The software’s single drawback is the fact that it can’t be used within a digital audio workstation because it isn’t available as a VST or Audio Unit plugin. Of course, some amount of time-stretching distortion is always present, but this is often used as a creative effect. PaulStretch is the most popular third-party freeware tool for audio time-stretching, capable of delivering extreme changes in sample speed/tempo without affecting the pitch. Xenakios has released PaulXStretch, a freeware time-stretching VST and AU plugin based on the PaulStretch extreme time-stretching algorithm.