Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit – An Overlooked, Moog-Adjacent Synth Returns In Plugin Form
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Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit · Source: Cherry Audio
The Crumar Spirit, one of those frequently forgotten about Italian synths with a rich heritage and illustrious parentage, returns courtesy of Cherry Audio!
Ti prego, perdonami…
As an Italian, it brings great shame upon me to admit that I am woefully uneducated on the subject of Italian synths. My Nonna would be spinning in her grave. Actually, if that were possible, she’d be spinning because I never became the Catholic priest she so desperately yearned for me to be, but that’s a whole other story!
I’ve only ever owned one Italian keyboard, an Elka X-605, albeit briefly. It had no legs and was big and heavy, so I moved it on to a collector in Italy. And that was that. Of course, we all know the Elka Synthex quite well, but the rest of those classic Italian synths remain both elusive and largely overlooked.
The Original Crumar Spirit
All of that might begin to be redressed by Cherry Audio’s latest plugin, their spin on the Crumar Spirit! Aside from the Synthex, this might just be the next most desired Italian synth. Even our very own Adam Douglas called for a plugin recreation of this very synth not that long ago! Well, it seems Cherry Audio were listening!
Ask anyone about the Crumar Spirit, and they’ll likely tell you how it was designed by Bob Moog. That is only partly true. Yes, Bob and Jim Scott designed much of the circuitry, along with Crumar’s own Sante Crucianelli, but it also benefited from feature design, functional architecture and documentation from the great Tom Rhea.
Esteemed input, I think you’d agree? But despite the valuable input from the likes of Bob, Jim and Tom, the times they were a-changin’ and in 1983, the year the Crumar Spirit was released, there was a seismic shift in the synthesizer market towards the pristine, new digital technology, ushered in by the DX7 that was released that same year.
Three years later, Crumar were no more. In 2008, another Italian company revived the brand, making new instruments and, in a limited run of 100 units, building a new Crumar Spirit, this time with MIDI and other improvements on the original design. And now, with the full blessing of Crumar, Cherry Audio bring us the software version!
Cherry Audio’s Crumar Spirit
As you will likely have guessed, Cherry Audio have delivered a powerful recreation of the original but with numerous improvements, additions and tweaks to make it even more powerful and usable in today’s modern music-making environment.
Aside from the obvious increase in polyphony, there’s also a unison mode and voice cycling, which adds variations on a note-by-note basis for that authentic ageing analogue feel. There are copious amounts of modulation capabilities that extend the original’s abilities, along with a nice little mod matrix with 25 sources and 45 destinations.
The envelopes have been added to and increased with way more functionality, and there’s a very useful and multi-functional arpeggiator included. All the usual Cherry Audio tweaks and design cues are here, courtesy of Mal Meehan, and the new FX section is neatly tucked away below the “keyboard” as it was in the ODC 2800.
More Information
The Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit supports VST, VST3, AU and AAX as well as a standalone version and works on both major operating systems from Windows 7 and macOS 10.13 and above, with full native Apple Silicon support. There is also a 30 day free trial available.
The plugin retails for $59 USD/€59 EUR and is available to buy right now!
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One response to “Cherry Audio Crumar Spirit – An Overlooked, Moog-Adjacent Synth Returns In Plugin Form”
Damn, this has been the synth I’ve lusted after ever since I learned about it in the early 2000s! I got so excited when they announced they were bringing it back to life… then I saw the price tag lol! Hopefully the plug in will hold me over