World · Union Post UK
Lunacy , the audio company that describe themselves as built for exploration and imagination, has opened up NOVA , which they tell us is a new platform that will translate music makers' ideas into shareable tools, effects, and virtual instruments. Here's the full details direct from the company... In its first phase, NOVA will feature a collection of community-created plug-ins that work in any DAW, from lo-fi cassette drift to otherworldly pianos.
Later this year new features, including ways for users to build and tweak custom plug-ins and instruments, will roll out. As the platform evolves, the community will be directly involved in shaping it. The vision for NOVA is grand: NOVA will let artists, producers, and audio creators craft miniature creative worlds from scratch, then share them with a simple link and remix them with other creators, right in the browser.
"Imagine if you could build any musical instrument you can imagine. Soon, NOVA will let you. Once it is fully launched later this year, you'll be able to dream up any sonic idea or playground, then turn that into a music tool, and then share it with the world with a single link," muses Casey Kolb, Lunacy co-founder and CEO.
NOVA opens up the creative process rather than confining it to a single software environment, such as a specific DAW, or plug-in. Most audio creation is stuck in decades past. Creators are limited to whatever decisions the developer makes for any given product.
They open the plug-in, browse through dozens of kick drum sounds, settle for a sound that's close enough, and then accept that sharing a project means emailing a .zip file and praying the other person has the same instruments and effects installed. NOVA will change this. At launch, music makers will be able to use instruments from a collection created by Lunacy and the company's close partners that will work on the web and in DAWs.
When NOVA's Builder features roll out later this year, when a project is created, anyone will be able to play it, remix it, or use it in their own projects via the free, cross compatible host plugin. "Say someone makes a step sequencer and shares it," explains Kolb. "You open it and wish you could add a custom shimmer reverb to the end of the signal chain.
You can add that, then you can share your new version with a friend, and that friend expands it further. The tools are never fixed; they are always evolving." Music is ripe for this fluid and evolving approach, as the last creative discipline to transition to completely shareable web-based collaborative environments. NOVA makes this transition: everything in NOVA stays seamlessly synchronized between the browser and users' DAWs, allowing them to move fluidly between the two and follow inspiration wherever it takes them.
They can build, share, remix, and create fluidly, without numerous local installs, license keys, or compatibility friction. NOVA is launching with dozens of virtual instruments, many of them free to play and play with. They include quirky takes on traditional instruments (piano, strings, vibraphone, bass) and synthesizers that produce specific, unexpected results. (See full details on a selected group of apps below.) "With every product, we instill soft world building.
Hard world building is like the Lord of the Rings, where every parameter is fleshed out, all the back story. Soft world building is more like Spirited Away, where nothing is fully explained. You land in some beautiful world where you don't know what's going on.
You have to explore, to tinker," reflects Kolb. "NOVA is that world for tinkering. You don't need to know how it works.
You just need ideas and imagination." Meet the NOVA Community Plug-Ins 1. Zephyr Strings (free) - A dual-layer multisampled string arp instrument built from real Budapest Strings recordings. A single Intensity macro crossfades dynamics and brightness for one expressive, mod-wheel-ready control. 2.
Good Vibes (free) - A four-velocity-layer sampled vibraphone with zero synthesis, all recorded resonance. A Sparkle macro layers reverse delay, rotor tremolo, and pitched granular texture on top. 3. Woodland Piano (free) - A four-dynamic-layer sampled upright piano with modeled key-release and pedal noise.
A Wonder macro drives a self-cascading granular delay for octave-climbing shimmer. 4. Growl - A heavy growl bass engine with a monophonic synth built on dual oscillators, a 4-op FM matrix, and a resonant bandpass filter. One Growl macro sweeps cutoff, pitch, and bitcrushing together, straight from your mod wheel. 5.
Gleam - A modal resonator synth: six tunable partials per voice ring out struck-metal tones with tails up to 20 seconds. Layered with real found-object one-shots and an 11-pattern arpeggiator for texture beyond the keys. 6. Drift Cassette - A dual-deck multisampler spanning 60+ instrument packs, crossfaded by a slow drift generator.
A nine-unit rack of tape saturation, bitcrushing, and reverb turns clean samples into lo-fi character. 7. Anima - An 8-voice phase-distortion synth with two nonlinear oscillators, wavefolding, and audio-rate feedback. Four recordable LFOs and a full mod matrix route motion to nearly a hundred destinations. 8.
Swarm - A unison synth stacking up to 16 detuned voices per oscillator across 16 distinct spread modes. Built-in chord generation and a reorderable effects rack turn single notes into massive pads. 9. Silhouettes (free) - Five distinct synthesis and sampling engines, from FM sines to additive bells to hybrid multisamples, sharing one XY-pad interface.
Each scene runs its own heavily modulated delay and reverb chain for deep ambient texture. 10. Chiptuner (free) - A single-oscillator chip synth with 16 waveforms, including band-limited NES-style pulses and additively rebuilt wavetables. A tempo-synced arpeggiator and dual-stage bitcrusher cover leads to bass, no filter required.
ABOUT LUNACY Lunacy is a creative music software company based in Los Angeles, California Founded in 2021 by composers and producers, we make products used by industry professionals across all genres We strive to make beautiful and intuitive music technology while pushing the boundaries of modern virtual instrument design. Pricing and Availability: See website. Get the latest headlines, offers and more in our great sonicstate newsletter - delivered to your in box every week
Source: Sonicstate
