Here we are at the end of another Black Friday, a little poorer, a little shame-faced. Just a little, as greed has fed on less human flesh than usual. I decided to finish my splurge with a bit of ‘Swedish top shelf’. Softube is normally too expensive for me – but let’s see if all those Euros add up to something.
You’ll notice two ratings of toilet paper have been awarded. The single star is for their UTTERLY STUPID decision to replace the standard OS windows in their Modular system, removing the scroll bars. ‘Use the scroll wheel on your mouse’, they whisper on page XX of the manual. ‘Fuck you buddy’, I yell back at this completely pointless replacement. THERE IS NO SCROLL WHEEL ON MY TRACKBALL YOU COMPLETE NIT. That’s the point of a standard operating system – it’s been carefully developed so that different users are equally served. Fortunately somebody has written some code to undo this mistake, but this should have been fixed long ago.
The other stars are my attempt to sum up what still seems quite expensive even with 50% taken off.
Special Sauce
Softube has one central claim – that they make accurate copies of hot headed hardware. Does it grump, does it growl, does it eat a chilli? Is it a thing that warms up and then some? Here it is. Everybody is getting into the circuit modelling game these days but Softube have historical bragging rights. We are not expensive if you compare to the hardware prices they might point out. But other companies are closing in, cheaper, more boastful. How long can they sail above the great unwashed?
Softube Modular
In general I don’t get modular. But if I am to try it then I’ll have one that works like the real thing. As I’ve pointed out before most virtual modular simply doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Forcing too much signal into an input should cause overdrive, but only Softube’s emulation does this as expected. I also don’t need a zoo of halfway decent no-name modules that I can’t remember – it’s better to fully understand less modules that are more accurate. I like that they start with Doepfer and have only now gone back to Roland and MOOG modules as historical touch points. I didn’t bother buying Braids, Clouds et al. which are free elsewhere and are digital anyway.
SOOG versus FrankenJuno
Playing with their MOOG Model D (Model 72) and Roland Juno (Model 84) emulations – well, I guess (yawn/stretch) they sound fine. Probably better than Cherry. Neither are major life goals (my Juno is sold and my MOOG is really a BOOG) but I’ve been interested to build a Roland modular rig with multiple oscillators, filters, a couple of odd ball bits thrown in – a FrankenJuno. Initial tests have created pleasantly awful screams and howls.
Apart from the stupidity with the windowing it’s a pretty simple set up. Not as fluid as Cardinal, a bit more like actual hardware. But unlike Cardinal it only needs a few overheated basic modules to start making a noise, and the MOOG and Roland modules can be made part of that tumult. I picked up a few extras – the multi band resonator and Rubicon – but the next main point was to try out Softube’s own instruments and see how they might fit.
Statement Lead
This ROMpler offers up 90 multi-samples – ‘careful recordings of rare, expensive hardware synths’. It’d be interesting to actually know what they were, although there’s been a lot of treatments pre-added so it probably doesn’t matter any more. You only get the rudiments of subtractive synthesis and very little tweaking or destruction is possible. I really feel this could be a Kontakt library. But then it is instant gratification and it is nicely curated. But normally $100 USD? Hmmm. Why does it look like a Revox Tape Recorder? In-joke?
The saving grace is that it can be used in the modular system. Still no modulation but you can at least grunge it up with filters and pipe cleaners.
Parallels
A completely different look for this one. Two big circles, modulators and ‘shapers’. 97 sound samples and ‘algorithmic wave scanning’ which seems a lot like plain old wavetables to me. Whether this is simplifying the interface or making it seem more exotic is matter for debate – it again relies heavily on the quality of the samples and you don’t have the tweaking available that you’d get in Vital or Serum. $150 USD? I am tempted to bring their wavetables into Vital just so I can fuck with them.
Again you are going to have much more fun bringing parts of this into your modular.
In summary I don’t feel super enthused about the whole deal which even at half price is much more than some very strong individual instruments, and at full price several years of a multi-instrument subscription. I celebrate what Softube has done so well, but it surely won’t stay ahead for forever. Others are getting better at this game.