Blog
Notes on guitar tones, plugin development, and making music.
September 7, 2026
The Best Plugins for Bedroom Pop in 2026 (An Honest List)
Nine plugins that actually make the genre sound like the genre: a Juno emulation, a lo-fi color box, a cheap amp sim with the right presets, a cassette deck, a Juno chorus, a free reverb, and free synths. Four are free. Two are ours, and we say so.
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September 3, 2026
Best Worship Pad Plugins and Pad Packs in 2026 (Honest Comparison)
Pad packs, MainStage templates, a dedicated pad plugin, and the free options, compared honestly by price, Windows support, and whether you need a keys player. Ours is on the list and we say so.
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August 24, 2026
Tascam 424 Plugin: How to Get the Portastudio Cassette Sound in Your DAW
There is no official 424 plugin. The sound is a recipe: cassette saturation, wow and flutter, narrow bandwidth, and the machine around the tape. Here is how each works and how to dial it in.
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July 22, 2026
The Best Free Amp Sims in 2026 (Honest Picks from a Paid Amp Sim Dev)
The free amp sims we would actually install: Neural Amp Modeler, Guitar Rig Player, ToneLib GFX, and more. What each is good at, and what a free rig costs you in time instead of money.
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July 20, 2026
Gated Reverb on Guitar: How It Works and How to Set It Up
The chopped reverb tail is one of the defining sounds of modern indie guitar. What a gate on a reverb actually does, the classic fixed-time way, and the modern sidechain way.
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July 13, 2026
Mac DeMarco Guitar Tone Settings: The Chorus, Amp, and Wobble Explained
The Mac DeMarco guitar sound is three simple moves: a warm clean amp, a deep wobbly chorus, and a soft top end. Concrete settings, plus how to get the whole tone in one plugin.
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July 13, 2026
What Is Tape Varispeed? The Slowed-Down, Sped-Up Tape Trick, Explained
The woozy, detuned indie-guitar sound and the slowed or sped-up vocals all over your feed mostly come from one old idea: changing the speed of a tape machine. What varispeed is, and how to do it in your DAW.
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June 25, 2026
How to Get the Mac DeMarco Guitar Tone: Settings, Gear, and Chorus Chain
It is mostly one move done without apology: a clean amp, a chorus turned up further than most players dare, and a guitar left a little out of tune. Settings plus a plugin recipe.
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June 25, 2026
How to Get the Mk.gee Guitar Tone: Settings, Gear, and Plugin Chain
A settings-first cheat sheet for one of the most-asked-about guitar sounds right now. Pitched-down guitar, cassette tape, vibrato, and gated dirty reverb, with a step-by-step plugin recipe.
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June 10, 2026
How to Build a Modern Indie Guitar Chain: Pitch, Tape, Gated Reverb, and Chorus
The four-plugin signal chain behind modern indie guitar records (inspired by Mk.gee, Boy Pablo, Wallows), broken down with practical recipes for each stage.
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May 30, 2026
Roomtone v1.2.8 is Live: New Preset Editor, Drag and Drop, Community Tones
The biggest Roomtone update since v1.0. A tabbed Preset Editor, drag-and-drop preset import that saves forever, three new filter effects, a curated community library, and a 68 MB lighter installer.
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May 24, 2026
Worship Pad Sounds: A Modern CCM Producer's Guide
What worship pads actually do, how every Sunday-morning church figured out the same sound, and how to build a pad workflow for any context — live, recorded, or solo keys.
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May 24, 2026
How to Make Cinematic Pad Sounds: A Film Scoring Producer's Guide
What separates a cinematic pad from an ambient one. The four ingredients film composers use, how they layer pads with orchestral material, and a workflow that works in any DAW.
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April 22, 2026
BBD Chorus Plugins: A Guide to the Five Modulation Effects Behind 80s Pop and Indie Guitar
What a bucket brigade actually does, why digital chorus often sounds wrong, and a practical guide to using chorus, vibrato, flanger, doubler, and phaser in 2026.
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April 2, 2026
Lo-Fi Tape Saturation: A Producer's Guide to Cassette Warmth
Most people use tape plugins wrong. Real techniques for adding cassette character without turning your mix into mud.
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March 28, 2026
What Is a 4-Track Cassette Recorder? The Tascam Portastudio Explained
How the Tascam 424 works, why it sounds the way it does, and why artists like Mk.gee are still using them in 2026.
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March 25, 2026
Why Your DAW Audio Drifts Out of Sync in OBS (And How to Fix It)
The technical reason your audio interface causes sync drift in OBS recordings, and a free plugin that solves it.
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March 22, 2026
How to Make Ambient Pads That Actually Sound Good
Stop layering 15 synths for one pad. Learn the three elements that make ambient pads work: shimmer, warmth, and movement.
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March 28, 2026
Roomtone March 2026 Update: DSP Overhaul, Lo-Fi Cabs, Vintage EQ
Major update: realistic tube saturation, 5 lo-fi cabinet types, 5 vintage EQ emulations, 26 effects, bug fixes. Everything new in this release.
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March 18, 2026
The Chorus Effect, Explained: How It Works and How to Use It
What a chorus pedal actually does to your signal, why BBD analog chorus sounds different from digital, and how to dial chorus for jangle, dream pop, and 80s cleans.
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March 14, 2026
Why Most Amp Sims Sound Fake (And How to Fix It)
The tube physics most plugins ignore: asymmetric clipping, coupling caps, and Miller capacitance. Why your amp sim sounds digital.
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March 10, 2026
Lo-Fi Guitar Tones: From AM Radio to VHS Tape
The real specs behind cassette warmth, VHS degradation, and telephone EQ. How to get authentic lo-fi guitar sounds.
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March 6, 2026
The Pultec Low-End Trick for Guitar
Boost and cut the same frequency? The classic studio technique that adds punch without mud—and how to use it on guitar.
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March 2, 2026
Guitar Presets by Genre: 322 Tones from Bedroom Pop to Shoegaze
Find the right guitar tone for your genre. Mac DeMarco, The 1975, Arctic Monkeys, My Bloody Valentine—322 presets organized by style.
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March 23, 2026
The Worship Guitarist's Guide: Why We Built NVA Worship Guitar
From silent stages to digital pedalboards. Learn how the "Holy Trinity" of worship effects (Drive, Delay, Reverb) work, and how NVA Worship Guitar changes the game for church musicians going digital.
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March 19, 2026
Every Indie Guitar Tone in 5 Minutes: Roomtone Amp Sim Demo
Watch how Roomtone Amp Sim achieves every indie, shoegaze, and bedroom pop guitar tone. From clean tones to gain breakup, chorus, and modulation—everything in one plugin.
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January 2, 2026
Roomtone Amp Sim: Finally, an Amp Plugin That Doesn't Suck
Why I built an amp sim for bedroom pop, indie, and shoegaze. Zero latency, 288 genre-organized presets, and tones researched from Mac DeMarco, Tame Impala, and Arctic Monkeys.
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