Audible Genius

great tool to go along with Syntorial.

well organized tutorials and on-your-own patches.

For a Free Synth that INCLUDES fantastic and fast YouTube tutorials that EXPLAIN the WHY in the sound design, it gets all the stars from me.

Primer in its current form is quite a surprisingly nice little synth. It surely wasn't meant to compete among synths, considering the strongly limited modulation options, but with a little loving care and the right motivation it can deliver unexpected sound gems.

Indeed it makes a decent "first synth" for beginners. It introduces a variety of subtractive synthesis features in a sort of rudimentary form. At the same time this could be a little misleading or confusing more than it should. But it's that exact weirdness that adds a unique charm to it, too.

I confidently recommend to play with it a bit more, because of the unique charm you may encounter and wouldn't want to miss. Who ever would combine sync, ring and FM?

Beside its wildness, it can serve up some clean and full sounding bread'n'butter synth sounds, too.

Nice software and concept.

If you get stuck in one of the.

unnecessarily hard "find the random pattern with your mind's eye" challenges.

there is a "backdoor" bypass to other lessons via the table of contents menu. Should not be.

so hidden though....

I have owned Syntorial now for about a year and it has taught me lots about sound design. The video modules are short and easy to understand and the sound design tasks build upon the previous lessons. There is lots of repetition for each new chapter so you get a good feel for what the controls do.

Ever since the release of the ipad app, I have spent more and more time with Syntorial (e.g. bus, train, plane rides). I haven't finished the entire course yet but I find myself doing small tasks here and there.

Before I started, I had some knowledge of syntheses i.e - basic ADSP and envelope understanding and could design some basic sounds but mainly it was alot of luck on my part to get the sound I wanted to design. Now I feel like I know how to roughly get the sound I want. The fine tuning still needs work but its been a great learning process.

Its also been great to learn about how certain effects work and what the controls do (e.g. delay, reverb). This has helped me to better use VST effects and to know when and why one would use them.

Overall I would definitely recommend this to anyone wanting to improve their sound design skills. Joe is great at replying to emails and listening to suggestions.

I would love to see other modules added in the future, such as FM, wavetable.

Syntorial is very useful / helpful for learning and understanding "Synthesizer". I like it very much. :-)

Fantastic idea! I learned much about (analog) synthesis and sound programming reading books. But trying to get close to a hidden soundpatch only by ears is a new experience. The progressive way and how only the needed modules appear in the synth is just superb. The Program window with integrated videos and challenges and the clear GUI makes it easy to work with it from the first click. It's fully worth the money for this excellent work.

Fantastic concept. Fantastic software. Fantastic support. Whatever hesitation I had about the initial purchase now makes me chuckle.