{"id":143,"date":"2021-08-12T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T05:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=143"},"modified":"2025-03-20T03:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T03:15:09","slug":"synthmaster-2-9","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/synthmaster-2-9\/","title":{"rendered":"KV331audio Synthmaster \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(I have version 3 installed – I just haven’t got around to writing about it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was claimed for v2.9 (at the time this was written) that this is “one of the very finest soft synths money can buy”. That’s like waving red underpants at a bull. I am that bull. The software is also on sale. I am a cheapskate bull. These two things are entwined – it seems to be on sale quite a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the manual (I always read the manual very carefully for everything I talk about here so that I’m not neglecting anything important besides I love manuals they … oh sorry never mind) ahem<\/em> reading the manual was not inspiring. Oscillators la la<\/em> plug into filter etc. etc.<\/em> layers. It requires much prodding and pushing to see where there fun is, tucked away in a very<\/em> 90’s workstation interface, complete with hidden pop up menus. Here’s the best bits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Oscillators<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There are numerous kinds of oscillators. The basic ones are single cycle samples, so a triangle is not a perfect triangle but a unique sampled one, and you’ll soon ignore that for the waveform from a ‘legendary’ analogue keyboard anyway. Once you have your ‘KORG MS20 #7’ wave loaded, you can dynamically bend it and flex it and distort it in many ways, so it’s not just sitting there idly. This is not a bad result at all, particularly when you add in some oscillator drift. You can instead load a SFZ file, a common multi-sample format used by a few but important titles including Alchemy<\/em> and Falcon. Synthmaster <\/em>doesn’t offer much in the realm of sample playback. The sample cannot be adjusted or bent, but runs through all the following virtual analogue path, so likely will be heard alongside a second oscillator doing the crazy stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are some types where I think the names are ‘aspirational’. Additive just means 8 basic oscillators. That’s nice, but not really 256 or more sine waves creating harmonics \u2013 it’s really a kind of organ mode, but each of the 8 can be a different basic waveform. The vector oscillator can blend between four basic waveforms in a square. It’s actually a different version of the additive, with less waveforms and the volume levels arranged as XY cross fades. Then there is wavetable, which has been updated in the last version to match the 256 wave formats on current software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtual Analogue stuff<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The filters and overdrives that follow the oscillators are very nice. Not exceptional \u2013 except perhaps the Drive knob which should be called I’m Losing My Shit<\/em> as it sounds like something going horribly wrong inside the box. The overall sound is better than many competitors, and if you just want a comparatively low priced virtual analogue with some extras, it’s a good choice. So what’s the problem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s interesting to see Roland’s Zenology<\/em> come on the market with a similar interface and not dissimilar operation. Both have a lot of hunt and peck and fiddling which doesn’t convert into a source of wonder, compared to say Alchemy<\/em> which actually is deep. They are not Dune 3<\/a> either. Synthmaster<\/em> is currently $60, Zenology<\/em> is $500 (with four ‘models’ included). If you take that as the standard to beat then Synthmaster<\/em> is indeed the fox that jumps over the lazy dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(I have version 3 installed – I just haven’t got around to writing about it.) It was claimed for v2.9 (at the time this was written) that this is “one of the very finest soft synths money can buy”. That’s like waving red underpants at a bull. I am that bull. The software is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[31,4,6],"class_list":["post-143","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-additive","tag-virtual-analogue","tag-wavetable"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2514,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/143\/revisions\/2514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}