Tool Much Fun 3
I’ve got another huge batch of stuff for you to check out. I have read posts and combed through replies on social media, digested email newsletters, tapped on ads and read websites for you.
Web stuff
Compare NBN Plan pricing in Australia.
Small business management online SaaS which includes Invoicing, Scheduling, Forms and more.
Scheduling & appointment management. I didn’t realize this was offered within Squarespace.
New aggregator site. I haven't checked what bias it might have. Compare with Quartz.
Audio
Samples
EDM, Trap, Drill, Slap House and other esoteric categories, plus Abelton Racks. Free samples.
Seems like they have only two packs, Celtic guitars and Latin guitars. No mention of more to come. Free samples.
Psytrace, ambient, glitch. Plus Vital and Serum presets, and MIDI. Wow this Serum thing could really take off 😄. Free samples.
At least 13 genres depending on how you categorize, plus synth presets.
Samples of kicks and synths, and Serum presets.
Presets (probably Serum) and samples for psytrance.
Straightforward title. Also dub, funk & soul (combined?), hiphop, ska & rocksteady (now these I can see together) and jungle.
Welcome to old skool
Audio Plugins & Apps
Anyma V physical modelling synth
Physical modeled synths can achieve sounds that are difficult to create with other kinds of synths.
This claims to “brings back the character and sound of the 80's samplers and Lo-Fi devices in one effect plug-in.”
DAC emulator for the E-mu SP-1200 and Akai S950 I think? They also make a “Dynamic Quantizer” which emulates an Electronic DQ-5010 — another item I hadn’t heard of before, but I am not a Hardware Guy. And they are working on a Sampler.
Voice to midi. “the fastest and most accurate voice pitch trackers.”
Free synth. Hopefully it is worth the visit to the horrible-to-visit github.
“free and open-source integrated development environment to create your own audio effects” Plugin or standalone.
While researching for an upcoming video on sound engines, I remembered or rediscovered this:
Free Sounds for Aria by Plogue
To use this you need the Aria Engine, the latest version could be here. This group does not make it easy to find their stuff.
Well I can see it. I wonder why the Input Gain value is so large?
I love Limiters, and hadn't heard of this one. It’s a “transparent look-ahead brickwall limiter with automatic attack/release-time optimization” from Japan. It appears the text has been translated with software rather than a bilingual human, so go easy on them for that. It is also one of the most expensive ones I’ve seen in a while. They also make a Compressor, De-esser and Ducker.
Color your sound
Multiband coloring plugin. So it saturates a bit to make a fatter sound. The controls are split into Excite, Drive and Distort if that helps you understand what it’s for.
A real-time voice creation and transformation plugin. Hard-hitting on the bank balance but you can drag a mouse around to change a voice to different voice timbres in real-time, which I don’t think anything else can do.
I’m still never sure when to use a clipper, but if you do then here is the latest one by WA Production with development participation from Emrah Celik who gives good advice online so I know he knows what he’s doing. Four bands to which you can add Punch, Bone and Fat. Bone??
Another plugin company I hadn’t heard of. Maybe I need to stay in more. Mixhead is a “digital tape saturation processor.” They also make Channel Strips, EQs, Clippers, and and Impulse Response plugin that “makes guitars sound better”.
A DAW I haven’t heard people mention. But then again they don’t mention Digital Performer which has been around for years. This one includes a Tracker and a button-style clip launcher a la Abelton Live, plus 26 stock plugins for those of you who like Stuff That Comes With Other Stuff, and a scripting module using Lua.
Visuals in Abelton Live. It requires the full version of MaxForLive.
Kontakt Libraries
Recommend by the fine folks at Soniccouture this one is made from… you guessed it… toys.
Another day, another synth
iOS mixed bag
A subtractive synthesizer with a fully customisable LFO.
iPad only app that says "accordion and harmonica" but also says it’s the sound of a 1968 analog organ.
I know some people will buy this just because of the cat icon. But it does look fully featured and competes with Goldwave
A competitor to Raindrop for saving all these links I am sharing with you.
Graphics & Design
With video as my copilot
Plugins, 3D packs and Effects for glowing, modern looking video.
Free InDesign plugin from one of the mainstays of automated layout.
Online PDF editing tools
I should just prefix this by reminding people that PDF content was never designed to be edited any more than correcting a typo, so here we’re talking about deleting or reordering pages, adding signatures and so on.
You can pay US$8 for a week pass if you only do ad-hoc PDF work.
Code Industry Master PDF editor
More stuff
Cute 3D models for gaming projects. In FBX, OBJ, glTF and Blend formats.
If you make websites and you see someone using a font you like, this extension lets you peek into the details quickly and see what the name and other attributes are.
Some would say not to post links to other news sites if you kind of aspire to be one yourself, but the internet is about sharing things. And they only do design stuff so we aren’t directly competing.
Amusingly-named tool for Mac, Windows or Linux to detect the quality of all those audio files you found.
Link-in-Bio landing page/redirection sites
Makes Tr.ee URLs
Has a free tier.
I’m tryna finish this blog post and keep finding new stuff for you!
Email marketing, templates and analytics. Aren’t we all getting way too many emails? I guess if you’re going to make them they might as well look pretty.
Link in bio plus Social Media management. Makes mtr.bio URLs. Can link to GoogleDrive and Zapier.
Link in bio plus online store, media kit and email marketing.
We have to just keep carrying the link fire
Snap your windows
I've tried many a window manager in my day. This one reminds me of Mosaic which I had trouble using in Sonoma, but no updates appear to be forthcoming.
The first URL I’ve seen with the .cool domain. This is a Mac or Windows app for "a better way to collect, search and organize your design files in a logical way and all in one place." So I guess it’s a Digital Asset Manager? They avoid calling it that on the home page. Compare with Extensis Portfolio which has been around for years.
Watch out, these next two get a bit nerdy. This is “a fast, light, and simple app to run Docker containers and Linux machines on macOS”
“Manage containers, pods, and images with Podman. Seamlessly work with containers and Kubernetes from your local environment.”
RSS reader. Back in the not-too-distant past, when you found a blog you liked you could bookmark it but also subscribe with an app that supports RSS, which includes most browsers. I’ve been using Vienna on and off, but that one hasn't had any jaw-dropping features added for a while.
AI
Don’t be worried — the following are not out to steal your jobs any more than any other site or service is. It’s just a buzzword in these cases.
“Discover your Twitter personality". The AI reads your tweets and provides an analysis.
Chrome extension for automating A/B testing. The AI component makes variations to your website to ”improve your conversion rate.”
That’s it for now. As I haven’t really said publicly, if any of the makers of these items want corrections, increased detail or even a more in-depth review, contact me to make arrangements.