ADDAC System has designed a modular synth that can be played like a guitarWhat if a modular synth was also a guitar? ADDAC System is answering that question. The Portuguese brand has just announced the Four String Series, which will incorporate physical strings into your Eurorack.
Originating from a desire to incorporate some synth tech into a lap steel guitar, the Four String Series utilises tactile modules and mechanisms to pluck each string. The design allows your Eurorack layout to twang and vibrate the strings from below, with the option to expand and customise as you please.

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The most important attachment of the bunch is the base ADDAC120 Headstock and Bridge module. Developed so that your strings can be elevated high enough to accommodate your modules underneath, it allows string gauges up to 0.055, has four locking tuners and costs €210.
While you can pluck the strings yourself from the top, there’s no reason you can’t leave it all to your synth to do the legwork. An ADDAC124 Plectrums module was designed for exactly that reason; designed with little metal ‘picks’, the module can pluck each string independently. Priced at €280, it can send triggers through buttons or via a MIDI input.

The ADDAC124 Plectrums module has two modes: Pluck mode, which will properly twang a string, and Harmonic mode, if you’re after more of a light string tap.
An ADDAC121 Humbucker module has also been developed to capture string sounds. However, it’s not like a conventional humbucker you’d find on a standard electric guitar. Instead, it uses an ADDAC122 Quadrophonic Pickup configuration, with a pickup for every string, to fully capture your experimental sounds. And it also allows for independent string volume control, for maximum configuration.
Elsewhere, there is a Rotary Exciter, which generates a rotating magnetic field to excite strings that are at the same frequency as the motor rotation speed. Another new module, the Ebow slider, was then developed to create a harness and sliding mechanism, making it possible to produce an Ebow effect on any string.
Credit: ADDAC
Other ways of stimulating your strings include the ADDAC126 Rotary Exciter, which generates a magnetic field that can have an impact on strings at the same frequency as the motor’s rotational speed. The ADDAC127 Ebow Slider also offers a unique Ebow-like effect, thanks to its “harness and sliding” mechanism.
An ADDAC125 Strings Mute module is also available, which can help dampen unwanted vibrations. The company likens its sound to a palm mute, but one that your tech can do without having ‘hands’; the attachment uses a servo motor, raising and lowering a piece of foam to dampen the vibration of your strings.
Credit: ADDAC
Though, if you’re keen to get involved, ADDAC System has also considered those who might prefer to play with a bow. As a result, there’s a nifty Bow Arch Attachment, which can be popped onto your headstock. The attachment essentially raises the two middle strings, which should make it easier to play each string individually while wielding your bow.
Of course, all of this sits most comfortably in the ADDAC120F Strings Frame. Sitting at €360, the custom-built frame is designed specifically for the Four String Series and can comfortably accommodate all of the available modules. The frame also has a dedicated power supply and should serve as a great base if anyone hopes to expand or customise their frame.
The Four Strings Series will begin shipping in July. For more information, head to ADDAC System.
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Is Oeksound’s Soothe3 the most transparent resonance suppressor yet?£199 / £45 upgrade / rent-to own available, oeksound.com
I reviewed Soothe2 in 2020. At the time, it was the undisputed champion of resonance suppression plugins. But since then, there’s been a tidal wave of competitors vying for the crown. Not content to rest on its laurels, Oeksound has finally released an update with improved sound, a streamlined interface and unique new features. It may be just enough to keep Soothe at the top of every producer’s essentials.

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Soothe is the perfect tool to reach for when you’re wanting to tame multiple unwanted resonances. Although you could potentially notch these out using a standard EQ, it would be incredibly time consuming, whereas Soothe reacts dynamically in real-time to remove these out as they appear. The plugin window has had a re-jig since version 2, but it won’t take long to readjust if you’re upgrading. The separate controls for Sharpness and Selectivity have been simplified to a single Detail dial which you turn up if you want to target narrow notches, or down to make broader reductions.
Other controls, like Attack and Release have been made more prominent, and the stereo section that lets you switch between and edit the Left/Right and M/S balance has been moved to a collapsible sidebar. It’s here that we find the Tilt section, which is one of Soothe3’s new features. This lets you increase or decrease the Detail, Attack and Release amounts in the upper or lower portions of the spectrum. This is a welcome addition as it gives you more flexibility to target something like a kick drum more broadly, whilst narrowing in on sharp cymbal resonances within the same instance. That said, it would be even better if you could control the Detail amount via each node instead, which is something you can do with Baby Audio’s Smooth Operator Pro. Technically, the more you boost a node, the narrower the cuts become, but we find the results relatively negligible in practice. In fairness, the Tilt controls are effective for most tasks.

The sidebar also includes a new Max Cut control that raises a line to set the maximum amount of reduction Soothe is allowed to make. This is useful to drive the processing harder without any massive cuts from rogue frequencies.
The largest part of the interface provides a live visual of the suppressed frequencies. I’m not sure what tweaks have been made to the ballistics, but it feels smoother and easier to read than its predecessor. Here you can double-click to add up to eight nodes, with eight shapes including a new tilt and bandpass. I’m especially happy about the bandpass as it means you have a much quicker way to focus on a small region whereas before, you had to use a combination of low-cut and high-cut.
There are Soft and Hard modes, as before. Soft is the mode that most will use as it has an adaptive threshold that reacts to the relative levels of resonances, and works well with more dynamic sources. Hard mode has a fixed threshold and is used for more aggressive control, or when using the plugin to sidechain duck another instrument. Both algorithms have been improved to give a cleaner, more transparent output.
Oeksound Soothe3 Max Cut. Image: Press
To get a better idea of how they sound, I push things to the extreme and compare the delta (removed) signal of Soothe3 with both Soothe2 and Waves Curves Equator. There’s a positive leap in cleanness between Soothe 2 and the Waves, and then a further leap with this new algorithm. On Ultra quality Soothe3 is silky smooth, with an open high end and minimal artefacts. It also has an improved ability to focus on resonances when the Detail control is turned up, which means less damage to the surrounding material. More than the various new features and user interface, this is what really makes the upgrade worthwhile to me. Some engineers complain that these kinds of tools can ruin mixes by making them sound over-processed, but this new algorithm allows you to dig into the signal while keeping things more transparent. Of course, you do still need to use your judgement to make sure you don’t overcook things.
Quality settings have been simplified to just Normal, High and Ultra in version 3, with no separate controls for oversampling. You can engage a separate feature in the settings menu that will always render on Ultra, giving the cleanest and most accurate sound. Also added is the ability to run Soothe3 in both linear phase and low latency mode. Linear phase might give better results if you’re processing in parallel, or provide more stable panning when using unlinked stereo. Oeksound released Soothe Live a few years back to provide an ultra-low-latency option for live sound and tracking, but this new version improves on that even more, with zero samples of latency at base sample rates. This makes it a fantastic option for controlling unpredictable live performances whether on-stage or whilst tracking.
For anyone working in Atmos and surround, the final new feature will be a legitimate game-changer; Soothe can now function in multichannel setups up to 9.1.6. There are various options for grouping and linking channels, and you can assign nodes to only affect certain channels. You also get separate metering and delta controls so you can hone in on problem areas, making Soothe3 a useful tool for taming multichannel masters.
Oeksound Soothe3 controls. Image: Press
If you’re looking for a simple resonance suppressor plugin and you don’t need some of Soothe3’s features such as the super transparent sound, low-latency mode and surround support, then there are cheaper options available such as Baby Audio’s Smooth Operator Pro and Three Body Technology SpecCraft, to name a couple.
Soothe3 isn’t cheap, but it’s a worthwhile investment if you’re serious about audio. Tweaks and new additions have refined an already excellent plugin. The sound quality now keeps up with—and often surpasses—the competition, while the interface is quicker and more pleasurable to work with. It’s definitely worth the upgrade price of £45 for existing users.
Despite a flood of competition, it turns out the real Soothe2 killer ended up being Soothe3.

Key features

Resonance suppression plugin
VST3, AU, AAX (requires iLok account)
Updated algorithms
Transparent Soft mode with adaptive threshold
More aggressive Hard mode with fixed threshold
New Low Latency mode adds zero samples at base sample rates
Streamlined, resizable window with simplified Detail control
Flexible nodes with 8 band shapes
Tilt controls for Detail, Attack and Release
New Linear Phase mode & Max cut parameter
Up to 9.1.6 multichannel support

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ADDAC System’s new Four Strings Series ADDAC System's latest creation comes in the form of the Four String Series, which comprises a collection of modules that make it possible to incorporate guitar strings and pickups into a modular synth rig.

News Sites are Blocking Internet Archive over AI Scraping FearsEspecially in this era of the Internet, the role of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has become increasingly essential as more and more web content vanishes into the ether or is surreptitiously altered to hide salient details. More recently a new worry has seemingly cropped up in the form of scraping of data for so-called AI systems, or at least that’s part of the excuses being offered for blocking the Wayback Machine’s web crawlers, with [Andrew Deck] and [Hanaa’ Tameez] of [Nieman Lab] detailing the impact and reasons provided.
Some news outlets like The Baltimore Banner insist that they’re only blocking the Wayback Machine crawlers because they are worried that LLM chatbots would otherwise ‘improperly cite’ the source of content, while outlets like The Atlantic have put a blanket anti-scraping policy in place. Meanwhile news outlets are generally happy to let paid commercial news archiving outlets like ProQuest and LexisNexis index their content, showing a potential financial incentive.
Whatever the reasons, the direct effect is that as content is modified or vanishes during for example a system migration, buy-out or bankruptcy, researchers who rely on the Wayback Machine are pretty much forced to rely on paid offerings by ProQuest and kin, without the pure archiving focus and free access to information. It will also leave big holes in what the Wayback Machine can cover in its archives, with news especially becoming very spotty.
Incidentally there’s an ongoing petition over at SaveTheArchive.com which people can sign.

oeksound introduce Soothe3 Soothe3 is powered by a redesigned algorithm that promises a significant improvement to processing transparency and a wider ‘sweet spot’, as well as introducing support for immersive channel layouts and more. 

Eventide & Newfangled Audio release Fixate:Midrange Fixate:Midrange employs intelligent EQ processing that quickly identifies and tackles ‘muddiness’, and promises to deliver professional-sounding results with minimal effort. 

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Meet SmartLab: a kooky-looking six-voice string synth from This Is Not Rocket Science and Error InstrumentsSuperbooth 2026: This Is Not Rocket Science and Error Instruments have teamed up to tease SmartLab, a very cool and quirky six-voice string synth instrument.
A standalone instrument rather than a module, SmartLab combines concepts from the two companies’ previous works, such as its collaborative White Rabbit module. It is currently in its prototype phase, with a planned release for July/August this year.

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SmartLab features advanced granular synthesis alongside more than 36 physical modelling engines, distributed across two sound engines. It has an expressive touch interface including motion recording, allowing users to capture gestures and replay them as evolving modulation, similar to a looper, but for movement and sound shaping.
SmartLab also functions as a sound processor, offering over 15 experimental effects including delays and textures inspired by organic, fluid soundscapes, which Error Instruments describes as “somewhere between an ambient machine and the playful unpredictability of a bubble-based synthesiser in the spirit of Rob Hordijk”.
Further key features include external LFO input and audio input support and a built-in microphone. The two companies are planning to start shipping SmartLab in June with a price of around €600, according to Gear News.
Hear it in-play below:

A number of other unusual synths have landed at this year’s Superbooth event, including the Cyma Forma RND, which has just a single large button on its front face and not much else in terms of controls, but packs in eight different synthesis engines.
Bastl Instruments has also unveiled the Kalimba, a Kalimba-inspired synth combining a familiar interface with digital synthesis, and producer Richie Hawtin and Erica Synths’ long-awaited Bullfrog Drums is finally here. The drum machine was teased back in 2024, and is not just for making beats, but for teaching people how to program and sample them too.
Head over to the Error Instruments website to learn more about SmartLab. 
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This kalimba is also a synthesizer – and combines the feel of an acoustic instrument with digital synthesisSuperbooth is well underway, and here’s one of the wildest new synths being demoed at the event. Bastl Instruments – the company known for its playful approach to synth design – has unveiled Kalimba, which is basically exactly that: a Kalimba-inspired synthesizer combining a familiar interface with digital synthesis.
Put simply, the unit’s 12 velocity- and touch-sensitive tines, when played, are captured by microphones and touch sensors, which then feed into the internal six-voice synthesis engine, driven by FM synthesis and physical modelling.

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The result of three years of development, the Bastl Kalimba is designed to be a synthesizer which responds as expressively as an acoustic instrument. There’s also a built-in accelerometer which affects the FM synthesis engine when you physically tilt and rotate the unit. Neat, right?
Kalimba also features touch points on the front panel for creating pads, pitch slides, timbral modulation and more. There are also two function-assignable touch points on the back of the device.

Kalimba also comes with loaded with an arpeggiator with five modes, even a built-in layering looper, plus a host of presets, custom scales, octave shifting capabilities, and a range of effects, including reverb, delay, bit-crush, overdrive, filters and modulation.
As you might expect, the unit has a built-in speaker for standalone playing, but also has USB-C for MIDI and charging, as well as a stereo output, TRS MIDI input, analogue clock input and another mini jack socket.
“Kalimba has been one of the most challenging development projects Bastl has endured so far,” the company says.
Credit: Bastl Instruments
“We have spent more than three years developing this instrument, exploring different casing shapes, tine lengths, materials, internal designs, features and visual directions. We couldn’t be more grateful and proud of the entire Bastl team for what they have accomplished and how much heart they’ve put into this project.”
In terms of availability, Bastl Kalimba is live on Kickstarter, with a number of pricing tiers available ranging from €389 to €550.
Bastl Instruments is showcasing the Kalimba at Superbooth at booth O385.
Learn more at Bastl Instruments. Back the project on Kickstarter.
Credit: Bastl Instruments
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This crazy synth has a single button – but four billion soundsOne of the wackiest synths to come out of this year’s Superbooth is the Cyma Forma RND, which boasts a single large button on its front face and not much else in terms of controls.
But don’t be put off by its somewhat limited user interface; though it’s a synth designed to make you “stop playing, start listening”, the RND is actually surprisingly capable…

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Developed in collaboration with French musical artist Bambounou, the Cyma Forma RND has a singular button, but there’s loads going on behind the scenes.
The RND is built around eight different synthesis engines: subtractive, FM, acid, noise, speech, Karplus-Strong, supersaw and additive. With each push of the button, four of these are layered and run their own unique sequence.
Each time the centre button is pressed, each of these parameters is randomised. “Press again. It’s gone, forever. Something new exists in its place,” says Cyma Forma.

The synth also comes with five filter types plus a reverb effect. It’s not entirely clear how the user is supposed to play with these, but the unit has a surprisingly comprehensive I/O setup – with four-track audio output over USB-C, four-channel MIDI in and out, 9 MIDI modes, MIDI clock in and out, analogue sync in and out, and a stereo mix output – so we’d imagine the answer lies there.
Also a benefit of the above I/O is while the synth is billed as ‘press once, previous sound gone forever’, you can record any sound into a DAW while you have it.
Credit: Cyma Forma
The number of parameter combinations resulting from the eight synth engines isn’t quite infinite, but for all intents and purposes, it’s close, with over four billion sounds available…
Availability & pricing
The Cyma Forma RND is available to preorder now, priced at $150 / £111. Shipping is expected in late June. You can also buy a flex case for an additional $66.
The RND will be available to check out at Berlin’s Superbooth this week, at booth Z245.
Learn more at Cyma Forma.
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Everything you need to know about iZotope RXRX is an audio restoration toolset whose seeds were sown in 2003 with a research project that resulted in three innovative tools: De-click, De-clip and Spectral De-noise. It was 2007, however, when those tools were bundled with a suite of more conventional audio processors and a powerful spectral audio editor, and released to the world as RX.
We’re used to working with audio in the time domain, but by adding access to the frequency domain spectral editors make it possible to fix audio glitches and problems in ways that are impossible with purely time-domain processing.

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As a result, it’s no big surprise that RX was a big hit in industries where being able to make a quick repair could save hundreds – if not thousands – in re-shooting, re-recording, and/or re-mixing costs. We’re talking TV and film post-production facilities, along with a bit of audio mastering, but there was less initial interest from music producers.
This started to change with the 2017 release RX 6, the first version of the software to harness the power of machine learning (ML) to enable functionality that seemed to border on the magical.
Machine Learning Meets Audio Editing
Image: Press
ML works by being trained to recognise patterns. Initially recognition is very poor, but over thousands of rounds of training, and refinement of the resulting neural networks, it becomes more and more able to recognise different types of sound. From here, it’s relatively straightforward to create algorithms targeted at the frequencies that constitute a given type of sound, be it to attenuate that sound, such as for noise reduction/removal, or to lift it out of the audio entirely, such as with stem separation.
In RX’s case musical stem separation is handled by the Music Rebalance module, which allows in-place volume adjustment of vocal, drums, bass and “other” stems (a godsend for mastering engineers!), or can separate those stems entirely. Two similar tools are aimed at TV and film production, namely Dialogue Isolate that removes background noise from dialogue, and the new Scene Rebalance that operates similarly to Music Rebalance but recognises dialogue, music and effects.
Working with separated stems in RX 12 has been massively improved thanks to the new Stems View which allows you to work with separated stems as lanes within a single window. I talk more about this excellent new feature in my review.
Not all of RX’s tools use ML, but the vast majority do in some form or other, and iZotope are steadily working through those that don’t, adding ML where there’s some advantage in doing so. For example, in RX 12, the De-bleed and Breath Control modules are the latest to receive an ML-based overhaul, making them both quicker to deploy and more accurate in their results (see my review for more about this).
Will RX Be Useful For Me?
Scene Rebalance in iZotope RX 12. Image: Adam Crute
Although capable of straightforward editing and processing – cut/copy/paste operations, gain and EQ adjustment, and such – RX’s main focus is on restoring damaged and poor quality audio, with a side-order of enhancement tools that can add polish in ways other plugins cannot. A good example of the latter would be using Music Rebalance’s stem splitting during mastering to tame an overly-dynamic drum stem without impacting the rest of the mix.
It is in restoring audio that RX is truly at its best, however, and it’s easy to see the value of being able to rescue a take or performance that’s perfect but for the squeaking of a piano pedal, the occasional mic pop, or the performer delivering an unexpected spike in volume that causes some clipping? Also invaluable is the ability to repair glitches that you didn’t notice during a recording session, and long after the performer(s) have gone off to do whatever-it-is they do while we’re topping-up our studio tans!
The newly-released RX 12 brings enhancements and improvements that only add to these restorative abilities. The ML-based modules benefit from increased accuracy and transparency thanks to iZotope’s focus on improving its models through countless rounds of training (using ethically sourced and properly licensed training material). The ML algorithms run more efficiently too, so the improved results are delivered with less hanging-around than before.
So, if you work in a studio with faultless equipment and perfect noise isolation, RX may be surplus to requirements, but if you work in a studio in the real world then there’s no doubt it will come in useful.
What Do I Get With RX?
De-bleed in iZotope RX 12. Image: Adam Crute
RX comes in three editions aimed at different types of user. Elements is for those who may need fix common audio problems such as clicks, pops, and overly-reverberant signals, but have no need for a full-features spectral editor. As such, the package comprises a set of plugins for loading into your DAW, but no standalone RX editor software.
Standard edition does include the spectral editor along with all of the restoration and enhancement tools you’re likely to need in a music production context. All of these are available as modules within RX, and many also have realtime plugin counterparts for use in your DAW, including Music Rebalance, Spectral De-noise, De-plosive, and Breath Control.
Advanced edition includes everything found in Standard along with some very attractive and powerful nuggets such as EQ Match, Ambience Match, Spectral Recovery, and Scene Rebalance. If you often work with audio for visual media then these tools will likely prove exceptionally useful (although the price may make you wince!), but for everyone else it’s unlikely the Advanced-only modules and plugins will prove useful.
A full list of the modules and plugins included in each edition of RX, along with explanations as to their functions, can be found on iZotope’s website, as can pricing details and upgrade options. Also, be sure to check out my review to find out more about RX 12’s new abilities features.
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