AdrenaLinn Sync is a software plug-in from Roger Linn Design that provides the same unique beat-synced filter modulation and sequencing effects of our AdrenaLinn III guitar pedal, plus quite a bit more. Though intended for guitar, it adds fascinating rhythmic tonal effects to any instrument or processed audio. First released in October of 2009, we listened to your feedback and are now releasing AdrenaLinn Sync Version 2, a dramatic improvement over the original. And it's free to all purchasers of the original version.

AdrenaLinn Sync Version 2 is written in conjunction with Way Out Ware, makers of TimeWArp2600 and KikAxxe, critically-acclaimed emulations of vintage Arp analog synthesizers. Version 2 is completely rewritten and takes advantage of Way Out Ware's flawless analog-modeled filters and audio processing technology, resulting in a very wide variety of truly exciting, unique and inspiring sounds.

Here's a video demonstrating the wide variety of sounds you can create with AdrenaLinn Sync v2:

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AdrenaLinn Sync transforms your input signal--guitar, keyboard, turntable, loops, etc.--into dramatic rhythmic patterns of filtered, resonated, chopped, pulsed, spiked, sequenced, looped, delayed and otherwise manipulated tones. Examples include:

• Classic guitar effects like tremolo, phasing, flanging and auto-pan, but moving in perfect sync to your music.
• Looped, 2 bar sequences of filtered tones
• Looped, 2 bar sequences of tuned resonances, emphasizing specific notes or overtones in your playing, in straight or swing timing. Think John Mayer's guitar sound on "Bigger Than My Body".
• Random filtering, phasing or flanging, changing to a different tone every 1/8 note, 1/16 note or whatever note value you choose, in straight or swing timing
• Chopped sequences: looped patterns of on/off switches--or volume changes--applied to your instrument signal, resulting in the real-time equivalent of sliced beats or loops of your instrument sound.
• Tremolo sequences: Looped sequences of volume pulses at programmed levels. Think Green Day's opening guitar riff on "Boulevard of Broken Dreams".
• And most importantly, mashed-up combinations of the above.
• 100 presets that truly show off the sonic capabilities, plus 28 blanks for your own creations.

The end result is that AdrenaLinn Sync is positively inspiring, transforming even simple held chords or arpeggios into beautiful, fascinating animated sounds that will pull new and creative compositional ideas out of your head and make your recordings jump out and turn heads.

What's different from the AdrenaLinn III pedal?

If you're familiar with our AdrenaLinn III pedal, AdrenaLinn Sync provides the beat-synced effects of AdrenaLinn III in a software plug-in. In fact, it goes beyond AdrenaLinn III:

• Greater Control than AdrenaLinn III -- more parameters translate into a wider variety of possible sounds. There are 2 modulation paths, more fine-tuning of randomness, more swing control, and lots more. Click the control panel for details.
• New in V2: Warm, punchy and faithful emulations of analog lowpass, bandpass and hipass filters, as well as superb analog
phasor and flanger emulations. The flanger is excellent at tuned resonances and the phasor can provide beautiful clangorous tones when highly resonant, for presets like Toy Piano and Steel Drum Ensemble.
• New in V2: 3D rendered user interface, mimics the controls and textures of the AdrenaLinn III pedal. Highly functional control layout clearly shows audio and modulation paths.
• New in V2: 100 new presets, optimized for the new V2 filters, and now able to be selected or saved from the plug-in's panel. 28 empty preset slots are also included for saving your own presets.
• Noise source for Self-Generated Noise Beats and Synth Loops -- Use noise with the sequencer to create synthesized drumbeats or self-generating synthesized loops.
  
• Full Stereo Signal Path -- Maintain full stereo from input to output.
• Snap To Scale-- Snap the modulation signals to 14 different musical scales. How about random resonances in the C pentatonic scale? Or an LFO glissando, slowly sweeping through the spectrum and emphasizing only notes in the D Major scale as it moves.
• Tube-Modeled Distortion -- A very warm and smooth distortion with pre-hipass and post-lowpass filters. Surprisingly versatile; using only these simple controls, a wide variety of amp sounds can be achieved.
• New is V2: Stereo Beat-Synced Delay up to 32 Seconds / 8 Bars -- Play 8 bars of accompaniment, then listen to it while playing 8 bars of solo, then listen to that solo while adding another 8 bars of chords, and so on. With Feedback at full, it loops indefinitely.
• New in V2: Limiter improved for faster attack and greater transparency -- Levels out resonant filter peaks and also adds sustain, providing longer chords and notes for the rhythmic effects to chop and slice.
• New in V2: Unlike the original version, version 2 no longer uses Cycling 74's Pluggo technology. This means that unlike the original AdrenaLinn Sync release, version 2 works fine in Cubase and also in Live 8 when Max For Live is installed.
• And lots more little improvements.
  

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AdrenaLinn Sync works by first passing your instrument through an extraordinary collection of Filters created by Way Out Ware, makers of the highly-acclaimed software emulations of the classic Arp 2600 and Axxe analog synthesizers. These filters flawlessly emulate the warm, full, punchy sounds of 1) classic lowpass, bandpass and highpass analog synthesizer filters, 2) classic analog phase shift effect pedals and 3) classic flanger pedals. You'll discover that these filters simply sound exceptional and don't need post-processing or lots of tweaking to get the professional tones you're looking for. The filters are also unique in their ability to respond instantaneously to sharp-edged modulation changes without any resulting clicks or pops, and in the case of the Flanger and Phasor, no smoothing of those sharp edges in the resulting audio. This is how we achieve our fast-transition flanger/phasor sequences. A third unique quality is that the frequency of these filters is set in musical semitones; this facilitates easy tuning and transposition of highly-resonant filters for tuned sequences as used in John Mayer's "Bigger Than My Body". Finally, we've included a noise source for making self-generating "noise beats" and self-generating synth loops à la Steve Reich.

After the filters, the audio is then passed through a surprisingly versatile Distortion processor. This distortion beautifully emulates the power amp section of classic tube guitar amps and not only has a very warm tonal character, but also a very natural and smooth transition between clear and overdriven tones. There is an analog-modeled highpass filter before the distortion, permitting you to fine-tune exactly how tight you want your guitar's low end to be, or to get the upper mid sounds of a Les Paul through a old Fender Twin, or to get the thin, slightly overdriven sounds of a Strat's bridge & middle pickups through an old Bassman. There's also an analog-modeled, slightly resonant lowpass filter after the distortion, permitting you to tweak the cabinet sound from dark tones to 15" speakers to 10" speakers and above. The gain control goes up to 500 times, allowing you to achieve anything from gentle overdrive to full-bore metal. And setting the gain to 1 adds the tube-style compression qualities and the pre and post filters' tonal variety to clear tones. You'll be surprised at how many great guitar tones you'll get from these 3 simple controls. But the real benefit is how this distortion interacts with the filters, giving you anything from the classic combination of wah pedal and Marshall to new and inspiring patterns of filtered distortion. You can even place the distortion either before or after the filters for wah-before-distortion or distortion-before-wah sounds.

Following the distortion is a fast-response, exceptionally transparent audio Limiter. This serves two purposes: 1) to even out the level changes inherent in fast-moving resonant filters, and 2) to add sustain to guitar, important because the rhythmic patterns sound best over an evenly sustained signal.

Next comes the Volume and Pan modulation section. These elements respond instantaneously to modulation signals but without pops or clicks, resulting in sequenced patterns of not only smooth tremolos but also hard-edged volume spikes or fast-sweeping pans.

Finally, there's a stereo beat-synced Delay with up to 32 seconds of stereo delay. You can set the delay from 1/32 note triplets all the way down to 8 bars and anything in between, including the popular 3-against-2 syncopation of dotted 1/8 notes. You can swap the left/right sides or ping-pong the delay left and right, and a handy lowpass filter keeps the delay from competing with the dry signal in the mix. And by using a long delay like 4 or 8 bars together with Stereo Swap, you can do what we Delay Looping-- play 4 bars of chords on the left, then hear them back on the right while overdubbing 4 bars of solo, then hear the solo play back on the right while overdubbing 4 more different chords on the left, and so on forever. By increasing Feedback to 100%, you can add infinite overdubs. The 32-second maximum stereo delay time is enough for 8-bar delay at tempos as low as 60 BPM.

In the lower half of the panel are 2 modulation sources taken from the world of analog synthesizers. These provide the rhythmic movement of the filters, volume and pan. First there's the LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator), which provides periodic sweeping movements useful for effects like tremolo, phasor/flanger, plus random filter and repeated pulsing volume spikes. There's a novel Random Peak feature, which causes each cycle of the waveform to rise to a randomly-chosen level, permitting a tremolo with random levels for each volume pulse. There's also a Phase control, permitting you fine-tune the early/late timing of your tremolo or filter tremolo.

The other modulation source is a looping 2-bar step Sequencer with 16 steps per bar. For each step, you can set the level (0-24), but also whether that step 1) plays its level constantly throughout the step, or 2) rises up to its level then falls back down at rates set with the Envelope Attack and Decay controls. This permits a wide variety of complex rhythmic patterns, and can be used with highly resonant filters to create tuned sequences. The sequence can consist of 1/8 notes, 1/8 triplets, or 1/16 notes, and the 1/16 notes can have even timing, swing timing or half-swing timing for a more natural and relaxed feel. For more chaotic patterns, turn Random on and the programmed sequence will be replaced with random patterns in which you control the probability for each step of 1) a new random level and 2) the envelope generator firing or not. If you want, press the Fill Random buttons to a generate a new 2-bar sequence with randomly-generated values. If you like the pattern it creates but the starting start you like is not on the downbeat, use the Shift Steps buttons to rotate the entire sequence forward or backward one step at a time. To make editing faster, use the ALL function to set all 16 sliders or envelope switches at once.

Between the LFO and Sequencer is the Modulation Mix. This allows you to set precisely how much effect the LFO and Sequencer each have on the Filter Frequency, Volume and Pan. Or, selecting Mode 2 feeds the mix inputs from the Sequencer's separate level and envelope generator outputs. For tuned sequences, turn the Sequencer's To Freq knob all the way to the right until it clicks to "Notes", insuring that each of the sequencer's 24 levels produces a perfect semitone in the filter frequency.

Between the LFO and Filter is a wonderful feature called Snap To Scale. This constrains filter modulation signals to one of 14 musical scales: chromatic, major, minor, harmonic minor, dominant 7th, pentatonic major, pentatonic minor, blues, root+5+7, fourths, diminished, whole tone, lydian and root+2+7+11. When used with the highly resonant filters this can, for example, give rhythmic emphasis to random pentatonic overtones in your playing, or transform a slow-sweeping flanger into one that hops between minor-scale notes in its sweep up and down the sonic spectrum.

Download the free 14-day full-featured demo
(Mac only, version 2.0.3, released August 24, 2010)

Click here to download the full-featured demo for Mac VST/AU formats, which works for 14 days. After that, you can buy an unlock code for only $99. System requirements: 1 gHz+ mac running OS 10.4.11 or higher.

Note: The current version is 2.0.3. If you're running a previous version (shown in the center right area of the plug-in's panel), please update your copy by downloading and installing this version.

Click here for the version history.

Download the Windows beta version (v2.0.3 Beta 2, released August 27)

Want to help us test the pre-release Windows version of AdrenaLinn Sync v2? Click here to download version 2.0.3 Beta 2 for Windows. This beta version works in both VST and RTAS formats, but only for 32 bit Windows, not 64 bit.

Note: like the Mac release version of AdrenaLinn Sync v2, this Windows beta version will run for 14 days only. If you find that this beta version works fine in your system and wish to continue using using it past the 14-day demo period, you are are welcome to buy an unlock code, which works for both the Mac and Windows versions.

After you've had a few days to use this beta, please email me (Roger) to tell me how it worked, and please include the following information:

* If it worked OK or what bugs you found
* What text shows in the center right section of the AdrenaLinn Sync v2 panel. For example "Audio off due to copy protection error -xxx" or "Demo. XX days remaining".
* Your Windows computer model, RAM size, and CPU type and clock rate
* Windows version (XP, Vista or 7; 32 or 64 bit)
* Which DAW you're using and which version of that DAW.
* If you experience a crash, a file containing the crash dump would be very helpful.