B.I.T. offers 16 voices of dual oscillator polyphony with dual filters, LFOs and envelopes in a classic analogue polysynth virtual synthesizer that does everything you'd expect it to.
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SubLab pulls together a number of digital and analogue processes to craft a bass sound in a single instrument that would normally take multiple plug-ins to achieve.
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Nylon is a cool looking synthesizer that uses oscillators based on geometry to define the timbre via a circular path. Then it's all morphing, modulation and movement for there into unexplored sounds.
Polyphenom 2 ups the ante on its predecessor with 200 wavetables, harmonic randomisation, a new filter and lots and lots of luscious sounds and textures.
Steinberg and Music Mind Labs have got together to turn virtual instrument Retrologue 2 into a hardware desktop synthesizer via their ELK MusicOS. The prototype will be revealed at Superbooth.
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Brainworx and Plug-in Alliance promised us some software synths at NAMM earlier in the year. The first one to emerge is a rather brilliant recreation of the classic Oberheim SEM.
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SFC-1 is a beautifully realised hardware controller for the U-He Repro-1 software emulation of the Sequential Pro-One. Is that a better hardware experience than the forthcoming Behringer Pro-1?
Parallels uses two paths of multi-wave samples from a range of fabulous synthesizers and blends them together with effects and modulation to give you an engaging and colourful software synthesizer.
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Roland has taken on the 3rd March as 303 day to reclaim the beloved TB-303 Bass Line synth and released an authentically modelled software version of the analogue classic - dammit!
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Whatever sound you can possibly imagine can probably be found amongst the 8000 presets of SampleTank 4. IK Multimedia's behemoth sample-based software workstation is available now.
New World Music expansion packs and a bunch of acoustic drum kits have been added to your Roland Cloud account for instant download.
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A brand new bumper bonus bundle of synths, effects, instruments and loops are yours for free with the Komplete Start collection with Kontakt 6 and Reaktor 6 players.
Gig Performer is a live performance VST host for instruments and effects. The new version brings in a setlist concept for faster loading, better MIDI, Ableton Link and Chord Pro support.
Techno-L HN1 is a badass-looking rompler stuffed full of ready-to-go sounds for techno, minimal and industrial genres that also could be suited to other types of electronica as well.
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?!?
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.
