Cycling ’74 have released Pluggo 3.5. In their own words: Pluggo 3.5 is an extraordinary collection of more than one hundred audio plug-ins that work with sequencers and audio applications that support Audio Units, Steinberg’s VST plug-in format, and Digidesign’s RTAS plug-in format. Version 3.5 is available for Windows XP and Mac OS X.

Pluggo is built on Cycling ’74’s Max/MSP platform, an unusual graphical music and multimedia development platform. i remember reading a review of Mode, another Cycling ’74 plugin bundle, in Grooves magazine a while ago. Mode is a smaller collection of more full-featured plugins than Pluggo, but even so I was intrigued by the review’s conclusion: “As always, Cycling ’74 has come through with a value-packed bundle at an impossible price. And, as always, the focus is on the strange and unusual. In other words, the sort of things that can quickly find a home in the plug-in folder of any musician who likes to dabble in the more experimental side of things.”

Pluggo looks to be in a similar vein — a few of the usual arpeggiators, LFOs, reverbs and so on, but also lots of wacky experimental things that you won’t find anywhere else. Here’s some information from their website:

There has never been anything close to the selection of plug-ins assembled in pluggo. With its range of sound design possibilities, pluggo 3.5 is more than just a few effects-it’s a real-time interactive audio processing, modulation, and synthesis environment that works right inside your favorite audio application. Effects categories include delays, filters, pitch effects, distortion, granulation, spectral effects, modulators, multi-channel effects, synthesizers, audio routing, reverb and dynamics, and visual display. It’s easy to see why pluggo has been winning rave reviews from critics and users since its release.

Originally just 74 eccentric plug-ins such as the legendary Feedback Network, Tapped Delay, and Swish, Version 3 added over 19 Essential Instruments–tasty and nourishing instrument plug-ins in a variety of flavors for your Audio Units, VST, or RTAS host application. These elegant and immediately effective instruments were created by eowave, the developers of the iSynth, and make full use of award-winning Max4/MSP2 audio programming environment for OS X. While space only allows us to tempt you with a few descriptions, you’ll find something for every palate, from the characteristically midwestern self-effacement of the Pretty Good Synth, to additive synths, analog-modeling drum and percussion synths, sampling, granular synthesis, FM synthesis, and some lovely waveshaping for that little sonic something extra. And you can seamlessly combine these exciting new instruments with pluggo effects plug-ins and modulator plug-ins for a world of sonic possibilities you’ll never exhaust.

We started developing pluggo with a breathtakingly simple yet radical concept: lots of interesting plug-ins for a modest price. We wanted people who would never consider paying hundreds of dollars for a single plug-in to find the pluggo deal impossible to resist. Since Max/MSP allows you to make so much cool audio stuff so quickly, we could prototype an effect in minutes and then ask, “Would we pay a buck or two for this?” The result is that ideas that would been rejected by other plug-in developers have become the stars of the parade. Raindrops? Sine Bank? Phone Filter? Then there’s the stuff that is simply unlike anything you’ve ever plugged in, like Spectral Filter, Feedback Network, Granular-to-Go, and Noyzckippr.

pluggo includes MIDI support when used with Audio Units, VST, and RTAS host applications. pluggo plug-ins can send and receive MIDI information, and Max/MSP developers can now develop their own MIDI processor plug-ins and virtual MIDI instruments.

Pluggo 3.5 includes support for host synchronization for Audio Units, VST, and RTAS host applications. pluggo plug-ins support beat-synchronized parameter changes, sample-accurate tempo sync for a plug-in’s modulating LFOs, and tempo-relative settings for plug-in parameters such as delay time.