This page will hold Cherry Audio’s original (and much more interesting) software titles. It is in progress – please stay tuned. Their replica instruments can be found here.
Sines 🧻🧻🧻💩
There’s movement in FM synthesis at the moment. That’s KORG expanding the 6 operator tradition into full modular with the opsix, or AKAI’s use of formants and pulse width in OPx-4 or Reason Studios’ Algoritm – or Sines, never described as an FM synthesiser but certainly built on 4 operators. It doesn’t look like FM at first glance, but when you compare it to the surfaces devised for the DX-7 the feline is out of the container.
The Average User loves the sound of FM but not the complexity. Sines promises an easier path. Each operator has dedicated controls to bend and stretch the original sine into the saw-ish, squar-ish and ‘what-the’ shapes made by traditional 2-op pairs. You can modulate across the operators but you rarely need to. A bit of ‘shape’ here, a bit of ‘wavefold’ there and voila you have perfectly good complex waves to pass through your traditional filter, effects and EQ.
It’s not most exotic sound I’ve ever heard – even OPx-4 is more lush and gloomy. Sines is capable of more but is currently standing its ground in that particular sonic space. I also think that this army of knobs wavering across the keyboard is a little daunting for the AvUser who is grateful for obvious presets and examples.
Dreamsynth 🧻🧻🧻🧻
I love the slightly out of tune, whistling, buzzing, ringing kinds of digital noise sounds that came with the Roland JD and JV series. The Dreamsynth provides these in a very easy to understand layout for people who like to keep things faux-analogue. Owning the 00’s machines I tend to use those instead – but if you didn’t have them, this is a ‘pretty good’ replica for not too much.
As with Sines, Cherry have placed a mirror maze of identical controls which goes against much of the interface design of the last few decades. It’s a bit old school Reason, although Reason Studios doesn’t do it any more either. There is a touch of bombast. Maybe because the original machines had no knobs (apart from the JD-800) and there’s a lot of catching up to twiddle.
JD-800 or DreamSynth? Hard one. Authentic versus augmented… I like them both but I’d take the one without the subscription.
Harmonia 🧻🧻🧻💩
This is an odd one. If you’ve played an organ you likely know that adding octaves (pulling out the stops) builds up more interesting wave forms. Rather than opening a filter, you instead add more harmonics of a sinewave – simple additive synthesis. With Harmonia you may combine up to eight copies of a sampled sound, tuned to related pitches (but not always octaves) that meld into a more complex sound. This is not really additive synthesis as it is defined. It’s more like holding down a chord on a sampler, but with dedicated controls for animating the relative volumes of each held note over time. You’re encouraged to add thirds and fifths and even some discordant copies of the wave to get a lush texture – or a hot mess if you’re not careful.
There’s two of these harmonic oscillators and so a means to play off two ideas, or morph between sounds. Probably also for times when your complex wave needs a bit of plain and simple underneath. The control matrix allows you a fair bit of additive techno wibbling which is not the same as the usual filter techno wibbling.
Lots of effects as well, hence no problems with cinematic glows and drones.
This is not going to be your ‘go-to’ tool for everyday music design. It’s going to work for reasonably slow changes in texture, glows, pads or wibbling. It can do other things but there’s probably more convenient ways to get there. It is a good thing.