Sun, football and tasty new music technology releases – that’s the story of June 2021. Here are the five of the latter that topped our list…

Accusonus Find Their Voice

Masters of the ‘few-knobs’ plugin, Accusonus revealed their latest effect in the closing days of May, and it’s a cracker. Voice Changer does exactly what it says on the virtual tin, transforming any spoken word input into all manner of realistic and sci-fi/fantasy-type characters.

The knobs in this case number just three – Character, Effect and Environment. The first dials in the amount of change applied to the voice, with a menu below selecting from a range of Human (‘Epic Movie Trailer’, ‘Whispering’, etc), Robot (‘AI Voice’, ‘Female Robot’, etc) and Super-Natural (‘God’, ‘Ghost’, ‘Dragon’, etc) beings; Effect applies various playback device sims (‘Phone’, ‘Radio’, ‘VHS’, etc); and Environment adds real-world reverb (‘Room’, ‘Stadium’, ‘Cave’, etc).

And that’s really all there is to it! A library of presets provides plenty of starting setups, and expansion packs are due to be added regularly. With its refreshingly simple approach to voice conversion and zippy workflow, Voice Changer is sure to find a place in the plugins folders of time-pressed sound designers across the media and post industries.

Arturia Expand Their FX Collection

With the addition of seven new plugins taking the total up to 22, Arturia’s FX Collection package now rivals their epic V Collection of virtual synths in number, presenting a similarly comprehensive array of classic and vintage emulations, from the Urei 1176 compressor (Comp FET-76) and Neve 1073 preamp (Pre 1973) to the EMT 140 reverb (Rev PLATE-140) and Minimoog ladder filter (Filter MINI).

The septet of newcomers in FX Collection 2 comprises three that have actually been around for a while in the form of 3 Modulation FX You’ll Actually Use, the JUN-6 chorus that was made available for free at the end of last year, and a trio of completely new bus-orientated processors. The Bus Force channel strip is one of only two original designs in the Total FX bundle (the other being Delay ETERNITY), but its parallel EQ, filter, compressor and saturation modules are “inspired by” the Pultec EQP-1A, SEM filter and Overstayer Modular Channel. Comp DIODE-609 and EQ SITRAL-295, meanwhile, recreate the super posh Neve 33609 diode compressor/limiter and revered Siemens W295 EQ.

The four modulation plugins aren’t as intriguing or esoteric as those three, but there’s no disputing their historical significance or enduring desirability. Chorus JUN-6 does the Roland Juno-6 chorus; Phaser BI-TRON nails the Mu-Tron Bi-Phase dual phaser pedal; Flanger BL-20 apes the little-known Bel BF-20 stereo flanger; and Chorus DIMENSION-D, of course, virtualises the Roland Dimension-D chorus.

A compelling and comprehensive analogue-style signal processing toolkit, FX Collection 2 is clearly a great upgrade for existing users, and well worth a look for everyone else. Find out more in Brent March’s review.

Apogee Remake Their Mobile Recording Classic

With its stellar audio quality, classy looks and straightforward operation, Apogee’s Duet audio interface has been hugely popular among mobile Mac and (much later) PC musicians since its initial release in 2007. The third iteration of the hardware evolves the quietly iconic Duet design into an even sleeker slab of aluminium and scratch-resistant glass than that of v2, with the control knob made bigger and gaining a delicious purple backlight, and the OLED display replaced with a pair of LED meters. The remarkable thinness of the thing is presumably at least in part down to the move from USB-A to USB-C, and zero-latency recording with effects is now possible via DSP-powered integration with the (not included, but half-price for Duet 3 owners) Symphony ECS Channel Strip plugin, which includes a library of presets by Bob Clearmountain.

Beyond that and a new mixer application, it’s business as usual for the Duet 3 – two ins and four outs on a break-out cable and headphone minijack; up to 24-bit/192kHz recording; top-notch Apogee preamps and converters; USB bus powering – which, we’re sure, will prove every bit as much a hit as its superb predecessor.

Apogee Duet 3 - New Compact Desktop Interface Announced

Krotos Elevate Their Concept

Aiming to appeal to newcomers and expert sound designers alike, Krotos Audio’s Concept synth was one of the standout virtual instrument releases of 2020. Its wonderfully user-friendly interface made serious synthesis as easy as it’s ever likely to get, and the sounds it produced were fantastic, most notably its pads. Just over a year after launch, June saw the release of Concept 2, introducing two new headline features and a few lesser improvements and tweaks.

Each of Concept’s two source signal generators can now be switched between their original analogue oscillator models and an all-new Granular oscillator, into which any of a huge library of bundled samples or those from your own collection can be loaded for slicing into grains and manipulating in all sorts of ways: grain size, playback direction and speed, randomisation and more. This, in itself, radically alters the overall scope of the synth, and the new Advanced Shape module proves equally game-changing in the modulation department, adding to the existing LFO, Envelope, Audio Input, XY Capture and Mod Wheel options with a ten-breakpoint LFO/envelope generator.

Other than that, upgraders can also look forward to a ton of new presets (now over 700, including artist contributions by Roni Size, Richard Devine and Kayla Painter) and Convolution Reverb impulse responses (now over 160), plus the ability to import your own WAVs as impulse responses, and significantly lower CPU usage. Perhaps best of all, though, the Concept 2 update is free for registered users of version 1 – go get it!

Krotos Concept 2 review

Tracktion Software Swear By Their New FM Synth

Although best known as makers of the excellent Waveform DAW, Tracktion Software have established a moderately sizeable roster of interesting plugin synthesisers over the last few years, and the latest – launched on the last day of May – looks to be something of a beast.

Inspired by the likes of the Access Virus and Yamaha TX81Z, and built by ex-Waldorf developer Wolfram Franke, the excruciatingly named F.’Em claims to be “one of the most powerful FM synthesizers ever made” – and with each of its four Layers housing a complete 11-operator FM synthesis engine, we’d be hard pressed to disagree. Those operators go way beyond the FM norm, consisting of eight freely routable wave operators (outputting a range of shapes), two multisample operators and a noise operator, and all routed in a vast modulation matrix. The resulting tones are processed using an arsenal of filters, EQs, regular and Flow LFOs (the latter holding up to eight analogue-style or user-drawn waveforms for switching between via another modulation source), envelopes, effects and more, and an arpeggiator is onboard for chord-based melodic play and sequencing.

It’s not every day that an instrument this ambitious makes it to market, and we applaud Tracktion’s efforts to do something genuinely different in the realm of FM synthesis. DnB and other bass music heads really need to check this one out.

What grabbed your attention in June? Let us know in the comments.