Inear Display released Bref, a freeware synthesizer plugin for generating percussive sounds.
Bref is a compact synthesizer for creating percussion sounds. It is available as a VST3 and Audio Unit plugin for macOS and Windows.
Inear Display states that Bref is designed to create various “short, crisp metallic sounds.” And as you can hear in the demo below, Bref certainly achieves that goal.
In the video, multiple instances of Bref combine to create a unique and futuristic-sounding beat. Bref randomly generates a pair of sounds on its dual percussion engines when you start up the plugin.
You can trigger Bref with MIDI, and use it with drum racks to alter the pitch of the notes.
The Morph knob allows you to blend the two sounds together, and automating Morph can produce some spicy results.
You can regenerate both sounds at once by hitting the All dice button, or you can regenerate the sounds for each individual engine via the A and B buttons.
You can also resize the plugin via the handle in the bottom right corner.
There are no presets for Bref, although the state of the plugin is saved when you save the overall project on your host.
Bref is available in a ‘name a fair price’ model, and yes, you can name a price of $0 and still get the plugin. The only thing you’ll need to provide in order to check out is an email address.
The plugin is based on a modified version of the Inear Display Ephemere’s FM synthesis engine, which is a glitch percussion synthesizer.
Ephemere has a list price of €49 + VAT, which when I clicked through, turned into a checkout price of €58.99.
Note that with Inear Display’s Black Friday sale, you can save 50% on purchases using the INRDBLK23 coupon during checkout.
Inear Display has outfitted Bref with a straightforward interface, while Ephemere has a lot more features and parameters available for tweaking and is, therefore, more flexible. The latter also has 12 sound generators assigned to each note of an octave and a preset system.
Bref is compatible with macOS 10.13 and higher and Windows 10 and higher. For macOS, you can run it on Intel or ARM, while Windows is for 64-bit only.
By the way, we just released a free videotape simulation plugin called BPB Dirty VHS.
Download: Bref (FREE/Name a fair price)
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Last Updated on November 21, 2023 by Tomislav Zlatic.
