Signal Processors

The latest incarnation of Wave Arts' plug-in suite is a treat for the eyes and the ears.

With version 2 of Guitar Rig, Native Instruments are taking amp modelling into the realms of modular synthesis.

Software guitar amp modelling has been around for a while, but GTR is Waves' first foray into the field — and as you'd expect, they have made a huge effort to get it right, even hiring guitar maker Paul Reed Smith to design a bespoke preamp.

Not content with offering some of the most fully-featured digital mixers in the world, Yamaha have now upgraded them, and are offering extra effects packs to further expand their capabilities.

We check out another batch of plug-ins destined to find a place in your virtual rack.

If you are looking for effects and instruments to give your mixes a sideways slant, Cycling '74 might have just the thing...

As well as more-or-less conventional vocoding and pitch-shifting, DelayDots' new VST plug-in offers effects so bizarre they almost defy description.

Brief appraisals of another selection of software Plug-ins from Disco DSP, Cutter Music, Kjaerhus Audio and PSP.

As well as a bundle of 50-plus effects plug-ins, Quantum FX provides all the tools you need to design your own.

We check out two more useful plug-ins, one for Powercore and one for PC VST/Direct X.

Convolving reverbs are coming down in price as more manufacturers make their own. We check out Emagic's new plug-in, which is one of the more affordable ones around, but still allows you to create your own reverbs from favourite spaces.

TC's plug-in powerhouse is now available as an external Firewire-connected rack unit.

Although most major MIDI + Audio sequencing applications include bundled EQ, dynamics and reverb plug-ins, they don't always sound too great, so many users are on the lookout for alternatives, like these two from Wave Arts.

The latest technological advances in reverb design have yielded expensive hardware units that can 'sample' the sound of real rooms. Now Audio Ease's Altiverb brings the same convolving technology to the Mac — at a fraction of the cost.