Ugo Audio has announced that its popular freeware Windows VST monosynth, Rez, has received a major update. It's more powerful, more flexible, and now comes with two GUIs. Going well beyond what you might expect from a little monosynth, Rez is capable of a huge range of sounds - from funky squishes, beastly basses, and screaming leads, to tight arpeggiations, swirling rhythms, atmospheres, bells, and interesting effects.

Additionally, Ugo has released three preset banks for Rez 3: Clockwork, Foundation, and Aurora. Each bank of 128 presets (FXB format) is focused on particular sound types, ranging from arpeggiated sounds, to basses, leads, pads, percussion, and effects. Clockwork, Foundation, and Aurora cost $10 each, or can be purchased as a bundle for $25.

• Clockwork: Making full use of Rez 3's arp sequencer, Clockwork is a well-rounded rhythmic collection that includes 96 arpeggiated melodic presets and 32 percussive groove presets.
• Foundation: 64 basses that range from analog classics to brutal hammers, and 64 leads that run the gamut of electronica - from anthem inducing hook creators and quirky synthetics, to raw industrial power.
• Aurora: Meeting at a crossroads of digital and virtual analog, Aurora delivers 75 pads, 26 percussive sounds, and 27 effects.

New features in Rez 3:

• Updated tone - can be brighter and more aggressive than before, and capable of sounds earlier versions couldn't do.
• 16 step programmable arpeggiator with dedicated arp sequencers for gate length, cutoff, portamento, and phaser frequency.
• More arpeggiator playback options.
• Cutoff offset control - reduces the cutoff of one of the internal filters relative to the other to provide chewier, more vocal sounds when at high resonance.
• More aggressive distortion with three tone modes.
• Lo-Fi mode simultaneously adjusts the bit-rate and downsampling of chained bit-crusher modules.
• Age control - think increasingly unstable/noisy/broken oscillators, rather than the subtle drift of an old analog.
• Phase reset - when activated, the phase will snap back into alignment when the age and detune sliders both hit zero.
• Improved/expanded oscillator phase modulation options - in addition to the previous phase offset options, you can now also adjust the amount that the output of the main oscillator can modulate the phase of the sub-oscillator.
• Sub-oscillator octave adjustment.
• Delays now go up to 1/128.
• Delay modulation.
• Aftertouch modulation of both oscillator phase functions.
• Velocity support for the amp envelope.
• Pitch bend range adjustment.
• MIDI learn.
• Easier to see/use GUI (with two variations: yellow and black).
• 24 demo presets from Clockwork, Foundation, and Aurora.