MISHBY Is A $50 Freakshow Industries Plugin You Can STEAL

Freakshow Industries has released Mishby, a $50 tape machine effect in VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin formats for digital audio workstations on PC and Mac. There’s a catch, though (or no catch at all, depending on your perspective). The developers will let you download and use the plugin for free. To do so, click the Steal button instead of the Buy button on the official product page.

Mishby (an acronym for Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Built You) is a chaotic audio destruction effect that is loosely inspired by a malfunctioning tape machine. Well, it’s more than just a malfunctioning tape machine. This tape recording device was “twisted by forbidden science” and then “infected by a long-forgotten parasite god” (good luck killing that with your antivirus software!) which eventually gained full control over it. At least this is how Freakshow Industries describe their newest plugin.

And it totally makes sense. Mishby is an audio mangling unit like no other. If you’re on a lookout for a completely unconventional and weird audio effect to inspire your sound design endeavors, this is it.

The thing with Mishby is that it can be both completely chill and utterly insane. Go easy on the controls and explore a range of wonderfully subtle lo-fi tape and vinyl effects, reminiscent of plugins like Wavesfactory Cassette and Vinyl Strip by AudioThing. But rotate any knob further than six o’clock and things will get super crazy very quickly.

Mishby is priced at $50 but you can pick a lower price (all the way down to $5) or even download it completely free of charge from the developer’s website. You can also choose to “buy yourself poverty” for $420 if you want. LOL. I mean, I absolutely love this. Being a dude who writes about music production software on a daily basis, encountering something truly original and funny like this is a much-needed change to the ordinary routine.

The same pricing model was used for Freakshow Industries’ older (but equally fantastic) Backmask plugin. I remember that some comments on that article were negative, stating that the free download option shouldn’t be labeled as “stealing”. That’s taking things too literally if you ask me. This is a $50 plugin with a pay-what-you-want option and one of the funniest product pages in the recorded history of VST plugins. Be sure to pay the developers if you can and use Mishby to make some great music.

More info: Mishby (24.5 MB download size, EXE installer, 64-bit VST/VST3/AU/AAX plugin format for Windows & macOS)