I think that Thorn has not been a smash hit. It had accolades on first release in 2018 but has not been prominent since – the fate of many spectral tools in a realm where only Alchemy and Zebra have become the dominant survivors.
The Average Enthusiast shies away from spectral synthesis, choosing ‘Legendary’ C20th sounds instead or confining their attempts to the barest familiar features. So designers try tease them out of hiding by stashing the complexity underneath mock analogue. Thorn is one of those ‘looks subtractive’ tools. It shows familiar panels for oscillators, filters, amps – all that. It’s considerably less complex than Zebra but more advanced than the free Zebrallete. I actually find that more appealing in that it has the right ‘baby bear’ amount of features needed in production. The three oscillator panels pop open to reveal harmonic tables, with 16 cells in which to animate (but no alternative graph like Zebra’s “geoblend”). So you could for example draw a saw wave in the first cell, and a single harmonic in the last to create a ‘filter sweep’ of epic proportions before even applying the conventional and Harmonic filters.
The Harmonic Filter has a similar interface – with more harmonics, but no animation – instead two simple knobs to do the business. Essentially ‘Shape’ is the cut off and ‘Balance’ is a kind of bass to treble emphasis. Everything else is traditional. Look, knobs – Do not be afraid!
Except of course the sound, which can easily reach those crazy alien shimmers and whorls that ‘Legendary’ instruments can’t touch. That’s the thing – you can have everything – subtractive and more … you just have to move your ambitions into this century.
There’s a sequencer which includes glitching, something that will get use even when being an olde school machine.
Currently listed as $200 at Plugin Alliance, which often discounts – with Zebra now at 99 Euro, they will need to do so. Pigments has very different way of thinking but can make similar noises. The other path is Vital for free – which produces similar sounds via wavetables – but needs a lot more experience to go places.