Rev Plate-140
Price: Free
One of the most important features in any mix project is the reverb. Reverb is used to bring everything together and to make everything sound like it was recorded together (even if it wasn't). There are multiple types of reverb, but my personal favourite is the plate reverb – and the holy grail of plate reverbs is the EMT 140.
Arturia has now released an emulation of it called the Rev Plate-140. At the time of writing it is totally free, but I expect it to be part of a larger set of plugins based on the previous product model. Expect a full review when the complete set is available.
Ozone Imager
Price: Free
iZotope make a fabulous range of software including their excellent mastering suite that MT has covered before. One of the tools that mastering can include is stereo imaging. This can analyse your track to ensure things aren't too narrow, too wide or out-of-phase and then make changes to this.
Ozone Imager is included in all of iZotope's Ozone mastering packages, but they have now released a single plugin version that is completely free. Simply sign up with your email address via their website. This will be a great tool for music technology students, allowing them to check the stereo image of their recordings.
B 906/BA 19A
Price: TBA
Behringer seem to be launching new products on an almost weekly basis. They have had a long history of releasing affordable pieces of hardware that, while cheap, are very effective. However, in recent months they have started to release copies of very famous pieces of hardware. This month sees the announcement of two microphones.
The B 906 is clearly a copy of the Sennheiser e906 (a super-cardioid guitar cab mic) and the BA 19A is a clone of the Shure Beta 91A PZM kick drum mic. Both of the originals are in the £200-300 region – expect Behringer to significantly undercut this but with the acceptance of potential differences in components and quality control.
Zplane's deCoda
Price: €49 (£41.84)
Transcription is one of those jobs that, as music teachers, we can never fully escape. No matter what role you hold, students will always ask classroom teachers and instrumental teachers alike how to play something, or something will need arranging for an ensemble. Zplane's deCoda has just made that slightly easier.
By dragging and dropping the chosen piece of music into the software it analyses the chords, structure and tempo. It can also change the key and speed to ease transcription of specific sections. The perfect tool for learning pieces of music.
