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Anemond releases Sloom, a VST/AU and standalone application for extreme timestretching

 

PARIS, France – June 19, 2024.  Anemond has released Sloom, an extreme timestretcher with spectral shaping.

Timestretching a sound means slowing it down without changing its pitch. When the slowing down is extreme, the original sound turns into a slowly evolving, ambient soundscape. When the stretching factor is very high (in the hundreds or thousands), the result tends to sound more and more static. To avoid that, Sloom includes a set of spectral modification tools that breathe some dynamics back into the timbre.

The first is a spectral shaping module that allows you to graphically modify, in real-time, the resulting spectrum. In this way, it is possible to filter out single harmonics and partials, or to easily separate noisy and harmonic parts of the sound. The spectral shaping can be manual or based on an adaptive spectral envelope curve that fits the current spectral profile.

There is also a modulation section that applies an LFO to the spectral profile, creating regular patterns following sinusoidal or sawtooth-like variations. Finally, a pair of randomness dials allows you to control the degree of phase and position randomness of the algorithm.

Sloom includes five different timestretching algorithms: “wide” (producing a large stereo field), “narrow” (which preserves the original stereo contents), “rough” (producing a more aggressive sound containing pitch artifacts and beatings), “robotic” (producing a single-pitched synthetic sound), and “hybrid” (a mixture between the “robotic” and “wide” algorithms).

It can operate on both live audio input, based on recording an input buffer of up to 5 minutes, or on sound files in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, or MP3 format, without length limitation.

Sloom has been conceived as a sound design tool to explore radical timbre modifications, easily creating textures for ambient tracks, video soundtracks, events, or art installations that can potentially span hours, days, or even much longer. However, it should not be used for precise, transient-preserving stretching, which is outside its scope of application.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Sloom is available as a VST3 and AUv2 plugin, and also as a Mac OS and Windows standalone application.

  • For plugin and standalone versions: Mac OS (Intel/M1/M2) or Windows (64 bit)
  • For plugin versions: 64 bit DAW compatible with VST3 or AUv2

AVAILABILITY AND PRICES

Sloom is available for purchase at https://anemond.net, and also as a free demo.

Each version contains the full VST/AU and standalone variants.

  • Full version: 39 EUR 
  • Free demo version: runs for 20 minutes at a time. Loading and saving are disabled.

ABOUT ANEMOND

Anemond is a music software studio based in Paris. Founded by J.J. Burred, an independent developer and musician, and former researcher at IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, Anemond designs innovative tools aimed at musical creation.

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