Ewan Bristow Releases FREE EB-Diøne Creative Sampler for Audio Manipulation via Plugdata

On Friday, Ewan Bristow released the free EB-Diøne sampler, which is capable of some radical audio manipulation techniques. 

As we’ve come to expect from Bristow’s work, EB-Diøne runs in the free Plugdata programming environment.

You can run Plugdata on macOS, Windows, Linux, and more, either as a standalone app or plugin (VST3, LV2, CLAP, AU).

Bristow explains the plugin allows you to manipulate audio creatively through spectral resynthesis.

He also notes that EB-Diøne is inspired by “paulstretch”. Presumably, he’s referring to the PaulStretch (Paul’s Extreme Time Stretch) algorithm, which was originally developed by Nasca Octavian Paul and later formed the inspiration for the PaulXStretch plugin.

Bristow calls EB-Diøne his favorite and most powerful plugin to date and says the sampler can create “absolutely mental neuro bass sounds or lush pads.”

Users so far seem to agree, with user reviewers and YouTube commenters blown away, that such a powerful plugin was dropped for free.

And I have to say, after you read the specs below, it’s easy to understand why producers are so excited about it.

So, what exactly does this bad boy do?

For a start, EB-Diøne offers sample loading and manipulation, spectral shaping, gating, and filtering.

Once you load up an audio sample, you can extract a small section of the sample and then alter the phase and spectrum of the section.

The spectral shaping feature allows you to edit the attack and decay of the spectral envelope, move the core frequency, and blur the phase.

The gating and filtering controls allow you to control shapes in the spectral envelope’s dynamics and refine the sound with high-pass and low-pass filters. 

As for the workflow, there’s a recorder built in for capturing your audio manipulations, playback controls (play, loop, reverse, speed), the choice of three block sizes for processing the audio, and position and length displays. 

Bristow has also packed in OTT (over the top) compression, which adds aggressive dynamic processing (right at home for basses), live mode for continuous output, MIDI control, and a single knob tape emulation control that adds distortion, noise, and warble. 

Bristow provides two options for downloading the plugin on his Gumroad account, namely a completely free download or an optional £5 download if you wish to show your support. 

After selecting an option and progressing to the cart, all you need to do is provide an email address, and then you’ll be forwarded straight to a page where you can download the plugin with a single click. 

There’s also a YouTube walkthrough embedded on the page that explains how to install the plugin with Plugdata.

In the past four months, I’ve covered Bristol’s EB-Morph and Florah(Lite) releases here on BPB. I have to say it’s impressive how frequently he drops creative plugin releases, especially as an indie developer who offers so much of his inventory for free.

Download: EB-Diøne (FREE – Plugdata required)

More:

• Mensla launches FREE MS-3 waveshaper synthesizer with integrated effects
• BP-909 is a FREE 909 drum machine plugin for Windows