Lunacy Audio has a history of strong releases; back in 2021, we awarded the company’s sample-based virtual instrument CUBE a stunning 9/10, and 2024’s multi-effects engine, BEAM, was also pretty damn impressive. Now, Lunacy has unleashed its latest project onto the world: AI-powered, browser-based sharing platform for plugins, NOVA.

Speaking to us last month, Lunacy’s CEO, Casey Kolb, described NOVA as a kind of “Google Docs for audio”. The core idea is to put circulation into the hands of its community, encouraging users to discover, customise, and build audio plugins and virtual instruments to then share back into the ecosystem.

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Users will also have the perk of saving their favourite plugins to the cloud, meaning you can keep things synchronised across your browser and your DAW. And, best of all, NOVA is completely free to use.

The process behind the browser-based discovery platform was rather different for the Lunacy team – namely, AI was used in the development process, and user functions are also AI-powered. With the company’s development team crafting the first two releases from the ground up, it’s a choice that Lunacy’s CEO originally would have never considered. However, it served as a tool to keep up with demands.

“AI works so well that now our internal sound designers can build products in two days that would have taken our entire dev team a whole year… It’s unbelievable,” Kolb told us in August.

While NOVA is free, certain AI-powered tools will come at a premium cost. However, five are totally free. First up is Zephyr Strings, a dual-layer, multi-sampled string arp instrument built from live recordings of the Budapest Strings Chamber Orchestra. There’s also the Woodland Piano plugin, offering four-dynamic-layer sampled upright piano with lifelike key-release and pedal noise.

Elsewhere, Good Vibes comes as a four-velocity-layer sampled vibraphone. Then the Silhouettes plugin serves up five distinct synthesis and sampling engines, from FM sines to additive bells to hybrid multi-samples, sharing one XY-pad interface. The single-oscillator chip synth, Chiptuner, comes as the final free offering, boasting 16 waveforms, including band-limited Nintendocore pulses, a tempo-synced arpeggiator and a dual-stage bitcrusher.

If you’re keen to splash the cash and buy some plugins, there are two tiers of payment – $19 ($29 after the current introductory discounted period), and $35 ($49 in future). The lower tier option will allow you to access Growl, a bass engine with a monophonic, dual-oscillator synth. You’ll also get Gleam, a modal resonator synth with six tunable partials per voice, which also features an 11-pattern arpeggiator for a bit of added texture.

As for the higher $35 intro tier, you can utilise the lo-fi-infused Drift Cassette multi-sampler, which features over 60 instrument packs and a nine-unit rack for tape saturation, bitcrushing and reverb. Phase-distortion synth Anima is also available at this price, as well as unison synth Swarm, which can stack up to 16 detuned voices per oscillator across 16 distinct spread modes.

However, this is just the beginning for NOVA. In future Lunacy plan to expand platform’s selection of tools – so it’s a great time to dig in to the intro price and await the future of NOVA.

For more information, head to Lunacy.

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