The KVR Developer Challenge 2007 is KVRs second audio plug-in/application design event, a challenge to create and release a brand new free audio plug-in or audio application that will benefit the community at large.
The challenge has already entered the voting stage (September 17th and end on October 22nd), with 41 entries to consider for a top 5 vote list.
The Windows platform dominates in this years batch (similar to last year), with just 3 Mac plug-ins, and 1 Linux entry (which is the multi-platform LFO-driven MIDI arpeggiator hypercyclic by mucoder.)
I have yet to give most of these entries more than a few minutes of my time, so I can’t really say which ones are my favorites.
On a first glance, the following ones look promising to me:
- Bagels (Stefan Hållén), an instrument that utilizes up to 12 resonant bandpass filters instead of oscillators, giving it a different sound while maintaining flexibility and tweakability.
- The Element of Surprise (Ugo), dedicated to creating randomly generated presets, for fast inspiration and experiments in spontaneous song writing. The interface is simple, but under the hood there is a full synth with multiple oscillators, filters, various types of modulation, and effects, all optimized to provide a wide variety of usable randomly generated sounds.
- Blip (Nicolas Fournel), a sound design program / loop creator / performance tool. The concept behind Blip is to create innovative sounds and loops by drawing with the usual graphic tools (pencil, airbrush, lines). The classic painting functions take a whole other dimension, as they create melodies and rhythms in the musical domain.
- ellipsis (arcDev Noise Industries), a VST loop player designed specifically for live use, featuring BPM-synced queueing and playback of whole & subdivided wave files.
- truc (de la Mancha / Sink), a multi-effect VST plug-in, with 4 banks of effects controlled by the movement of 2 pucks. The top puck controls the wet/dry level and/or volume of each effect bank, the bottom puck modulates any 4 of 13 parameters within the effect banks. This allows continuous morphing of the sound by moving the pucks to vary the impact of each effect bank.
Over the next few weeks I will digg a bit deeper, but in the meantime, why don’t you share with me which plug-ins you’re excited about and why.
