Fancy a free Minimoog Model D emulation plugin? Idle Foundry’s CA-72 has got you covered

A new Minimoog emulator has hit the market – and it’s totally free. Developed and modelled directly from an original 1970’s Model D’s circuit boards, Idle Foundry’s CA-72 plugin comes as an open-source answer for anyone keen to inject a vintage Moog quality to their projects… and it even works on Linux.

Rather than sticking to voicing by ear or emulations, this Minimoog-inspired plugin was modelled directly from the Model D’s CA3046 oscillator board – ie, the Minimoog’s original, older board prior to its redesign. From there, developers put the data into a SPICE Netlist, before simulating them in ngspice to build the real-time models from the vintage simulations.

Again, this decision means that the plugin isn’t simply based on recordings from the Minimoog, instead emulating the actual responsive behaviour and responses of the original vintage synth. Idle Foundry has also shared the source and circuit notes, if you’re keen to spy through the process in more depth.

The plugin also adds a few modern perks – namely, CA-72 moves beyond the Minimoog Model D’s monophonic limits, meaning users can experiment with between two and ten polyphonic voices on its POLY mode. With the added voice allowance, there’s also specific per-voice variation, as well as drift, stereo spread and feedback control.

In terms of control, there is a selection of three oscillators to toy with in CA-72’s oscillator bank. There are also filter controls for attack, decay, contour, cutoff frequency, as well as contours for filter and loudness.

CA-72 comes loaded with 24 factory presets, with a slew of leads, pads and percussion options to get the ball rolling, inspire you and get the creative juices flowing. Users can select between the presets in a handy a presets library, which will also allow you to search through favourites, and even tag different presets for better organisation.

As it stands, version 0.1.0 comes as CA-72’s first iteration. The debut release comes in VST3 and CLAP, and can be used on MacOS, Windows and Linux.

CA-72 is available to download for free from GitHub.