Kilohearts Ultimate vs x42-plugins

Kilohearts Ultimate is a bundle of audio plugins for macOS and Windows, including the Phase Plant modular synthesizer, plugin hosts, effects, and Kilohearts Essentials. The listed products include Multipass, Snap Heap, Disperser, Faturator, Convolver, Filter Table, Shaper Table, Carve EQ, and Slice EQ. Phase Plant, Multipass, and Snap Heap use an open modular architecture for building instruments and effects. The included effects can run as regular DAW plugins or be combined and modulated as Snapins in a Snapin Host. The product page says a saved preset can be shared even if another person owns different Snapins. A DAW is required; documented system requirements include an x86 64-bit processor with SSE3, while macOS also supports Apple M processors. Kilohearts Ultimate costs $399, paid once and offers a 10-day trial. Content Banks are not included. Offline installers are available for Windows and Mac, with license keys required on the offline computer. Kilohearts Essentials is a free Snapins collection available with an account.

x42-plugins is a collection of audio-processing tools offered as LV2 plugins and standalone JACK applications for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its audio, MIDI, and utility tools include equalizers, meters, synthesizers, tuners, and sequencers. The Meter Collection has needle and bar-graph meters, an EBU R128 meter, phase displays, and spectrum analysis. The Equalizer is a four-band parametric EQ with shelf and high- and low-pass filters, zero latency, and spectrum and spectrogram displays. LV2 plugins need an LV2-capable host; standalone applications require JACK. The FAQ lists Ardour, Harrison Mixbus, REAPER, Audacity, and Carla among LV2-compatible software. x42-meters, x42-eq, and x42-whirl are included with Harrison Mixbus and Mixbus32C. Source code is available under GNU GPL version 2 or later. Without a valid license signature, plugins process audio, but their GUI stops responding to mouse input and eventually fades to black. Listed one-time license prices are 19.00 USD for Whirl Speaker, 29.00 USD for Equalizer, and 49.00 USD for Meter Collection.