Having bought Tracktion’s KULT, MYTH and NOVUM I was sent an application to download updates and demonstrations of their other instruments. We are sure you will love these other fine synthesisers! Just give them a demo. I did.
Waverazor has an interesting idea – split the waveform into sections. So the front half of a sine and the rear half of a saw. Or four parts of various waves, with their phases and scales all hither and yon. In most cases you end up with something buzzy because you’re making sharp bits at the razor joins. After some time I didn’t manage to craft anything that sounded better than a standard wavetable. But I then sent some waves to a filter, at least I tried for a while to figure out how that worked because there’s a mess of knobs all in identical cyberspace chic. The two filters can be many poles. Not just two pole or four pole but hella fuck yeah poles. Which resonates like a mother and blows the headphones off your ears leaving them bleeding. Ow.
I’m normally keen to follow a weird idea, but this one wasn’t really weird – just subtractive synthesis and oscillators that buzz like when you made a bad choice from Adventure Kid. The interface is all the stuff I don’t like from the 90s. Like almost all of the 90s. 🧻🧻
F’.em is an FM synthesiser with 11 operators. Dear God why would you do this? Everybody else has worked for years on how to get more sounds with less operators. There’s even waveforms included here that come from Yamaha synths specifically to achieve this. The envelopes have 32 stages. Seriously that is not a virtue – that is the spawn of Satan. ADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDSR. Take another look at the way Yamaha and Korg have improved FM over the years. No sir F’.U. 🧻
Hyperion is apparently inspired by Eno. I don’t think he’d go for it. There’s an utter shit load of layers, all riddled with modular cables arcing to and fro and oscilloscopes and tigers and bears oh my. Eno said that synthesisers should be like guitars – have immediate affordance. This is not at all welcoming even with postcards of planets and natural scenes rather like those you get in yoga software. For all of that cabling and kittens and oscilloscopes – it sounds utterly normal. I did not try very hard to make my own patches. I felt too weary. Surely there is a simple way to make this kind of sound.
That simplicity is design.🧻💩
I sometimes forget to open the comments often because I usually type this stuff late at night. Apologies. I do like bickering.