XILS-lab has released Oxium, a unique performance-orientated synth plug-in adept at giving equal billing to still-sought-after classic analogue sounds and more adventurous modernistic tones. It costs €99 / $129 and is available for 32- and 64-bit Mac OS X and Windows in Audio Unit, VST and RTAS formats.

Launch Offer: Until August 15th, 2012, you can purchase Oxium for €69 instead of €99.

Oxium includes more than 250 carefully chosen performance-showcasing presets from XILS-lab's team of sound designers including Laurent Bourgeon (Lotuzia), Simon Ball (Soundsdivine), Nori Ubukata, Pascal Laigle (Tzadi), Kelvin Ford, Ingo Weidner, Stephen Wey, Sami Rabia (Aiyn Zahev) and Michael Cavallo.

XILS-lab says that mastering Oxium is far from being a steep learning curve, thanks to its intuitive user interface. An Instant Visual Feedback (IVF) concept based around a 'Flower' design allows standard synth building blocks — oscillators, filters, and LFOs, etc. — to be quickly absorbed at a glance. Meanwhile, modulation options are also accessible quickly and simply via a central page, and include the usual suspects — it's simple to add performance-enhancing Vibrato (oscillator pitch), Tremolo (VCA level), or Auto-Wah (cutoff frequency) modulations to a patch.

Looking for 'photorealistic' analogue-sounding sounds? Take two cumulative analogue- modelled oscillators and simultaneously select several (Triangle, PWM Triangle, Saw, Square, and PWM Pulse) waveforms for each (together with cross and ring modulation); shape them with a flexible double-multi-mode filter structure using XILS-lab's proprietary third-generation zero-delay feedback algorithm featuring six self-oscillating filter types (12dB and 24dB Low-pass, 6dB and 12dB Band-pass, and 12dB High-Pass — plus 12dB Low-pass, Band-pass, High-Pass, and an additional Formant Filter option on the second filter that can also be modulated); finally, mix to taste using the flexible double-mixer architecture with fully-configurable serial or parallel modes.

Seeking something more modern and exotic-sounding? Try using the Grid, Oxium's on-board advanced sequencer modulator, adapted from the masked zones idea introduced in XILS-lab's Le Masque: Delay timeline-driven delay effects plug-in namesake, featuring 16 freely-assignable zones, horizontal and vertical quantise modes, and two level parameters for added musical flexibility. Ditto the three (Amplifier, Filter, and Auxiliary) D-ADSR envelopes easily at hand to assist with sound sculpting — useful for triggering tempo- synced modulation, for example. And rounding off the feature set, three full-featured LFOs that can be set to run polyphonically (with each voice having its own LFO) or monophonically (with all voices using the same LFO), each capable of modulating oscillator pitch and width, filter frequency (host application synchronised or otherwise), and amplifier level.

Oxium offers two user-selectable skins to reflect its 'split personality' and is protected by a simple serial, without the need of any hardware dongle or challenge response.