Ultra Audio - Ultra (A fancy Vital-style synth that popped up out of nowhere)

[Benjamin923]

A price tag like that is really intense when, like you say, we have no idea if this company will be around in 5 years or if it will be getting actively improved. It’s priced at the absolute top of the market against companies with far more extensively developed products and high consumer trust developed over decades in some cases.

[Benjamin923]

The video was posted on May 10, 2024. So it's flying since then under the deepest radar, strange

It’s super weird man. I don’t think it was released then, but perhaps it was in beta with an intention to be released shortly. Idk what happened but it’s a bit hard to have faith in consistency

[osiris]

Why do people equate Synthmaker with amateur. I just asked because some of the UI reminds me of Synthmaker. You do realize Adam Szabo used it for (at least) early versions of his stuff. Wouldn't call that amateur.
Anyway, $250 is too much unless your Omnisphere on sale.

[ultra_audio]

Hi all, Nigel here, the creator of this synth.

We haven't officially launched yet, and were planning to do so in the new year, which is when we will start promoting it. I wasn't expecting for anyone to find it and post about it here, but it's cool that some of you have found it.

The development started in 2018, but things took longer than expected - this was largely due to having to learn to code C++

Some of the packs and presets were created a over the years of development, but the synth is brand new and hopefully offers some fresh concepts.

We have not really had time to create too much content on the web, and some of the videos we have feature an old UI in them, so need to be replaced. Video content is very time consuming.

There is a sampler, a super osc, and analog osc as well as the UltraWave. We have another couple of prototype oscillators that we have not yet released, we're going to add these as updates over the course of 2026.

Happy to answer any questions you have about it...

[enCiphered]

Thanks for stepping in and sharing the background.
One thing still missing is the price explanation.
At that level, people assume the synth includes lifetime updates, a mastering engineer and a therapist.
Even if the secret oscillators could power my studio and heat my apartment, generate infinite harmonics, infinite energy and infinite confidence… the price still feels ambitious.

[Benjamin923]

Glad to see Nigel showing up here to talk about it, I look forward to hearing more during the official launch

[ultra_audio]

One thing still missing is the price explanation.
At that level, people assume the synth includes lifetime updates, a mastering engineer and a therapist.
Even if the secret oscillators could power my studio and heat my apartment, generate infinite harmonics, infinite energy and infinite confidence… the price still feels ambitious.

Lol. Well, it will have lifetime updates.

We are just getting started, and have a couple of other Osc types half built.

I'd argue that even without the future Oscs, it already has a feature set that rivals the synths at this price point. It has flexible routing, loads of good Filters and FX, multiple LFO types etc. The import and wavetable creation is IMHO miles ahead of anything else. The Arp and Vibrato engines are pretty cool.

I think the area we need to improve right now is the number of presets available. This will improve over time as more people discover it and start creating sounds. We have built an entire marketplace into the synth, where you can create packs, upload them and then get paid when people buy them. You can buy individual patches. The patches automatically install and can be played a few seconds after buying them.

Will people see the value in all of this? There are a lot of great synths out there already. We can only show what we've built and hope that people dig it as much as we do.

[Matt67]

Can anyone say if there's anything obvious here that Vital can't do?

Personally, I prefer Vital because of the filters and, in particular, because of the extensive ModMatrix (which has already been mentioned here). I have the utmost respect for the developers of Ultra, but at the moment, Ultra doesn't offer me anything that I don't already do with Vital. And I've been working with Vital for years.

[kejkz]

Well done, it's quite capable synth, I like the visual representation of everything that happens during the playing and programming process. Works quite smooth on my system. Might be the first wavetable synth after Largo that I like sound of. There are some well rounded features there. This way of wavetables shaping is quite interesting, must have been hell of a work to get there.

Do I really need it... no. Would I like to have it in my arsenal... maybe. Price is not outrageous for the novelty it gives, since it's an advanced sampler and a synth. I also believe that this synth cries for MPE, but it can shine also with just standard MIDI. Current set of presets doesn't do the right to the synthesis possibilities, since not a lot of modulations are actually used and not a lot of tricks are done to make it stand out. But sound is there, it's just a matter of what you'll do with it. Import and map wave to me at least looks like a killer feature. If it can turn up any sample on my hard drive into a playable synth, well... that alone could be worth it. Need to demo it a bit more, since it's really deep.

[db3]

I think the area we need to improve right now is the number of presets available. This will improve over time as more people discover it and start creating sounds. We have built an entire marketplace into the synth, where you can create packs, upload them and then get paid when people buy them. You can buy individual patches. The patches automatically install and can be played a few seconds after buying them.

Will people see the value in all of this? There are a lot of great synths out there already. We can only show what we've built and hope that people dig it as much as we do.

Good to see you here. The feedback so far is positive, but people will be cautious about investing a significant amount on a product from a new, unproven developer. Maybe if it came with a few hundred highly-polished presets it would warrant a high price, but as it seems your business model is to make money from an integrated preset marketplace, I'd suggest it would be best to entice as many people as possible into your ecosystem with a fixed low entry price point.

Best of luck.

[Agg]

Can anyone say if there's anything obvious here that Vital can't do?

Personally, I prefer Vital because of the filters and, in particular, because of the extensive ModMatrix (which has already been mentioned here). I have the utmost respect for the developers of Ultra, but at the moment, Ultra doesn't offer me anything that I don't already do with Vital. And I've been working with Vital for years.

Yeah my problem is I haven't used Vital enough, so I'm not equipped to make the comparison. I saw the comment about the lack of modding options however.

I understand programming a synth takes infinitely more effort than pointing fingers, but the price tag kinda IS steep. If a free synth like Vital has advantages that can be found within minutes for someone who is familiar with it, I'd consider that as a risk.

As a practical example, I'd argue the reverse is why Pro-Q 4 can remain at 3-4x the price of other EQs. The others have like 98% of the same features (maybe even some better features), but they are missing some one, single thing, and that jeopardizes the plugin. It can be a clear UI, it can be linear-phase (non-FFT), it can be per-band M/S/L/R. In my eyes, that one difference forces these other plugins to sell at $10-40 on Pluginboutique (which is good for me as a broke ass student, but bad for business).

[wagtunes]

Vital is a great synth. This is a great synth. Why does everything have to be a battle of "Mine is bigger than yours?" You can own MORE than one synth and they can both or all be great.

I wouldn't give up one synth in my collection.

[Agg]

Vital is a great synth. This is a great synth. Why does everything have to be a battle of "Mine is bigger than yours?" You can own MORE than one synth and they can both or all be great.

I wouldn't give up one synth in my collection.

Absolutely you can. Realism just plays a lot into it. Consumer choices and such. You can own 10 EQs too, but only heavily invested folks do (which goes back to the example I gave, in which the ideal of having both doesn't meet reality).

[wagtunes]

Vital is a great synth. This is a great synth. Why does everything have to be a battle of "Mine is bigger than yours?" You can own MORE than one synth and they can both or all be great.

I wouldn't give up one synth in my collection.

Absolutely you can. Realism just plays a lot into it. Consumer choices and such. You can own 10 EQs too, but only heavily invested folks do (which goes back to the example I gave, in which the ideal of having both doesn't meet reality).

Well everyone's reality is different. If you have money to burn and feel that having many choices allows greater range in creating music, then you'll probably invest in multiple options. I've written whole songs inspired by one particular synth that I wouldn't have written otherwise.

[dune_rave]

What can this new synth offer, for someone who has almost all big name synths like serum, sylenth, vital, halion, falcon, avenger, omnisphere, korg collection, zebra, diva, repro, massive , current etc ?