Elsewhere I touched on Wolfgang Palm’s attempts to streamline spectral synthesis – which I think have been unsuccessful when compared to the work of Harry Gohs (trading as VirSyn). The two German programmers have something in common, both taking up a spectral banner and marching boldly into the additive maelstrom, then forced onto the iPad by acts of evil piracy. Gohs has kept his tools simple, not many neologisms, more about fingering about the spectral charts that Palm tried to hide away. I haven’t seen an interview with Gohs, it would be interesting. Here’s the titles I’ve paid for, which may not be the latest versions.
Addictive Synth (2011)
The first VirSyn synth I found on the iPad – a simple and effective additive waveform through additive filter pathway. My favourite way to play it is to hold a note and then run my finger through the spectral graph of wave and filter, editing serious harmonic madness in real time. Finger painting the harmonics on the iPad is fluid and glitch free and you can sweep through a vast terrain of sound in real time with just two fingers. Of course that’s a simplistic way to go about it – but damn it sounds good. Be aware that the presets are often lathered with several tonnes of reverb so first set up your own patches. A newer Addictive Pro does things I probably don’t need – but has already been superseded by AddStation – see below.
Cube Synth (2013)
Here you have additive ‘models’ A,B,C and D at the corners of a 2D graph that morphs between them. Now there’s a noise spectrum as well so you’re not restricted to pure harmonics. As with Addictive you can finger paint the frequencies but you are more likely to sweep between shapes you have designed at the four corners. Some similarity to Image Line’s Morphine and Alchemy although these are able to resynthesise sounds into additive form. There is now a Cube Synth Pro.
Poseidon (2015)
A comparatively simple device which can resynthesise sounds into an additive ‘model’ (which then acts as a wavetable) – becoming the oscillator of a traditional subtractive synthesis flow. Although it’s got a lot of heavy maths going on and the filter is particularly fierce I found this to be the least interesting VirSynthesiser because it’s basically subtractive synthesis. I don’t see much value in pivoting the eye candy wavetable around on screen without being able to alter it. See Nave instead.
Also be aware that you’ll have to buy AudioShare for the iPad to be able to load your own sounds for resynthesis. Naughty! As far as I can tell the models in Poseidon don’t load into other VirSyn instruments. Naughty naughty!
Tera (2014)
The word modular appears on my screen and I tip toe away, Quickly. Mind you it’s not expensive. There’s been an update.
AddStation (2020)
The AddStation comes back to the feel of Addictive Synth – but with four layers and a much larger resolution of additive partials. Rather than Cube where you have four variants cross fading on a 2D surface, you get four stacked in a sequence of eight (for some reason sequence of eight sounds like a pirate talking). Instead of a continuous morphing sound it’s (surprise!) a bit more like the wave sequencing in the Korg wavestation (which can also be had on iPad). Keep in mind that the Korg just has samples through filters, while the AddStation is a complex of 512 harmonics, each with their own envelope, pan and pitch, a harmonic filter on top. Smoother, more intricate. A slow fade between the sequence gives you the morphing sound of Cube, sharp joins are more rhythmic.
AppStation runs nicely on my M1 Mac – other updated titles probably do as well.
My general review of VirSyn is all of this might be engineered into a single coherent instrument that would initially cost more but not snooker you by this or that omission. Or that the instruments need to snap together. Yes I’d like resynthesis in AddStation. Yes I’d like a proper manual. I do understand that iPads aren’t computers and the price is right.
Harry has been crafting up some really remarkable instruments now for over two decades. Virsyn Tera on the desktop has been one of my favorite synthesizers.