Things Fold is one of those plugins that quietly shows up in your VST directory and ends up living on half your tracks. It’s a wavefolder – a type of waveshaper that folds your sound into new dynamic territory – and it’s free right now from AudioThing and BPB.
Punch, Grit and Control in One Square Box
The interface is a perfect square, resizable, and refreshingly clean. Navy blue panel, wooden side trim, gray and black controls – it’s got this subtle analog hardware vibe without trying too hard. No flashy animations, no weird 3D knobs. Just something you can stare at for hours without getting annoyed. There’s even a graphics control menu tucked up top where you can adjust brightness and contrast. That’s rare, and it’s actually handy. It’s the kind of feature you don’t think about until you need it – and then you wish every plugin had it.
Top left corner: wavefolder visualizer. Bright lines, spectrum grid, real-time feedback. It’s minimal, but it tells you exactly what’s happening to your sound. You see the harmonics folding in as you dial things up – and yeah, it’s satisfying. It’s not just a pretty waveform display; it’s a functional tool that helps you understand what the plugin is doing under the hood.
The big Fold knob sits dead center. That’s your main control. Push it gently for subtle grit or crank it for full-blown chaos. Just don’t go wild with the Fold and Feedback knobs unless you’re ready to blow up your monitors. This thing gets loud. It’s not shy about pushing your signal into aggressive territory, and that’s part of the fun – but it also means you need to keep an eye on your gain staging.
Around it, you’ve got:
- Transient envelope shaper with Attack and Release (dynamics processor)
- Pre panel: Highpass and Lowpass filters
- Post panel: Feedback and Lowpass
- Dry/Wet mix knob
- Autogain and Softclip toggles
You can flip between Pre and Post settings with a little double-arrow icon. It’s intuitive, no manual needed. The layout makes sense, and you’re never more than one click away from the control you need. That’s something a lot of plugins get wrong – burying key features in deep submenus or tabs. Things Fold keeps it simple.
The presets? Surprisingly good. There are 22 of them – not just filler. You’ve got bus compression, lo-fi saturation, vocal & bass enhancers, drum boosts and even retro-style color like “Old Radio”. I dropped it on a vocal chain and it added this gritty warmth that felt vintage without sounding fake. On drums, it gave me punch and edge without killing the transients. The Exciter preset added sparkle to a dull synth pad, and the low-end booster gave my kick a nice round thump without muddying the mix.
What I like most is that the presets aren’t trying to be flashy. They’re practical. You load one up, tweak a couple knobs and you’re good to go. No need to spend 20 minutes figuring out what it’s supposed to do. That’s a huge plus when you’re in the middle of a session and just need something that works.
It’s also worth mentioning that Things Fold is cross-platform. macOS, Windows PC, Linux, even iOS & iPadOS – it runs everywhere. VST2, VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP – you name it. That kind of compatibility is rare, especially for a free plugin. It means you can drop it into pretty much any DAW and get to work.
Things Fold isn’t trying to be the centerpiece of your plugin collection. It’s not a flashy flagship synth or a sprawling FX suite. It’s a focused, well-designed wavefolder that does its job and gets out of the way. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.
Normally it’s $19, which is already fair. But right now, it’s free. And not in a “limited features” kind of way – you get the full version, no strings attached. AudioThing is giving it away as part of a limited promotion in collaboration with Bedroom Producers Blog, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. If you’re reading this and haven’t grabbed it yet, do yourself a favor and head to the site attached. You won’t regret it.
