CYCLING '74 PLUGGO 1.04

(Mac; $74)

It isn't often that a program comes along that makes everyone's jaw drop in unison, but Cycling '74's Pluggo is that kind of product. Seventy-four plug-ins for 74 bucks? That's a deal that sounds too good to be true. But Pluggo is the real deal!

Just what do you get in this big box of goodies? You'll find delays, filters, panners, reverbs, pitch shifters, and more. Special attention is paid to granulators-no fewer than seven unique plug-ins offer different tools for this purpose-and you'll have numerous means of manipulating the spatial dimensions of your sounds.

But wait, there's more! Pluggo also includes many creative ways to control your plug-ins in real time and lets you apply those controls to any VST plug-ins in your library. To top it off, the Plug-in Manager applet lets you configure different sets of plug-ins for use in various projects.

Now that users are uploading their own Pluggo plug-ins to the company's Web site, there's no end to the tools you'll have for mangling samples. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: if you are serious about doing hard disk recording on the Macintosh, you must buy this software.