Soundtoys set the much-loved Effect Rack plugin free (for a limited time)

Soundtoys are letting you use their Effect Rack plugin – usually only available with the superb Soundtoys 5 bundle – for free, until 30 June.

This is a powerful and creative multi-effects plugin that enables you to create processing chains using 14 classic Soundtoys effects; the likes of EchoBoy and PrimalTap for delay, Decapitator and Radiator for analogue-style saturation, and Tremolator and FilterFreak for powerful rhythmic modulation and filtering.

As well as being able to chain these effects, you can also customise the processing with a set of global controls.

There’s a Recycle knob for creating feedback loops, for example, and a global Mix control for parallel processing. You can save favourite chains as presets.

In a bid to get you to ‘stay@ home and create’, Sonible and Focusrite have made their Balancer plugin free until at least 4 May. This promises to balance your audio tracks automatically in a matter of seconds.

Thanks to AI technology, Balancer can ‘listen’ in to any audio material for a few seconds, then use the information that it gathers to automatically correct deficiencies in the spectral balance of the signal. To help the plugin out, you can select from different profiles, which tell Balancer what kind of instrument or voice it’s working with.

Balancer features Sonible’s smart:engine, which is used to power its smart:comp, smart:EQ 2 and smart:EQ live plugins. It runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats.