The Crumar DS-2, Resurrected by Cherry Audio
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The Crumar DS-2 by Cherry Audio continues their collaboration with the legendary Italian brand, bringing back an often overlooked analogue rarity.
Billed as a digital synthesizer back in 1978 (that’s what the DS stands for), Crumar launched the DS-2 as their first proper synthesizer and what an odd thing it was. It was a monophonic synth that was married up to a 44-note paraphonic string synth, using digitally controlled oscillators to tackle the perennial problem of tuning drift that was common at the time.
Digital? In 1978?
As we know, DCO’s are still analogue oscillators, but in 1978, it was probably the marketing department that insisted on using the word ‘digital’ at a time when it signified advanced technology and the future. For those not young enough to remember, prefixing anything with the word ‘digital’ was very similar to the trend of prefixing stuff with the letter “i” in the early 2000’s/2010’s.
The digital aspect of the oscillators was Crumar’s own design, and the resulting output was a set of traditional waveforms but stair-stepped, which gave the Crumar DS-2 its decidedly rough edge.
The paraphonic string synth section, by its very nature, used a single, high/low pass filter and had its own VCA. It created its sawtooth waveforms by utilising divide-down square waves and a high-pass filter. Again, this gave the Crumar DS-2 a distinctive tone not heard anywhere else.
The Cherry Audio Crumar DS-2
Now Cherry Audio, in collaboration with the present-day incarnation of Crumar, has brought the DS-2, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, using their extensive plugin knowledge and beautiful 3D visuals, created by Mal Meehan.
As you’d expect from a Cherry Audio synth, all of the original features that made the DS-2 what it is are all here, but a lot more has been added to make it a more appealing and attractive proposition to today’s musician.
Aside from the obvious fact that it is far less prone to breakdown and won’t put your back out when carrying it around to gigs, Cherry Audio have added extra voice modes, such as Unison and up to 16 voices of polyphony from the previously mono section.
A DS-2 and Then Some
There’s an additional sine wave added to oscillator 2, along with white and pink noise generators and a third LFO. All LFOs feature sync, retrigger and reverse wave options and all envelopes feature an initial delay stage.
The Touch section allows you to route aftertouch to a multitude of destinations for some really great expression options. Of course, you can choose to isolate both sections of the Crumar DS-2 as well as play them both together.
Once again, the new Cherry Audio effects section makes a welcome appearance, delivering the ability to create and share FX chains between compatible Cherry Audio instruments, such as Trident and SH-MAX.
In Conclusion
Cherry Audio have a canny knack of picking obscure but intriguing synths to recreate, which makes their portfolio incredibly diverse and hugely attractive for people looking to have a diverse palette of sounds at their disposal.
The original Crumar DS-2 is not the most sought-after or popular vintage synth on the market, and those in the know would snap one up, such is its unique sonic character. But now, via the wonder of plugin technology, we can all discover this Italian sleeper-synth for ourselves at an incredibly affordable price.
It also sits nicely with Cherry Audio’s previous Crumar recreation, the Spirit, and it is a real delight to have both of these spirited, quirky, and pretty unique-sounding Italian stablemates together, alive and kicking and giving us some much-needed variety!
More Information
The Cherry Audio Crumar DS-2 is available to buy now for $/€59 and comes as a VST/AU/VST3/AAX plugin as well as a standalone app.
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