Hello everyone,

I released two plugins a few days ago, each carrying a little legend of its own. Whether those stories ever really happened, nobody can say. But you're welcome to add your own chapter to them by installing the plugins.
You can download them for free, links below. You will also find a more detailed description of how they work.


LINA - 4-band tube EQ



Legend has it that a Polish engineer named Lina built a unique tube equalizer and named it after herself. Her technical choices were radical and unusual, but she knew it would sound exactly as she wanted. Some swear they heard her, while others claim she never existed.

LINA is four fixed, musical bands, and not much else: no surgical precision, no endless menus, no preset library the size of a phone book. Just a handful of knobs that you turn until something sounds right. LINA adds colour and warmth with a bit of attitude, and makes no apology for it. If you're after subtlety this probably isn't your stop, because LINA doesn't really do that. Polish generosity is no legend.


FALA - vintage BBD chorus



Another Polish story. A teenager with far more curiosity than money once wanted his guitar to sound bigger, but couldn't afford any of the chorus pedals he saw in the magazines. So he spent his nights in a small bedroom surrounded by old radios, dead cassette players and a soldering iron well past its prime, and most of what he built produced either nothing at all or noises that were interesting without ever being musical. Then one evening a chord rang out wider and stranger than it had any right to - the circuit drifted, it hissed, it never behaved quite the same way twice, and that turned out to be exactly the point.

That's FALA ("wave" in Polish), a BBD chorus that leans into the imperfections of old analog circuits rather than ironing them out: gentle drift, an unsteady clock, a touch of hiss, and movement that feels alive. Shallow gives you subtle widening, while Deep pushes into that unmistakably vintage warble. The labels are in Polish, but no dictionary is required. Just turn knobs, play a chord, and you'll soon work out what does what.


The practical bits

Both are free, with no copy protection, and run as VST3 + AU on macOS (Universal, Intel + Apple Silicon) and as VST3 on Windows.

- LINA https://github.com/studiokozak/LINA
- FALA https://github.com/studiokozak/FALA

Go to the release section on the right.


macOS - first launch

Because these are free releases put together without an Apple developer account, the plugins aren't notarized, so macOS will most likely refuse to open them the first time and tell you the developer can't be verified.
Use this command in a Terminal and adjust the file name:

Code:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/FALA.vst3"

Then restart your DAW. Done.


Both plugins were built with a fair amount of stubbornness and far too much coffee, and I hope they find a home in your sessions.
I wouldn't ask for your email address or to buy me a coffee, as I developed these plugins primarily for my own personal use. If they prove useful to you, then I'd be more than happy.
I'd just genuinely love to hear what you think, too. Praise, complaints, bug reports, "this ruined my mix", whatever you've got, positive or negative. It's all welcome and it all helps.

Stéphan (Studio Kozak)

 

Do not ask me why, but the post title reminded me of this:

"Four Polacks, six opinions."
-- Frank Sobotka, The Wire

But thank you, I'll give them a go and try to make some constructive commentary once I've put them through their paces