Where it began
Before there was a single line of code, there was a habit: stopping to listen. To wind moving through a stand of trees. To water finding its way round a stone. To the way a valley hands your own voice back to you, later and softer.
Nature rarely does two things at once without a reason. A tide pulls. A frost settles. A flock turns. Each sound has one job and does it completely, and you can see it happening. We wanted plug-ins that behave the same way.
So for two years, five of us worked with every piece of gear and every technology we could get our hands on, to capture sound, sample it, tweak it and twist it, until what came out of the speakers felt like something that had grown rather than something that had been built.
This page is the long way round: how we got here, who we are, and a thank-you to everyone who listens.
Two years, step by step
No plug-in here was a shortcut. Each one went the whole length of this path.
Every plug-in began as a question about a real sound. Why does an echo come back darker from further away? What makes a voice step forward out of a mix?
We recorded and measured with everything we could find, because you cannot model what you have not heard properly.
Then the patient part: cutting the material up, lining it side by side and comparing, until the pattern underneath showed itself.
The behaviour written out as mathematics, so it responds like the real thing instead of imitating a picture of it. Nature Tape is modelled from the tape outwards. Nature Comp bends one precise gain computer five different ways.
Small decisions, made again and again. A dial has to feel right at a third of its travel and right at the top, on a whisper and on a full mix.
The part we enjoy most: pushing a sound past where it is polite. Fossil ages a signal from today to ancient. Murmuration turns one voice into a flock.
Each face is drawn to show what the sound is doing: a tide behind a porthole, a moon over a lake, a compass over a valley map. If you can see it, you can trust it.
Twenty-nine plug-ins in two collections. Elements: sixteen that each do one thing from one dial. Nature: thirteen studio tools for the whole of a mix.
The craft
Four verbs carried the two years. Here is what each one means to us, and one plug-in that came out of it.
It starts with getting the sound itself, honestly, with the noise and the room and everything around it.
Nature Denoise came straight from that work: show it a moment of the noise alone and it learns what to remove, and keeps the performance.
Nature DenoiseA recording is only material. Sampling is where it turns into knowledge: the same source, again and again, under different conditions, until you know what really changes.
Nature Tape has four machines in it for that reason, each with its own bias, wow, flutter and hiss.
Nature TapeMost of two years is this. Listen, adjust, listen again.
Nature EQ keeps the true shape of its bells and shelves right up to the top of the band, where ordinary digital filters are squeezed. Nobody asks for that. You simply hear it when it is missing.
Nature EQAnd then you let go of polite. A sound that only ever behaves is half a sound.
Turn Fossil's dial and the medium takes over: wow and flutter, saturation, a narrowing image, dropouts, hiss, crackle and hum.
FossilSo far
What the two years became
Every one of them drawn, modelled and tuned by the same five people. Choose any to open it.
Moonlight
UndertowFossil
Horizon
Lantern
Firefly
Echo Valley
Thaw
Murmuration
FireLeaf
Taproot
Lagoon
Monsoon
Flint
Canopy
Dripstone
Nature SaturatorNature EQ
Nature Comp
Nature Limit
Nature Gate
Nature DeessNature Tape
Nature Auto Filter
Nature Delay
Nature Verb
Nature FX BoardNature Denoise
Nature Debleed
Nature Cosmos
Nature Harvest
Nature Spark
Nature Bedrock
Nature Sunward
Nature Stampede
Nature Fork
Nature Agreement
Nature Mate
Midi Stone
NF Software Center
NF Player
U-MixThe team
We are a small team, about five of us, and every plug-in passes through all of our hands. Between us we cover the listening, the mathematics, the drawing, the proving and the looking-after.
Recording, sampling and sound design: the reference every decision is checked against.
The models, the filters, the oversampling: code that has to be right before it can be beautiful.
Every dial, porthole and meter, drawn so you can see what the sound is doing.
Presets, real sessions, and the stubborn bugs that only show up at two in the morning.
The store, your licence keys, and the person who answers when you write.
What we hold to
A plug-in that does one thing completely is worth more than one that does ten things nearly.
Every face shows what is happening to your audio. No guessing, no hidden pages.
No subscription. One payment, three computers, free updates, and thirty days to change your mind.
Write to us and one of the five replies, within one business day.
From all of us
If one of these plug-ins helps a song arrive a little closer to the way you heard it in your head, the two years are paid back.
We are still listening. Tell us what you make.
The five of us at NF Audios
