The best day! Announcing the Noise Engineering plugin public beta!

You’ve been asking for plugins, and we’ve been hard at work. But now, we need your help getting them ready. Read on to see how you can get some free plugins, and a chance at testing them before anyone else!

Plugins! Plugins!

A lot of you have been asking us to make our plugins compatible with VST and AU for quite some time, and now, they’re almost ready and we need your help.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help us make sure that our plugins work in as many different places as possible. The thing is, with three plugin formats, two operating systems with nearly infinite configurations, and a huge variety of DAWs, it’s literally impossible for us to test out every possible combination for compatibility. We want YOU to try out three of our plugins in your setup and tell us what happens. They’re available as VST, AU, and AAX (64 bit only on all three), so you can try them out in a whole bunch of different hosts.

We think we’ve barbecued most of the gnarly bugs, but we want to make sure they all get squashed before we open the plugins up to everyone. At this point, you’ve probably got a big, burning question for us…

How do I sign up?

Good question! It’s pretty simple. To sign up for the Public Beta, all you need to do is create an account at the Customer Portal, and check the box that says “Sign up for the Noise Engineering Plugin Newsletter and Public Beta.”

Already have a Customer Portal account? Just log in, and on the “My Account” tab, be sure the box that says “Sign up for the Noise Engineering Plugin Newsletter and Public Beta” is checked.

And that’s it! Once you’ve done that, you’re on the list with a chance at being selected to be a part of the beta.

Each week, we’ll randomly select a group of users and add the licenses to their Customer Portal account. If you’re one of those users, you’ll get an email with instructions for installation and bug reporting. (So be sure to check that box! We can’t email you about the plugins if you don’t, so we won’t select you!)

When will I get the plugins?

This is a public beta, and it is our first venture into VST/AU so we’re going to start the beta off small: if you get picked early, you’ll have the highest chance of finding problems. Each week, we’ll add more and more users to the Public Beta.

We don’t have a set end date for the Public Beta, but even if you’re not selected, or if you just want the plugins but aren’t interested in testing, fear not. Once they are out of beta, these three plugins will remain completely free for anyone with a Customer Portal account. That’s right, everyone will eventually get them, and they will be free. Not interested in testing? Hang tight and we’ll make another announcement when they are out of beta.

What are the plugins?

You’re asking all the tough questions today, huh? Included in this release will be Sinc Vereor, Virt Vereor, and Ruina. Each plugin has a preset manager and MIDI mapping so they’ll integrate with your setup however you want to use them. They also have randomization controls so you can create completely new patches at the press of a button. Oh, did we mention that both of the synths can take Scala files? Because they can. Microtune your heart out. We’ll dive into them more post release, but here’s a nice, simple overview.

Sinc Vereor

Sinc Vereor is a synthesizer based loosely on our Sinc Iter oscillator and Ampla Versio firmware with some extra tweaks added. It’s got three modes: Noise, Plain, and Super, and a single Tone control that modifies the timbre of the oscillator in different ways for each mode. Noise is, um, a noise oscillator based on Perlin noise. Plain is a more traditional oscillator, with familiar waveforms like saw, triangle, and square, with wavefolded wackiness at the end of the Tone parameter. Super is the same as Plain, but it has 6 phase-offset oscillators instead of just one.

Then, there’s an ADSR envelope, a multimode resonant filter, a chorus, and some sample-rate and tuning controls.

Virt Vereor

Virt Vereor is another synth, and it shares some similarities with Sinc: it uses the same dynamics section inspired by the Ampla Versio, but it uses the three oscillators we created for Arturia’s MicroFreak and our upcoming Virt Iter module (yes! We are still working on it!).

There are three tone parameters this time, and they change function depending on the mode. The three modes are called Bass, Sawx, and Harm. Bass is based on an unusual algorithm described in Electronotes #73. Sawx is a supersaw-inspired monster that borrows some techniques from the Manis Iteritas. Finally, Harm is an additive mode that gives you spectral control and distortion of partials. You can read more details about each mode in our blog post about the MicroFreak oscillators here.

Virt Vereor otherwise shares a similar architecture with Sinc. You have the same ADSR envelope and filter section, as well as a chorus, sample-rate control, and tuning controls.

Ruina

Ruina is a distortion plugin very similar to our Ruina Versio module. It shares most of the same controls (yes, now you can add some DOOM to your DAW productions, too!) and gives you all sorts of unusual ways to mangle and distort sounds. Wavefolding, multiband drive, full-wave rectification, and a whole lot more are at your fingertips. Unlike the hardware module, it adds an additional filter mode as well as input and output levels and oversampling controls. And presets! Now you can share your favorite ways to DOOM with the world.

Watch out for that evil eye though. Does it ever blink?

What about that AAX bundle you released in January?

We are still testing these, but they are coming to VST and AU soon! We’re using this beta to thoroughly test our systems. Look for announcements sometime this summer.

What about Reason?

Reason users! We have not forsaken you. You were our early software adopters and we remember that. We have some special things coming for you, too, but we aren’t quite ready to launch (or announce) that yet. I can’t put a timeline on it (if 2020 taught us anything, it is that) but we’ve got lots more cooking for Rack Extensions too!