Rob papen has released Blade, a new virtual synthesizer that uses "harmolator" synthesis to generate sound.

At the heart of Blade, ready to twist and transform your musical mind, lies the Harmolator. An additive synthesis system, which rather than using the system of changing additive partials, uses global controls which capture the essence of additive synth in an intuitive way making the creation of sounds much easier than using other additive synths.

The nine Harmolator controls allow you to create a vast range of sounds so you get all the amazing sounds that additive synthesis can generate with the added simplicity of traditional subtractive synthesis.

The Harmolator allows oscillator spreading, fattening the sound and also square / sine wave sub-oscillator. What's more, the sound can be modified further by the 21 per-voice distortions types and 14 filter types.

Blade offers total control of the sound over time using an array of different modulation controls. The most significant of these is the central XY screen. Here you can either alter things directly by moving the cursor around, or you can record paths which can be replayed. The recorded path can be looped, bi-directional looped and tempo based as well. Even the speed of the XY recording can be modulated for dynamic changes. So the XY pad is also an incredibly advanced "human input" modulation source. Furthermore, Blade has the full range of other modulation sources, including a dedicated envelope, LFO and velocity as modulation source for Harmolator controls.

Two FX units featuring all the FX from other Rob Papen products, plus the Arp / Sequencer and an Easy page which allows you to easily control sounds, all add up to a flexible and useful instrument at the cutting edge of today's synthesizers.

Blade Features:

• 16 voices, operating in poly, mono 1/2, legato 1/2 and arp modes.
• Harmolator Oscillator with 9 controls, harmolator wave settings, two types of spread functions and extended sub-oscillator.
• 21 Distortion Units operating per voice (ahead of filter).
• 14 Filter Types including 6/12/18/24 low/high pass, 12/24 band pass / notch, vocal & comb filter.
• Filter separation function for unique filter stereo soundAmp section with Volume, Velocity and Envelope control.
• XP Pad with 12 amount controls for each X and Y, which can modulate the 9 Harmolator parameters, Filter Cutoff, Filter Q and Volume.
• XY Pad which can operating either directly or with recorded paths, in poly, mono or free modes.
• XY Pad playback can be tempo synced, with different tempo settings, and with loop & bi-directional loop options.
• XY Pad movement speed control.
• XY editing options at right mouse menu.
• Dedicated Harmolator velocity, LFO and envelope controls.
• Pitch LFO and Pitch Envelope, 2 Free Harmolator control sources, 2 Free Envelopes, 2 Free LFOs and 4 modulation sources.
• All of Blade's controls can be used as modulation destinations, and there are a full range of modulation sources including MIDI controls and internal controls.
• 2 FX units with 27 effects, including distortion, reverb and tape delay plus many more.
• 16 Step Arpeggiator with each step having its own pitch, velocity and free amount, which can also be used as a sequencer for modulation purposes.
• Easy Page allows control of the main parameters in a flexible and easy way.
• Preset handling with copy, paste, clear and compare function.
• 'Quick Browser', 'Recently Browsed' and 'Favorite' functions.
• Preset Manager screen allows you to easily find and organize presets and banks.
• Full MIDI control over all parameters included the X/Y Pad.
• PC: 32 & 64 bits VST and RTAS for Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7.
• Mac: 32 & 64 bits AU and VST and 32 bit RTAS for OS X 10.5 or higher.
• Mac: AAX for OS X 10.5 of higher very soon.
• Mac: 32 bit AU, VST & RTAS for OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
• Serial/license system, 2nd serial for 2nd computer/laptop are available after you have registering the product's original serial/license.

Pricing & Availability

Blade is available for 32- and 64-bit Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU, RTAS and AAX (soon) plug-in formats. It costs £99.00 / €119.00 but special introductory pricing until 30th April, 2012, is £78.95 / €99.00 / $119.00.