Five plugins this week worth paying attention to. Mastering the Mix's Carbon Q is the most architecturally unusual: a networked EQ that communicates between every instance in your session in real time. IK Multimedia announced a 60-player Italian string orchestra, BLEASS shipped a spectral reverb with per-band decay shaping (and unusually, Linux support), Sinee released a version 2 of their Kikzilla kick-bus processor, and FRCTL Audio put out a free granular sampler that is genuinely simple to use.
Carbon Q, Mastering the Mix
$55 intro (30% off until November 6) / $80 regular, VST3 / AU / AAX, Mac and Windows
Carbon Q is an eleven-band EQ built to operate across an entire session at once. The idea: you place a MIX instance on your output channel and Agent instances on your individual tracks, typically vocals, music, drums, and bass. Every instance can see every other instance. From any one of them, you can view and adjust the tonal balance and relative volume of each part against the full mix.
The eleven bands are fixed at 20, 30, 60, 120, 240, 480, and 960 Hz, then 1.92, 3.84, 7.68, and 12 kHz, with ±9 dB per band. There is no free-range parametric here. The philosophy is that tonal balance decisions at the mastering stage happen in those regions, and locking the bands creates a common language across all instances. Three of the bands can operate in Dynamic Mode, responding to signal level rather than applying static cuts or boosts.
The Smart Preset system runs an analysis of your session against reference tracks, splits the references into stems, matches tonal balance by section, and surfaces the ten closest presets. All EQ moves are level-matched in real time, so A/B comparisons reflect only tonal changes and not loudness differences.
The session-wide communication is the thing that does not exist anywhere else in this price range. Fabfilter Pro-Q 4 has a match curve function. iZotope's tools can cross-analyze tracks. Carbon Q makes the cross-session view the primary interface, not a secondary feature.
For whom: mixers and mastering engineers who work within a predictable session structure and want a quick, referenced way to balance the tonal relationship between stems. Less useful if your workflow involves free-form EQ shaping rather than balance correction.
Sinphonica Maestosa Strings, IK Multimedia
$399 intro / $499 regular, Pre-order now, releases October 8, AU / VST3 / AAX, Mac and Windows
IK Multimedia recorded 60 players across five string sections in Rome for Sinphonica Maestosa Strings, their follow-up to the original Sinphonica library. The five sections are Violins I, Violins II, Violas, Cellos, and Double Basses, each sold separately ($149–$199) or together as a complete collection at the intro price.
The recording setup captured the ensemble through eight microphone perspectives in a large Italian concert hall, giving users control over the depth and positioning of the recorded space. IK says the articulation sets cover more than 40 articulations including sustains, staccatos, spiccatos, tremolos, harmonics, and col legno, with five True Legato styles and round-robin variation within articulations to reduce machine-gun repetition on fast passages.
Sinphonica Maestosa Strings is a standalone plugin, available in AU, VST3, and AAX formats. Unlike IK's earlier SampleTank-based instruments, this ships as a self-contained instrument. The Articulation Morphing system allows crossfading between playing styles in real time, and the PALCO Virtual Stage Positioning tool adjusts the apparent position of each section on a virtual stage.
At $399 intro the library competes directly with the mid-tier of the orchestral sample library market. The Italian string character, recorded in Rome, differs from the British ensemble sound of Spitfire's offerings or the Berlin Strings aesthetic.
For whom: composers and producers who work in the Italian orchestral tradition or who want a full-range string ensemble with hall acoustics at a competitive price point.
Pre-order Sinphonica Maestosa Strings →
Spectral Reverb, BLEASS
$39 desktop / $13 iOS, VST3 / AU / AAX, Mac, Windows, Linux, iPadOS
BLEASS Spectral Reverb, released September 24, processes audio in the frequency domain rather than feeding it into a convolution engine or a feedback delay network. The signal is decomposed into frequency bins, and each bin's reverb tail parameters, decay time, attack, stereo width, can be shaped independently across the spectrum using what BLEASS calls Spectral Maps: per-parameter frequency curves drawn by mouse or touch.
The practical consequence: you can make the lows of a snare decay much longer than the highs, or set the upper frequencies to bloom more slowly than the fundamentals, or pull the stereo width down on a specific frequency band while leaving the rest wide. Most reverbs give you one set of parameters across all frequencies. Spectral Reverb gives you a separate curve for each parameter.
Four processing slots host six spectral processors beyond the core reverb: Spectral Gate, Harmony Follow (which aligns the tail to harmonic content for pitched reverb effects), Spectral Ducker, Spectral Enhancer, Pitch Shifter, and Frequency Shifter. The combination turns it into a design tool as much as a spatial processor.
Linux support is notable. BLEASS typically ships VST3/AU/AAX for desktop and AUv3 for iOS. Native Linux support via VST3 is not common for boutique plugin developers, and at $39 this is one of the more feature-complete spectral processors available on that platform.
For whom: sound designers and producers who want per-frequency control over reverb decay, and Linux users who have been underserved in the spectral processing category.
Kikzilla 2, Sinee Audiotools
$79 intro / $99 regular, VST3 / AU, Mac and Windows (no AAX)
Sinee Audiotools built Kikzilla 2 around the idea that the kick bus is not just a mixing destination but a place where you design the low-end relationship between the kick drum and the sub content underneath it. Version 2 expands the original Kikzilla into three parallel sections.
The Rumble section generates sub-frequency content independently, using a synthesized signal that can be pitched, shaped, and sidechain-triggered by the kick. The Bass section provides a separate effects chain for the bassline signal running through the same bus. The Kick section handles the kick drum itself. All three routes feed into a final combined output chain. The routing logic means you can adjust the relationship between what the kick sounds like, what the sub sounds like, and how they combine, without leaving the plugin.
100 presets are included from producers Cortechs and SINEE. The init preset starts from scratch if you want to build the relationship yourself.
The absence of AAX is a real limitation for Pro Tools users. Otherwise, the architecture solves a specific problem in club and electronic music production: making kick and sub work as a coherent low-end system rather than two separate signals that happen to share frequencies.
For whom: electronic music producers in techno, house, and club genres who spend time tuning the kick-to-sub relationship. Kikzilla 2 codifies that workflow into a single plugin with dedicated sections for each element.
GRNi Lite, FRCTL Audio (indie pick)
Free, VST3 / AU / CLAP, Mac, Windows, Linux
GRNi Lite is a stripped-down version of FRCTL Audio's full GRNi granular sampler. Released October 3, it operates on a single sample slot: load a file, mark the region you want to granularize, set the root note, and play. The three main controls are SIZE (grain length, from short and glitchy to long and smooth), DENSITY (number of simultaneous grains, from sparse to a solid cloud), and ROOT (tuning offset). Each held note grows its own independent grain cloud from the same sample.
The simplicity is intentional. GRNi Lite has no effects chain, no modulation matrix, no second sample layer. Those live in the paid GRNi at $44.99. Lite exists as a no-friction entry point: no serial key, no time limit, no registration.
CLAP format support alongside VST3 and AU is consistent with FRCTL's approach on their other plugins. Linux support via VST3 and CLAP makes it usable across all three major platforms.
Granular synthesis has a reputation for requiring deep setup before it sounds good. GRNi Lite's three-knob interface is a deliberate argument against that reputation. Drop any sample, play a note, adjust SIZE and DENSITY. The result is not going to replace a modular granular environment, but for anyone who wants to quickly generate textured pads or stretched ambiences from their own recordings, this does it without a tutorial.
For whom: producers and sound designers who want a fast granular tool for texture generation, especially Linux users where free granular options are limited.
Five this week. Carbon Q's intro discount runs until November 6. Sinphonica Maestosa Strings releases October 8 from pre-order. Sinee Kikzilla 2's intro price has no published end date. BLEASS Spectral Reverb is at its regular price. GRNi Lite is permanently free.