The Hippies Won’t Come Back You Say.
Do you remember the 00’s? The hippy revival? When people started saying ‘man’ at the end of sentences again man? Do you remember Koblo and Rhizomatic Absynth? I mean the first version with the groove tube graphics – oh it still does? Trippy! I remember trying to teach it at the University of Western Sydney back whenever, and the students rebelling and wanting the familiar interface of Reason instead. But anyway.
It’s probably that cryptic interface that has kept Absynth’s mystique all these years, because if it ever used a simpler, more modern layout the cat would be out of the bag. It’s a three oscillator virtual analogue with cross modulation, two filters and wafty effects. It’s expansive – but not really that weird once you grok it. A bit like Synthmaster in some ways.
Version 1 had single cycle waveforms. Version 2 added samples (and if you look carefully at the presets, the provided samples hold a lot of the strangeness that people thought was in the synthesis). Granular playback of these samples now gave Absynth its cloudy pot head texture. Version 3 added surround sound, frequency shifting and ‘fractal’ waveshaping. A resonator joins the pipe effect. Version 4 was more aligned with other NI plugins. Finally v5 added a mutator for easier patch creation and the ‘aetherizer’ effect.
All these processes are well chosen and executed but not entirely unique. The expectation that Absynth has a particular sound comes more from the examples provided and the final effects than any innate limitation of the synthesis. So over time it has become a particular use machine, cinematic, compared to Omnisphere and Alchemy mostly based on the preset sample library and the surround outputs. But if you really wanted you could make the same kinds of sounds that Massive is supposed to be for – and vice versa.
The lesson being that perception, as guided by interface, is a major part of the synthesis. UPDATE – Native Instruments have dumped Absynth, possibly part of their attempt to merge with Izotope and Brainworx. They are becoming a provider of solutions.