Most plugin houses treat a major version number as a toll booth. Point-oh releases get a new price tag, a "legacy" label slapped on the old version, and an upgrade fee for anyone who wants the features they've been reading about for a year. discoDSP just did the opposite: Corona 7, released August 20, 2026, is a free update for every existing Corona 6 owner, and it is not a token refresh.

What actually changed under the hood?

The engine's oversampling jumps from 4x to 8x, which matters most on the harsher wave and FM-adjacent sounds Corona is built for: less aliasing, cleaner top end, at the cost of CPU. discoDSP's answer to that cost is a new Draft Playback mode that halves the oversampling factor while you're auditioning a patch, so you're not paying the full CPU tax until you actually commit to a sound.

The bigger structural addition is full MPE support. Per-note pitch bend, pressure and timbre are now available as sources inside the modulation matrix, with MPE Mode, Zone and Pitch Bend Range settings added to the MIDI menu and proper RPN parsing for MPE configuration messages. Players who'd rather stick with a single-channel controller get polyphonic aftertouch as an alternative mode. It's a meaningful catch-up: Corona has been around for years as a virtual-analog and wave synth, and MPE controllers (Roli, Linnstrument, Osmose and the rest) have only gotten more common in that time.

There's also a new Super 7+ unison mode, modeled directly on the Roland JP-8000's supersaw, complete with per-saw stereo panning and a unison spread control, plus step recording and MIDI export for the sequencer/arpeggiator, an Effects Lock that holds the FX chain in place across preset and bank changes, and live modulation indicators shown directly on the knobs across the panel.

Why give away a €149 upgrade?

Corona 7 runs as VST3, AU and AAX on macOS and Windows. New buyers still pay the regular €149; it's the existing user base that gets the whole feature set for nothing. That's consistent with how discoDSP has run its catalogue for years, most visibly with OB-Xd, its widely used, completely free emulation of the Oberheim OB-X. In a plugin market increasingly built around subscriptions and paid point releases, giving your existing customers the full new version rather than a paywalled "Pro" tier is the exception, not the rule.

Corona 7 is a free upgrade for existing Corona 6 users.

Why it matters

MPE support on a veteran VA/wave synth like Corona closes a real gap for players who've moved to expressive controllers and didn't want to give up the engine they already know. And the free-upgrade model is worth naming out loud precisely because it's rare: it's a small, concrete counterexample to a plugin industry trend toward monetizing every feature release.

What we think

discoDSP doesn't get the attention Native Instruments or u-he do, but this is exactly the kind of release that should move the needle on reputation in producer circles. Free MPE, free 8x oversampling, free unison mode: for a company with OB-Xd already sitting free in half the world's DAWs, giving away a genuinely substantial Corona update isn't charity, it's a pricing philosophy, and it's one more plugin companies charging for every dot release should have to answer for.