We don’t do sales very often–this is the second one in the history of the company–so get ‘em while they’re hot.

I’ve been remiss in tooting my own horn by mentioning that Audio Damage’s latest product, Filterstation, is now available. It’s a dual filter plug-in with 12 different filter types, three routing modes, a tempo-syncable LFO, and an envelope follower. There’s also a dual XY control for sweeping the frequency and/or resonance of either or both filters. Also of note is this is our first plug-in in Steinberg’s VST3 format, along with the usual VST2 and Audio Unit versions. All have both 32- and 64-bit binaries on both Windows and OS X.

The filter types cover all the usual modes and also include some exotic variations, such as emulations of the filters in the Korg MS-20 synthesizer and Moog 914 filter bank, and the filter from one of our very first products, FilterPod. The envelope follower lets Filterstation do a nice imitation of the Mu-Tron III envelope filter, a product that a number of people have suggested we model.

You can listen to audio demos and buy one at the Audio Damage site. It’s yours for the low, low price of $49. Operators are standing by.

In other news… Um… Well, there isn’t much other news, I guess. I’ve been toiling away on Audio Damage’s latest creation. It’s not a terribly complex plug-in but we decided to switch to Steinberg’s VST3 format as the basis of our products. We think that this is the most future-proof approach to building plug-ins currently, since Steinberg provides code to turn VST3s into Audio Units and VST2s, and also covers the 64-bit versions. We hope that Steinberg’s backing of this system will help isolate us from whatever surprises Apple throws at us next. We’re also building our own platform-independent preset system, something which Chris has been trying to talk me into for years. So, we’re doing new and interesting things, but this means learning a new plug-in framework, which–as is par for the plug-in development course–is not particularly well documented. It is kind of fun to be doing something different, however.

The other news that might be worth relating is that we’re going to Kyoto in two weeks, to take the half of the vacation we forfeited this spring in the wake of the tsunami/earthquake/nuclear disaster/rampant uncertainty/etc. It’ll be nice to get away for a bit, and it will be interesting to see Japan at a different time of year.

Finally, I’ve been putting together a set of photos of the resident felines (all six of them). I’ll try to get that put up on Flickr this weekend.

Long story short is that if you’re a musician, you may want to wait a bit before moving to OS 10.7.

It’s available now at our website, where you’ll also find some audio examples of what it does. VST on Windows, VST and AU on OS X, 32- and 64-bit versions of both. Yours for only $39, which is about 1/20 or less of what you’d be likely to pay for either an M500 or a PanScan.

As Chris announced today on his blog, Audio Damage is branching out. Specifically we’re starting to design and manufacture modules for the Euro-Rack modular synthesizer format. Our first product will be a 2-in/2-out USB1.1 class-compliant audio interface. It’s compatible with the iPad, so you can use it to conveniently add just about any iPad audio app to your Euro-Rack modular rig. Of course it will also work with a laptop or desktop computer. Hence you can use it as a convenient way to route audio between your DAW (or other audio software) and your modular. It also has DC-coupled outputs so you can use it to control your modular with software like the Silent Way suite from Expert Sleepers or Volta by MOTU, or by generating signals via your own devising with something like Max/MSP or Reaktor.

While this module is far more utilitarian in nature than Audio Damage’s software products, we realized that it would make an excellent first hardware product. Besides being extremely useful and unique in the Euro-Rack market, it’s relatively easy to manufacture. While I have a fair amount of experience with designing and building synthesizer modules and microprocessor-based devices, I’ve never taken a product from design all the way through manufacturing. However, doing hardware products is something that Chris and I have talked about doing almost as long as we’ve been talking about anything, and we finally decided the time had arrived. We think that we can make some interesting contributions to the Euro-Rack modular scene, bringing to bear both our considerable experience and success in the plug-in world and our mutual extensive experience with–and love of–synthesizer hardware. We’ve also enlisted some outside expertise to fill in our gaps. As we gain experience with manufacturing hardware products in general, our offerings will become more complex and more diverse.

We’re not abandoning software–not at all. We’ll continue making plug-ins also, and we envision products that provide novel integration between modular synths and computers.

Obviously I’m quite excited by this new venture. I think this will be the last time I can successfully turn a hobby into a business, however–I’m running out of hobbies.

Phosphor traces its roots to the alphaSyntauri synthesizer, a ground-breaking synthesizer introduced in 1979. The alphaSyntauri used an Apple ][ computer for its user interface; sound generation was handled by hardware. It offered a glimpse of the power of additive synthesis at a price more or less affordable by someone who found an Apple ][ more or less affordable. I'm old enough to remember poring over an article in BYTE magazine about the alphaSyntauri, but I never actually used one. Our inspiration and reference for constructing Phosphor was a complete alphaSyntauri system that Chris assembled from eBay finds.

Phosphor is available now for $59, in VST for Windows and VST and AU for OS X. Hit our website for more info and audio demos.