The Hip Hop, it don't stop...

I have to confess that I Don’t Get It. ModernBeats has announced a free VST package (free as in “buy $200 worth of shit from our site, and get this package free”) which is, to quote directly from them, “5 innovative plugins specifically designed towards modern Hip Hop production!”

While I haven’t tried them (mainly because I haven’t bought $200 worth of shit from the ModernBeats site), it’s obvious from the screenshots that they are SynthEdit creations, so PC only, plus all the normal caveats that implies. (As a “real” VST/AU developer, we tend to look down our nose at SynthEdit plugs, and justifiably, I think.) But what I don’t get is how these are “specifically designed towards modern Hip Hop production!” There is something called a WaterVerb, which seems to be a reverb plus some samples of bubbling water, Subatomik and Transistor (the uses of which should be obvious), and BlazeBox (which a mutli-FX unit). The final plug is TimeMachine, which is basically the same as the Grungilizer that comes with Cubase.

So, I don’t see how these are any more specific to hip-hop than any other plug-in (with the possible exception of Waves L2), but I have to be kind of bemused when a chunk of SynthEdit plugs get press. Just caveat emptor.