Sampling has always meant playing back a recording. AudioThing's new plugin, Materia, does something stranger: it takes that recording apart note by note, harmonic by harmonic, and hands you the pieces to rebuild however you want.
What does Materia actually do to a sample?
Drop in any audio file, a vocal take, a field recording, a snare hit, and Materia runs it through additive resynthesis, decomposing the sound into up to 96 harmonic partials. Each partial is independently editable: its own frequency, amplitude, phase, and a 128-point envelope that can reshape how that single harmonic evolves over time. That is a granular level of control most producers never get near, since additive synthesis has historically demanded either serious DSP knowledge or a willingness to fight an unforgiving interface. Materia's pitch is that the resynthesis happens automatically, and the sound design happens on top of it.
The analysis feeds into a multimode filter with 10 types, including customizable formant filters, so a resynthesized vocal sample can be pushed toward vowel shapes that were never in the original take. Four built-in effects, a resonator, echo, phaser and waveshaper, sit in the signal path for further mangling before the sound leaves the plugin.
Why does this matter for producers working outside the box?
Additive synthesis plugins tend to live in two camps: scientific-looking tools built for sound designers who already know what a partial is, or gimmicky one-knob "resynthesis" effects that do not give you real control. Materia is aimed at the gap between them, offering deep per-partial editing without requiring a synthesis degree to get a usable patch out of it. For deep and tech house producers who build tracks around a single hooky, texturally weird sound rather than a full arrangement, a tool that turns a found sample into a genuinely playable, tunable instrument is a real workflow shortcut, not just a novelty plugin.
Each of Materia's up to 96 partials carries its own frequency, amplitude, phase and envelope, turning a static sample into a fully editable instrument.
What's the catch?
Materia is cross-platform (VST2, VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP on macOS, Linux and Windows) and launches at $39, down from a regular $69, through October 31, 2026. The introductory window is short, and the regular price nearly doubles after it closes.
