Acustica Audio released Pumpkin, a free (for a limited time) Halloween-themed saturation plugin for Windows and macOS.
I have been an Acustica user for a little while now, and I especially love their Pink and Gold channel strips. One of the most exciting parts of the ecosystem is the bevy of freebies that come and go with the seasons.
Halloween and the fall have been one of many ways to get into Acustica products, and the newly released Pumpkin is a great way to be introduced to the product line.
Now, before we talk about the plugin itself, you will need an Acustica account as well as the Aquarius desktop app to register, authorize, and download the plugin. Thankfully, you do have some other freebies you can snag on there as well.
So, what is Pumpkin?
I saw the pressers for everything yesterday but didn’t really grasp what it was supposed to be doing. Naturally, I had to download it and explore the plugin for myself.
At its core, Pumpkin is a single-stage saturator that also comes with handy features to help further refine your sound. The core mechanism is controlled by a massive drive knob on the left side of the interface.
You get access to a number of different saturation and distortion curves, some taken directly from other Acustica products like Crimson. Following the distortion, you get access to a set of EQ shelves as well as emphasis and deemphasis controls to really make the most of the processor.
This plugin uses Acustica’s newly devised Hyper technology, which blends algorithmic functions with more CPU-intensive dynamic convolution the company has used in the past.
The sound of Pumpkin is fantastic, and I can see it being a handy tool for regular use if you’re after a workhorse saturator with a little more fine control.
You’ll want to act fast if you’re looking to grab Pumpkin. While it is currently free at the time of this writing, this offer expires on the 5th of November.
Pumpkin is available for Windows and Mac computers. Supported plugin formats are VST, VST3, AU, and AAX. It is Apple Silicon-compatible, but I have no clue if that extends to the AAX format as well.
Download: Pumpkin (FREE until November 5th)
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Last Updated on November 2, 2023 by Tomislav Zlatic.
