Step right this way, bargain hunter, and feast your wallet on some of the more affordable new plugin instruments and effects to make it to market in the last few weeks…

Novation Bass Station And V-Station

Our first noteworthy plugin newcomers aren’t actually newcomers at all. Novation’s Bass Station and V-Station are exacting emulations of two synths that helped to define the sound of electronic music in the ’90s and ’00s – the Bass Station and K-Station – and have been around for so long that the company are now giving them away for free, with the caveat that they haven’t seen any active development in almost ten years. Needless to say, then, if you’re on a cutting-edge computer or operating system, your mileage will vary considerably. The GUI is hilariously low-res; you’re looking at Rosetta emulation on Apple Silicon Macs at best; and there are no AAX versions – only an RTAS version of V-Station.

Still, if you can get them working, Bass Station is an absolute beast when it comes to belting out phat b-lines, while the three-oscillator V-Station is a versatile workhorse with a built-in arpeggiator and effects. They’re both thoroughly worthwhile and genuinely classic synths that turn-of-the-millennium dance music fans, in particular, should jump at.

Cherry Audio Galactic Reverb

Although best known for their superb Voltage Modular modelled modular synth, and an array of equally tasty fixed-path instruments, Cherry Audio recently started making moves in the effects arena. Last year’s Stardust 201 made a fine fist of aping the Roland Space Echo, and now it’s joined by Galactic Reverb, an algorithmic reverb that “captures the expansive sound of coveted classic hardware”.

Based on the algorithm of the same name from the Cherry’s Dreamsynth, Galactic Reverb offers up to 35 seconds of decay time and 500ms pre-delay, tail modulation, damping and EQ, and a ducking feature (for dropping the wet signal whenever the dry input is present). The straightforward, old-school interface encourages hands-on tweaking, as does the onboard MIDI controller assignment system.

On sale at the time of writing for a mere $19, and hardly breaking the bank at its full $29 price, Galactic Reverb clearly demands your attention.

G-Sonique Analog Tape ASX-72

If you’ve got room for one more tape-and-deck simulation in your plugins folder, G-Sonique’s latest would like a word. They describe their new Analog Tape ASX-72 effect as “not just another mix plug-in with almost inaudible effect designed only for few audiophile mix engineers”, by which they mean you can crank it up into more overtly creative sound-mangling territory than some of its rivals might allow.

You get a choice of two tape types (A421 and C64), switchable between 15ips and 30ips speeds, and Analog Tape ASX-72 enables adjustment of all manner of mechanical and circuitry parameters, including Drive, Wow, Flutter, Bias, Emphasis, Hiss, and the amount of inherent clipping and compression brought to bear. The simulation sounds impressively authentic at every turn, and while the plugin can just do subtle tape saturation if that’s what you need, it feels most at home in grungier territory.

Analog Tape ASX-72 retails for €38.90, but you can get it in the intro sale for €19.90. Be aware, though, that this one is Windows VST only.

United Plugins Bassment Core

Developed by Muramasa Audio and released under the United Plugins collective banner, Bassment is an all-in-one solution for amplifying and processing bass guitar, providing amp and cabinet simulation, equalisation and a bank of effects pedals (compression, wah-wah, sub synthesis, etc). It’s great, but also kind of pricey, so United have rather shrewdly stripped it of the pedals and graphic EQ, named the resulting cut-down plugin Bassment Core, and slashed the price.

So, what we have here is the same versatile amp model as the full Bassment, and the very same set of 15 speaker sims. The amp features five bands of EQ, plus dedicated Bass, Mid and Treble sections for tweaking the colour, filtering, distortion, compression and more in each frequency range; while the sonic scope of the cabinets is extended by a menu of 15 Character styles. The whole thing sounds phenomenal and gives plenty of room for bass-shaping manoeuvre, and – man alive! – right now it’s only €9, down from €49! What are you waiting for?

Audio Brewers ab Reverb

With spatial audio now a necessity for many producers, rather than an esoteric afterthought, surround-capable software effects are coming into their own. ab Reverb, from sample library producers turned plugin developers Audio Brewers, is just such an effect, able to receive mono, stereo and Ambisonics sources, and output in stereo or Ambisonics, thereby making its signals decodable into a diversity of surround configurations, including binaural and Atmos beds. Beyond that, the actual reverb controls are as you’d expect: separate Early and Late sections incorporating Size, Pre-delay, Damping, Density and Wet controls, and each supplemented with a single EQ band and a Freeze button for perpetually ‘holding’ the buffer. There’s also a sexy visualiser that shows the activity of the reverb on three axes around the listening position.

ab Reverb can be yours for €49 until August 5, after which it settles at €59.

Togu Audio Line TAL-Dub-X 2.0

Togu’s fabulously filthy tape delay plugin, TAL-Dub-X, has been a software studio staple for half a decade now, and the recent arrival of version 2.0 makes for the perfect opportunity to bring this bargainous beauty to the attention of those yet to get involved.

In a nutshell, TAL-Dub-X is a wildly creative echo effect, geared up for extended feedback looping and filtering, with discrete left and right delay time and feedback controls, modulation of delay time and filter cutoff, ping pong mode and adjustable saturation. The v2.0 update is small but significant, adding a host sync mode (about time too!) and six new waveforms (previously there was only a triangle) to the modulation LFO, and a ducking mode with external sidechain input. It’s a free upgrade for registered owners, and newcomers can get all this good stuff for just 25 bones.

Have you come across any particularly thrifty new plugins of late? Tell us about it in the comments.