Nudist Audio Newsletter #14

Hey sound-tinkerers,

It’s a short newsletter this month! I’m off on an artist retreat, focused on writing music for this stretch. If you ever get the chance to to this, I’d really recommend it. Creativity thrives with new places, uninterrupted chunks of time, and a bit of boredom (and, of course, Nudist Audio™ plugins).

I’ve been having ideas for new plugins at a breakneck pace. It remains to be seen if any of them are good ideas.

Two little updates to tickle your fancy:

1. The new free update to Fermenter is out - including a randomizer button, which, to be honest, is really fun. I can’t believe I didn’t put it in from the start.

2. I’ve also published a user manual for Fermenter! It goes into more detail on how it works and gives you some ideas for how to use it creatively.

Instead of your usual plugin recommendation, I will leave you with a plugin gripe: does anyone know why so many emulations of classic analog synths are… lame?

I’ve been playing a physical DX-7 and a Moog a lot recently, and wow - they’re truly so much more fun than any of the emulations I’ve used. Part of it is probably just that pressing buttons is more fun than clicking a mouse. But I actually think most of it is the presets.

It feels like whenever I open an emulation, nearly all of the presets are ridiculously complicated to the point of being unusable. Every single modulator and envelope is on, four effects are applied, there’s a giant reverb tail, and the result sounds like something you could only use in a cheesy Star Trek reboot. It’s like they were trying to demo all the features of their fancy new effects engine, and forgot that they actually have to sound good.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I just using the wrong plugins? Does anyone have solutions? Please! Let me know in the comments.

Hope your month is filled with excellent presets and a bit of productive boredom.

Cheers,
Caleb