2018 saw a plethora of inventive, appealing software synthesizers, including our Top 5 by Arturia, FXpansion, Native Instruments, Waslio Audio, Cherry Audio and Waves. Wait, that's 6?!?
Just when you thought Korg had lost interest in the Volca series of mini synths two new ones pop up on Instagram - a Buchla inspired Micro Modular and a Digital Percussion Synthesizer.
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BOLT offers a different approach to synthesis. It builds overtones with the structure of the oscillator with full or odd harmonics, inverted or deeply embedded and then modulates the heck out of itself.
An Instragram video of musician and producer Julian Wassermann at play on his Nektar Panarama T4 controller keyboard also shows an unknown VST synthesizer with the Nektar logo and the name BOLT.
Uli Behringer updates us on the forthcoming MS-101. As with many others promised for the end of the year it's taking longer than expected but it's now in pre-production and we could see it early next year.
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After months of complaints from Prologue users Korg finally steps up and deals with the oscillator tuning issues on their hybrid polyphonic synthesizer
The Neutron 2.0 firmware update brings a load of new stuff, features and improvements completely free to all users plus a new Neutron App to get into the details that the knobs don't provide.
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A whopping great big update to the original software sample library workstation. SampleTank 4 has 5 times the content, a redesigned sound engine, mixer, editing and grooving.
Teenage Engineering weighs in on reports that the OP-1 portable synthesizer has been discontinued prompting inflated second-hand prices. They are just tooling up for another run.
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Arturia has dropped Pigments, a visually enticing mega-synth that takes modulation, randomisation and probability to some very interesting places. Get your first in-depth look here!
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More voices and oscillators in unison than you could possibly use, doubling up on filters and arpeggiators and a complete wavetable editor make this one decent upgrade.
Dtronics map the guts out of Roland Linear Arithmetic synthesizers and route them to 56 knobs of programming bliss on the DT-01 programmer.
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Another classic synthesizer is about to be reborn via the fertile womb of Behringer. According to Uli Behringer's Odyssey is now not far off - exciting times.
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Behringer sort out the Poly Chaining to make it easier to run 16 Model D synthesizers as one big enormous polysynth, and fix a couple of other things with the 1.1 update.
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Aparillo is all about unfolding the life of sound through the manipulation of sine waves, synthesis, harmonics and modulation. Or you can just move stuff about to produce some fabulous soundscapes.
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How about a fist full of new wavetables, microtuning, double the LFOs, effects modulation, pitch bend mapping and useful initialisation options? Not bad for an update to the Novation Peak.
