At Computer Music, one of the biggest things that we’re still proud of – especially compared to other music-making magazines – is the fact that every issue, not only do we offer up a unique free giveaway item (often with quite high RRPs, we’d add) and freshlybrewed new samples, but we provide our massive, world-famous CM Plugin Suite. It’s been a staple for years, however, since our last major tidy up of the Suite back in 2022, we’ve noticed that many of the oldest plugins no longer play nice with today’s tech. Apple’s new silicon-based processors are one factor, coupled with the general advancement of plugins and instruments over the last decade which has left many of our former favourites looking a little pale in comparison.
To bring the Plugin Suite right up to date, and keep it ultra-useful for your current needs, we’ve ejected some of those on the older end of the scale and (largely) replaced them with all-new incredible-sounding plugins and instruments. So, it’s a fond farewell to Seaweed Audio’s Fathom, ta-ta to Thenatan Trax CM and we’ve bidded a final adieu to Acon Digital’s CM Verb, amongst a few others. In their places comes a salvo of extraordinary fresh additions, from reworked ‘CM’ versions to kindly-provided complete versions. On that front, we have the full version of GForce’s exquisite Axxess synth, IK Multimedia’s massive MixBox SE and Rob Papen’s hugely creative Go2 synth, sitting alongside bespoke new versions of DH Plugins Halo 2, Lunacy Audio’s CUBE Mini and JMG Software’s Orbitron – now in specially-made ‘CM’ form. There’s a lot more besides. Overall, we’ve added 21 new items, and version 3.0 of our Suite now contains 71 plugins overall.