FW Editor: Can you tell us more about Psycho Toolkit? What inspired you in creating this package?
Trevor Magnusson: A lot of the effects are "happy accidents" - unintended discoveries while doing research on other plugins. As they were like nothing else I had seen around, I decided to bundle them together and release them.

FW Editor: Psycho Toolkit incorporates 7 different tools. Can you tell us more about each of these tools?
Trevor Magnusson: Barnum Preamp adds smooth distortion to the midrange frequencies, warming the sound like an anlogue preamp, but then going a bit further. Excitable Boy is aural enhancer / exciter, but once again, I push it a little further - you don't want to push a whole mix through this one. Flip Speed is two different kinds of octave generator in one, with some extra attitude thrown in. Metal Demon is death metal vocal effect that takes a "pure" singing voice and makes it sound tortured and throaty. Sick Puppy is the result of some of my wave-peak analysis research, and produces extreme distortion that I simply haven't heard anywhere else. Trash Triode is my attempt at emulating a "cheap" vacuum tube amp. Water Glass takes the FFT (fast fourier transform) noise reduction technique, and pushes it harder so that it generates glassy and grainy textures.

FW Editor: Do you have any favorite distortion tool? Why?
Trevor Magnusson: Well, apart from my own, I think the Izotope guys have it sewn up with Trash. There were a few good ones in the early days from memory there was something called WarmTone.

FW Editor: Delphi DirectX SDK is one of your most popular applications. Can you tell us more about it? What inspired you in developing Delphi DirectX SDK?
Trevor Magnusson: I'm surprised to hear that. But if you say so, I only did it for myself - I'm very experienced and comfortable programming in Delphi, and I wanted to use it for my plugins. There was no DSK available, so I developed my own.

FW Editor: Which is the main difference between Psycho Toolkit freeware version and Psycho Toolkit full version?
Trevor Magnusson: Most of my plugins follow the same strategy: the free version has some of the knobs disabled. So you get to install it, and make sure it runs stable on your audio host app, then, if you're happy, you can register.

FW Editor: Is Psycho Toolkit a good tool for mainstream audio production?
Trevor Magnusson: Honestly? I think there are better choices. I would have imagined Psycho Toolkit to be more aimed at hardcore, extreme techno and cyberpunk. But I'm not so young anymore, and perhaps I'm not keeping up with the genre names!