Expert Sleepers Upgrade Crossfade Loop Synth To Version 3

Expert Sleepers (Love that name! –Ed.) have updated their Crossfade Loop Synth plug-in for Mac to version 3.0.1. Anyone who downloaded the new version 3.0 should upgrade because the developers were caught napping on the Digital Performer side of things which caused the DAW to bottom out.

The upgrade from version 2 expands the Crossfade Loop Synth into two plug-ins: Crossfade Loop Synth and Crossfade Loop Synth Effect. The effect version takes the power of Crossfade Loop Synth and turns it into a live sampler, a looper and a very unusual and powerful delay effect. It’s too bad the Graphical User Interface didn’t get any major love…


Crossfade Loop Synth

Crossfade Loop Synth is at heart a simple sample playback synth plug-in. It plays samples in the classic sampler manner – by simply altering the playback speed according to the desired note. No fancy timestretching or pitchshifting is applied.

You can control how the sample is looped as it is played. An adjustable amount of crossfade can be applied to the loop endpoints to smooth the transitions. This makes it extremely easy to produce glitch-free pad sounds. The loops can also be played backwards and alternately forwards and backwards (pendulum-style).

Further sound processing can be applied in the form of overdrive/saturation, filtering, envelopes (for amplitude and filter), pulse-width modulation, oscillator sync and LFOs (one each for filter, pitch, PWM and sync). The synth is 32 note polyphonic, and all parameters can be controlled by MIDI controllers.

Crossfade Loop Synth Effect

Crossfade Loop Synth Effect is the same as Crossfade Loop Synth except you can record live audio to use as the sample, rather than just loading it from disk. You can record continuously, even while playing back. This allows you to use the plugin as an extremely unusual and creative delay effect. For example you can have the delays played back at double the pitch/speed you played them. Or at double the pitch and backwards. Or as a chord. Or repeat the first beat of every bar… You can save the recorded sample to disk as an AIFF file for later use.

Expert Sleepers Crossfade Loop Synth plug-in for Mac come in the AU and VST flavors, both Universal Binary, and will set you back $49. More information on the Expert Sleepers Crossfade Loop Synth 3.

Author: FutureMusic

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