Loudness is just one of those chases...you’re always a little closer than last time, and somehow never quite 'there'. At some point, you might’ve found yourself pushing the limiter harder and harder… but the track somehow gets smaller instead of bigger. Everything is loud, but nothing hits . The kick loses its snap. The snare stops popping. The mix feels tired instead of powerful. That’s usually the moment something clicks: “Maximum loudness isn't just about what measures l

Mixing vocals into a 2-track beat can be tough for one core reason: the instrumental is already a finished mix. The transient balance is locked, the low-end is glued, and you have zero multi-track control. You’re not shaping elements, you’re trying to get vocals to sit inside a mix that’s already printed. The goal isn’t to rebuild the track… it’s to carve space so the vocal actually integrates instead of just stacking on top. Below is a reliable and fast method I use to make

Sound designer’s block usually sneaks up on you the same way: you open a synth, twist a few knobs… and nothing jumps out. Nothing unexpected happens. Nothing makes your eyebrows go up. Everything sounds like a slightly-edited preset or a sound you’ve made ten times before. The surprising truth…? You’re not out of creativity — you’re out of things that surprise  you. Nothing in the patch is giving your ear anything to react to. No motion. No friction. No “wait… what was that?”

We’ve all been there — that drum loop that looks right on meters but just sounds…foggy. The kick feels soft, the snare loses its snap, and the whole mix starts dragging. You tweak EQ, nudge faders, maybe even throw a compressor on the bus — and it still feels smeared. That’s because mud doesn’t live in the frequency domain — it lives in time . The buildup happens when sustain and release overlap between hits. The solution isn’t to carve frequencies; it’s to carve envelopes .

(Spoiler: Yes.) Here's Why!

All about our Articulate Audio ADSR Envelope Shaper Plug-in

How and why our Obliterate Distortion Filter plug-in came to be.

Why we do what we do.

Last year we wrote a blog post about Mix Glue, what it is, and how to achieve it with a buss compressor like Invigorate. Buss compression...

In our last blog post we asked the question: why do we want a delay plug-in, what is it for? We talked a lot about how it adds depth and...

Recirculate started with the question, “Why does one want a delay plug-in”? I don’t think it’s possible to know what a plug-in should be...

We call Saturate a Spectral Clipper. We’ve talked about what Spectral means before, but it’s weird to sell a “clipper” plug-in, no? Isn’t...

(This is a continuation of the blog post WERKFLEAUX, all Newfangled Audio plug-ins now contain those changes, so please read it for...

I'm a proud DSP nerd. I often go to sleep thinking about algorithms or new ways to modify sounds. Most of the work we do at Newfangled...

Our last blog post was all about our new plug-in Invigorate and how it works. This blog post is going to be about why... and the elusive...

Ever since we released Elevate we’ve had people asking us to make a master bus compressor. The truth is, we did try using Elevate’s...

(More Good Harmonics, Less Bad Aliasing) I’m happy to announce that Saturate 1.10 has three new features to make it much better at adding...

(or how we made the Bent 259) We’ve referenced Model Bending a couple times while talking about Generate. It’s a new technique we’ve...

(All the new features!!!) The response to Generate has been fantastic. However, there have been a number of really great feature...

(AKA: Free Updates!) Generate and Pendulate are unique synthesizers and designing them was an incredible undertaking. When we released...