Aqeel Aadam Outgrowth is a new sample-manipulation instrument for macOS, Windows, and iOS, featuring multiple engines.
Software samplers/sample players focused on sound design often have extensive feature lists. Keeping track of them all requires hours of exploration to uncover all the possibilities, which risks reduced productivity.
But there are exceptions. Aqeel Aadam teamed up with sound designer BlankFor.ms to create Outgrworth, a sample-based instrument with a deeply sound-designed focus that is also fun and engaging without overwhelming the user.
Aqeel Aadam Outgrowth
Outgrowth is a fascinating new sample-based virtual instrument for macOS, Windows, and iOS. It’s not a simple sample playback instrument like a ROMpler.
Aqeel Aadam Outgrowth is a well-designed, sample-based instrument that is playful and easy to explore. The core comprises five inspiring engines, each designed not only to play back samples but also to process them in real time.
It starts very classic with Stem, a basic one-shot sample player that repeats your loaded sample. A feature that is familiar from many sampler plugins. The next one is more colorful.
Retain is a granular stretching engine that sustains your sample indefinitely. It’s not overly complex; you have two dedicated controls (grain count and window width) that can achieve a lot.
Then, Reflect is a looping algorithm that loops the sample in three ways: ping-pong, forward, and reverse. A unique feature is that it keeps the looped sample at a consistent rate across all pitches. The developer has also built in some intriguing Synthesizer engines.
Radiate is an additive resynthesis engine that maps each harmonic of the sample to a sine wave oscillator. It’s like a super-straightforward additive Synthesizer.
Instead of building its own waveforms with sine waves, the engine does this from your loaded sample. You can fine-tune this engine with two easy parameters: partials and cross-mod.
The fourth and last engine is Delve, a wavetable Synthesizer that takes your sample and transforms it into a wavetable. You can tweak it with two parameters: start and sub-oscillator.
Five fascinating engines that have the great advantage of being very easy and hands-on to use. This, in turn, is very inspiring without overwhelming you with hundreds of parameters.
Classic Shaping With A Twist
Alongside these engines, you also have classic synth-like features like a built-in filter with a feedback option for extra bite, and an impressive modulation engine.
The latter includes two ADSR envelopes, an LFO, a slew random (jitter), velocity, and random per note, mod-wheel, polyphonic aftertouch MPE, keytrack, and MIDI CC.
No mod global modulation matrix, but each modulator has its own mini mod matrix where you can assign them to up to 16 parameters in the engine, giving you tons of ways to add movement to your sounds.
That’s not all you explore in Aqueel Aadam Outgrowth. It also includes five unique one-knob audio effects to further shape your sounds.
Subvert is a unique shaper that analyses your sample and flattens or inverts its volume accordingly, giving different results depending on the knob position. Submerge is a distinct spectral-based effect that adds dimensional realism to sample repitching.
Then, Strike is a dynamic control that infuses an acoustic-like response to sample playback and performance, while Ripple is a one-knob tape emulation designed by BlankFor.ms. Finally, Smear is a distinct reverb applied before the ADSR envelope.
This unlocks unique sound design options, allowing you to shape the sound in ways not possible when reverb is applied at the end of the signal chain. Thus, reverb is part of the sound foundation that can be shaped with the ADSR.
First Impression
A super exciting new plugin and iOS app that just arrived at the end of the year. Seen on iOS, it’s sure to be one of the big highlights of 2025. I think it’s fantastic that you can achieve so much with so few parameters. That’s what makes it so inspiring.
Since it is based on samples and you can load your own, you have endless possibilities to transform samples into new soundscapes with just a few simple steps.
Aqeel Aadam Outgrowth is available now at an introductory price of $50, down from $65, through December 22, 2025. It runs as a VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
The iOS version is available now on the Apple App Store for $14,99 and runs as a standalone and AUv3 plugin on iOS (iPhone, iPad).
More information here: Aqeel Aadam Sound / App Store
Plugin News
Ridgewalk was inspiring and I watched several videos about this and tested this now. But why buy another App another Sampler for 50$ I can do with pretty many of others already?
Pro: drag and drop of samples is fast&hassle free I like
Con: using my certain special audio sources I know I must get certain jobs done in the future I wasn’t impressed at all. None of those modes, features, sampler modes was in any kind new to me.
It’s a sampler and mostly everything I can achieve with all the others.
My use cases: Heavy Sound Design, other worlds, creating new fresh sounds, stacking sounds. Outgrowth let everything sound like any random preset from my good Synthesizer manufacturers.
“using my certain special audio sources I know I must get certain jobs done in the future”
What?
Describes a „stress test with audio“: knowing that a tool must deliver in a very short time, I throw in certain pool of special audios from successful projects I can rely on. Let me test new products e.g. Outgrowth pretty fast to find out how it performs against existing tools. Learning new workflows is just hard and very time consuming, night shifts brutal. Hope that makes my prev sentence more clear!
And every musician works differently, is inspired differently, and therefore uses different set of tools. It can happen, as in this case, that a tool isn’t suitable for a particular person. That doesn’t mean that a product is bad. It’s just not suitable personally.
Thank you for posting this. Tried the demo and instantly bought it, so inspiring.
I don´t know any other plug-in with this unique feature set which makes it really fun and easy to dig unexpected sounds and atmospheres from any samples thrown in. Very comfortable that samples are automatically mapped which works fine even when multiple samples are thrown in simultaneously. So instantly ready to start experimenting without the hassle of setting up things. But you can if you like. Nice!
Finally a sampler concept which fits in my workflow! With lots of random options, very fast to use and tweak – has the right fx, fresh concepts and it sounds great. Thx for posting this, bought it instantly and I am very very happy. Especially on IOS I missed a sampler like this.