The Sound Guy has announced the release of Spectral Machine, a frequency-domain plug-in featuring a wide range of unique spectral effects, including:

• Spectral Freeze.
• Delay Spectral Bands.
• 3-band Amplitude Modulation.
• Harmonize.
• Pitch Quantization.

The Sound Guy's Earl Vickers says "6 years in the making, off and on! It's been through a few different programmers, and there were years when I thought it would never be finished. Xavier Amatriain (co-author of the Spectral Processing chapter of DAFX: Digital Audio Effects, the audio effects bible) wrote the first version of Spectral Machine starting in 2005, using a plug-in framework created by Sophia Poirier (of SFX Machine RT and DestroyFX fame). Xavier had to move on to other projects, and development continued sporadically. Then in 2009, Alessandro Saccoia (IK Multimedia & IRCAM) took over in his spare time, and now it's done. Phew! I'm pretty excited about this product. I hope you guys like it!"

What can you do with Spectral Machine

General Purpose Effects:

• Delay Spectral Bands: Apply separate delays to different spectral bands, with individual control over the amount of feedback in each band.
• Spectral Freeze: Click the "Fire" button to freeze the sound, which then decays at different rates for high and low frequencies. Click the "Reset" button to unfreeze.
• Sample & Hold: Similar to Spectral Freeze, but it automatically retriggers at a specified interval.
• 3 AM: A tremolo effect with individual control over the modulation rate and depth in three frequency bands.
• 3-Band Filter: Precise control over the gain in three user-selected frequency bands.
• Spectral Peak/Notch: Lets you boost or attenuate an arbitrarily narrow frequency band around a specified frequency.
• Oscillating Peak/Notch: Interesting peak/notch effect with an oscillating center frequency.

Monophonic Effects (for monophonic sources such as solo voice, clarinet, sax, etc.)

• Pitch Shift: Frequency-domain transposition with timbre preservation.
• Harmonize: Multiple transposition with timbre preservation.
• Pitch Quantizer: Nudge each note to the nearest semitone, for pitch correction or to create an interesting vocal effect.
• Pitch Isolate: Isolates the tonal portion from the rest of the sound.
• Sine / Noise: Gives you independent control over the sinusoidal and noise/transient portions of the sound.
• Spectral Shapeshifter: Lets you change the shape of vocal formants (spectral envelope) without affecting the pitch.
• Vibrato: Frequency-modulates only the sinusoidal component.
• Robotization: Changes the pitch to a fixed frequency for a robotic effect.

Pricing & Availability

Spectral Machine costs $75 (plus tax where applicable) and is available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST and Audio Unit plug-in formats.