Rob Papen RP-PAN
Rob Papen Inspiration Soundware promotes its 25th anniversary as an award-winning virtual instrument and effect plug-in developer by generously gifting RP-PAN to anyone for free as an all-new plug-in featuring creative panning effects, as well as appropriately applying a 25% discount to any of its other plug-ins and associated upgrades purchased throughout June 2022…
RP-PAN is, indeed, available to anyone for free as a generous gift from Rob Papen, promoting its 25th anniversary as an award-winning virtual instrument and effect plug-in developer, yet to simply see it as ‘freeware’ falls short of the mark. It is only fitting, therefore, that its introduction to the musical masses should come directly from founder Rob Papen himself: “This free plug-in has been created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Rob Papen brand, and is highly useful for creating panning or Doppler effects in your music or post-production.”
Put it this way: the central position of Rob Papen has always been to create plug-ins that truly reflect thinking outside of the box, an admirable attribute that has always panned out well for the brand. Plug-in puns apart, and regardless of it being generously gifted to anyone for free, RP-PAN ultimately upholds this tradition by allowing its users to apply some very creative panning effects to audio or instrument tracks. The panning ‘sphere’ can be used to manually record pan movements between left and right in the stereo field. Furthermore, things get even more interesting when using the SPRING BACK TIME and SPRING BACK DESTINATION features, allowing that ‘sphere’ to precisely bounce back to the CENTER, LEFT, or RIGHT positions in true tempo-based fashion. But beyond regular panning effects, Rob Papen has also added DOPPLER effects - themselves not suited to tempo-based sounds - and a LAZY MODE for automated panning movements or other experimental panning effects, as well as avoiding any muscle pain possibly arising from multiple manual panning movements. It is fair to say, though, that no Rob Papen plug-in would be deemed worthy of the notable name without the easy-to-use BANK manager that has become the award- winning virtual instrument and effect plug-in developer’s trademark - as, of course, have its plentiful presets. RP-PAN is no exception to this unwritten rule - regardless of being generously gifted by Rob Papen to anyone for free.
It is worth reflecting on Rob Papen’s 25th anniversary milestone that ultimately led to RP-PAN. Rob Papen himself started out as an artist back in the Eighties, working with the Dutch electronic music groups Peru and Nova. Needless to say, he gravitated towards sound design with well-known synthesizer brands in the Nineties, having had a hand in producing classic sound cards for Waldorf’s wavetable marvel, Microwave, followed by factory presets - always designated by the initials RP - for Access’ Virus virtual analogue synthesizer, E-mu’s Emulator III sampler plus Proteus 2000 and Orbit 3 sample-playback modules, and Ensoniq’s ASR-10 sampler. Fast-forwarding to the advent of VST (Virtual Studio Technology), Rob Papen moved beyond simply developing presets for other people’s virtual instrument plug-ins in favour of realising a complete concept for what would become the renowned Rob Papen brand of today. The first custom VST instrument designed by Rob Papen - developed by Linplug - was (the now-discontinued) Albino. Although an instant success, Rob Papen wanted to take things further, forming the RPCX (Rob Papen ConcreteFX) partnership with a talented coder called Jon Ayres in 2006. That software dream team expanded soon after to include programmer Jacek Kusmierczyk, responsible for creating Mac versions of all Rob Papen products and overseeing PRISMA as an advanced utility plug-in that allows any Rob Papen product owner to stack (up to four) of their virtual instruments as a single so-called ‘prismatic’ sound source. Several individuals are notably involved behind the scenes helping to make the Rob Papen brand what it is, including in-house sound designer JoMal, creating cool product presets; Hans van Even, responsible for most GUI (Graphical User Interface) designs; Richard Hider (a.k.a. TONAL AXiS), who helps out on several tasks; and last, but not least, Rob Papen’s son, Mike, and wife, Marion, who assist at the company’s home-based headquarters - not forgetting, of course, all authorised Rob Papen distributors and resellers worldwide, without whom the 25th anniversary milestone might never have happened.
As it happened, however, the award-winning virtual instrument and effect plug-in developer has many products to its notable name that are musically much loved by both professionals and hobbyists alike, so what better way to celebrate achieving that 25th anniversary milestone than by generously gifting RP-PAN to anyone for free as an all-new plug-in featuring creative panning effects, as well as appropriately applying a 25% discount to any of its other plug-ins and associated upgrades purchased throughout June 2022.
“By the way, if you click on RP-PAN’s Rob Papen logo, the homepage opens, and there you can discover many other exciting Rob Papen plug-ins.” So says Rob Papen himself by way of an appropriate celebratory closing comment if ever there was one! On the face of it, then, there has never been a better time than now to purchase any of those exciting Rob Papen plug-ins - or associated upgrades - and enjoy a (time-limited) 25% discount in celebration of Rob Papen’s 25th anniversary milestone.
RP-PAN 2 is available as a 64-bit AAX-, AU-, VST- and VST3-compatible effect plug-in for Mac (OS X 10.13 - macOS 12) and as a 32- and 64-bit VST- and VST3-compatible effect plug-in for PC (Windows 7/8/10/11) - with 64-bit AAX compatibility available for PT 12 or higher (PC) - for free from Rob Papen as a download.