STS-33 Space Transition Synthesizer

My system crashed. I lost all my settings and savings... STS-33 will be the FIRST VST I will re-load.

Just sayin...

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I'd been looking for a synthesizer to create vast soundscapes, especially dark menacing ones. Something that had evolving sound, not just a static pad. And with all that, something you didn't need a PHD in synthesis to wrangle sound from. I figured if such a thing did exist, it would probably cost at least $500, and would most likely be hardware. It all seemed like just a dream.

Well, STS-17 is the synth of my dreams.

Advanced Wave-Transistion, I'd never heard of it... not to mention the 120+ different waves it uses (with names like Waterflow, Jungle, MetalHit etc.) to create moving oceans of sound. This technique allows STS-17 to create worlds folks. (One of my favorite things to do is just sit back, close my eyes, and get lost in the soundscapes. ) The technology implored uses gobs of knobs, with names like "pstime", "transition", "shift", and even weirder ones like "vividise". I'm not going to even pretend to understand how this synth works (though I've got a vague notion), but luckily for me (and others) HG Fortune doesn't expect us to know how. That's why he installed something which all synths should have, LAZY buttons. All three parts of STS-17 (oscillators, filter, master) have a LAZY button that randomly initializes the functions in it's respective module. This leads to instant variety and perpetual new sound creation. This feature greatly adds to the accessibility of this synthesizer.

Obviously, HG Fortune doesn't let the accessibility stop there, because the price for this synth (and all his synths) are well within range of almost anyone's wallet. Hence, STS-17 (and Swamp) is one of the very -few- softsynths I've ever actually purchased, and I am PROUD to support HG and to own STS-17 legally. There is nothing else out there that I've ever heard that sounds like STS-17 (and this is not exclusive, all HG's synths sound unique). I think it's a marvelous synthesizer by a genius designer, and you should at -least- give the lightweight free version a try, even if you're not into atmospheric synths.

Bottomline: If you want wonderous ever evolving dark soundscapes that anyone can program with a single press of a button, look no further.Read Review