This becomes something from the tradition of holidays for Arturia to provide free plugins for vacation. Last year took recreation from the iconic choir from Juno-6 and turned it into a stand-alone effect. This year, it breaks the record of recording from the melloton emulation.

The original mellotron is, of course, the iconic keyboard that plays a loop tape back another instrument – like Proto-Sampler. Arturia caught the wind that some artists used their mellotron v plugins in an unexpected way. They loaded special samples and, instead of playing it back as a melody with the keyboard, just add warmth and vibration of the simulation loop loop.

So this holiday season Arturia decides to cut the intermediary and release the mello-fi ribbon as a plugin of the Mandiri Simulator Tape. It can add distortion, saturation, flutters and even some filtering. The interface is simple and gives everything starting from fine warmth to full of engine damage. There are even 25 presets included to start.

Of course, there are many Lo-Fi simulation plugins and tapes out there. But Arturia is very good. And, free. So there is actually no reason not to take it. And you have to do it faster than later. Mello-fi ribbons will be available as free downloads from Arturia sites from December 21 to Friday 31 December. After that, Wow, who knows.