long blocks of your precious time from interruption so you can get more done.
Subscription based calendar app that combines your events, maps, contacts and weather into a single place.
Create customizable QR codes from within an app. Free!
App Store direct link. Attractive and full featured habit tracking app that continues the tradition of being subscription based even though they don’t necessarily add features every year.
Helps you track habits, build routines, journal, improve sleep, and more, plus motivation via competing with your friends. Currently in beta — sign up to try.
ICYMI
Cardhop
Full-featured Contacts management app from the makers of Fantastical, if you find the built in Contacts app a little flat and lacking — please note I have never seen anyone rave about Apple Contacts the way I’ve seen raving about the almost-as-bland Apple Notes. Includes interesting features such as a relationship graph. Multi (Apple) platforms - Mac, iOS and the mysterious Vision too.
Video
Asset Library of transitions, overlays, textures and effects. Transitions include burning paper, punched hole, wipe & light leak.
Even more extensive asset library — over 2 million assets, including videotemplates, stock footage, royalty-free music and sound effects and a range of plugins for AfterEffects, Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut. Subscription based.
Any way you cut it
Analyse a video file or EDL and detect all the cuts, then generate a Cut Track and markers. Could be useful.
Hard to know which category to put this one in. It’s a Chrome extension for YouTube video creation. Create titles, thumbnails and scripts, monitor keywords and other analytics.
Development
AIsk me anything
“macOS native app designed to remove all the friction involved in iterating on your local files with the most powerful language models”
Seems to use Claude 3.5 Sonnet to help you write and review your code.
Training
I looked up how to do something in the powerful but unintuitive Final Cut Pro and found one of Jenn’s YouTube videos. She was thoughtful, knowledgeable and well paced.
Looks a little Linuxy
Looks familiar
Chat
A module you can add to your websites to allow chat with Slack users directly in your website.
“iMessage for Android and the web”. Seems to be free. You have to install a server on a Mac for it to work.
Bolta lightning
AI
Code-focused AI powered tool for writing, reviewing and testing.
Taking on giants like Hootsuite, Bolta offers multiple account management, unlimited scheduling, a unified inbox, and analytics all using a browser extension to handle Threads posts.
“Where knowledge begins” they said. It will be fun they said. I can’t find what this is supposed to be; it appears to be some combination of AI-based search and news articles. All wrapped up into one convenient place? Signup required to save your “threads“
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing for sale. Working this way may be unfamiliar to many of you who have been slaving away over your warm keyboard attached to your desktop or laptop. This company seems to let you hire virtual machines so the actual computing is being done on their servers, presumably privately, and your computer just access them remotely over the internet. Team collaboration features such as file sharing allow your team to have access to files without having to use some other cloud syncing service.
All the toys and tools (not included)
We live in the future
Admin looking its best
File Sharing
Privacy focused online storage, but the servers are based in Estonia. 100MB free account to try out, then up to 2TB. Includes features like hidden folders in case someone is behind you or monitoring your screen remotely, and anonymous sign up.
This concludes our adventure for today. But fear not. So many new items were found during the making of this one that yet again they have spilled over into the next edition. You’ll see me there!