Log InCreate An Account
  1. Plugins
  2. »
  3. Green Oak
  4. »
  5. Crystal
  6. »
  7. Details

Crystal

Semi-Modular Synth Plugin by Green Oak
MyKVRFAVORITE510WANT144
Crystal
Crystal by Green Oak is a Virtual Instrument Audio Plugin for macOS and Windows. It functions as a VST Plugin and an Audio Units Plugin.
Product
Version
2.5.6
Product
Version
2.5.8
Instrument
Formats
Sample Formats
Loads and/or Saves
SF2 (SoundFont)
Copy Protection
None
My KVR - Groups, Versions, & More
802 KVR members have added Crystal to 55 My KVR groups 928 times.
Not In Your MY KVR Groups
(or group limitation prevents versioning)
+55 in private groups

KVR Rank

Overall: 75   57   74

30-Day: 79; 7-Day: 70; Yesterday: 55

Crystal is a semi-modular software synthesizer featuring both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis.

Crystal offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes / LFO rates / delay times, built-in effects for chorus / flanging / comb filtering / echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing, granular synthesis, program morphing, MIDI learn, and imports SoundFonts.

The musical applications for Crystal are boundless.

Latest User Reviews

Average user rating of 4.42 from 26 reviews
Crystal

Reviewed By Warkauze [all]
February 22nd, 2024
Version reviewed: 1.0 on Windows

You really can't go wrong with a synth like this. Tons of different options to create very interesting sounds. I am not personally a huge fan of the UI visually, however despite that I would absolutely recommend it.

Read Review
Crystal

Reviewed By anthony598 [all]
July 31st, 2022
Version reviewed: 2.5.6 on Windows

I love Crystal, an amazing free soft synth. Very unique sound to it. Plenty of presets, not a crazy amount. Allows you to edit sound. Definitely recommend.

Read Review
Crystal

Reviewed By Trader One [all]
November 23rd, 2021
Version reviewed: 2.5.5 on Windows

While synth itself has lot of modulation sources and especially envelopes are very well made working with banks and presets is pain if synth can't write to its VST directory. I found that best works to use patch/bank load save from DAW (if your DAW supports this function).

While modulation sources are excellent sound is just average and because of constant problems with loading / saving banks and patches I moved to another synth. Its not actively maintained, last version is from 2016. I recommend other Crystal users to do the same. We have much better free synths now.

Read Review
Crystal

Reviewed By alfamax [all]
December 22nd, 2018
Version reviewed: 2.5 on Windows

Easy to learn. Flexible to configure. Matrix, LFOs, Oscilators. Soundfonts. Browse, create and breed your own presets. Delay. Reverb. Autopan. Modulation. Filter. Resonation. Pads, Basses, Leads, Motifs, Fx. 2018. And still amazing. Just a Classic.

Read Review
Crystal

Reviewed By Magpel [all]
September 20th, 2007
Version reviewed: 2? on Windows

Given the sophistication and novelty of Crystal, you can make a case that it was/is the most GENEROUS free VST ever. And there's some tough competition for that title.

Learning to use it is an education is synthesis.

The .sf2 was the topper. All of sudden, untold GB of sample data became fodder for Crystal's bottomless mangling architecture.

Crytsal is a synth I would program for fun and exercise, not in support of a song or composition but just for its own sake--every bit as much as Cameleon 5000.

It's strength, obvioulsy is movement and modulation. I loved it from the start, but it wasn't til I heard the Tim Conrardy banls that I was able to understand its rhythmic potential. The enevenlopes are still the best of their kind, imo, not that I've checked out all the "competition." The frequency splitter is a trip. The Mod Matrix is pretty much bottomless, for all intents and purposes. Stability is excellent, CPU usage can go from modest to extreme. .Sf2 support was a brilliant stroke.

It's weakness, frankly, is in (the lack of) thickness and solidity of its core sound and an LP filter that to my ears is no great shakes. I am not able to coax fat, high character lead sounds out of Crystal, but so what? Keeping in the free domain, we have Synth1, Triangle 2, and the Iblits for that.

Crystal is, uh, an absolute gem. Glen/Green Oaks' generosity with this one is truly humbling.
Read Review

Products similar to Crystal...

Comments & Discussion for Green Oak Crystal

Discussion
Discussion: Active

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED

Mmmr
Mmmr
27 August 2021 at 9:32am

Can't import Crystal's effects banks or contact the developer (Grrr at Facebook).

Hi. Bit of a story. Back in the day, I got Crystal from a ComputerMusic CD and messed around with it a bit. Time has moved on and last year sometime I bought Jbridge to use a different VST. Recently, I went through the old discs from ComputerMusic and started bridging the old 32-bit plugins (God this was fun). I made a project in Ableton Live yesterday where a spreadsheet I have that lists all installed VSTs and VSTis throws up random plugins for me to use in whatever project I'm working in. It threw up the bridged version of Crystal. I was totally confused on how to use it (as it's been a lot of years since I did use it) but got it working. After the project was finished, mixed and exported I thought I'd see if there were any tutorials. There were so I spent some time last night watching videos. It then occurred to me that there may be a current version. And, Hey Presto, there was. I downloaded and installed this and it seems to work fine apart from one thing. From the Greenoaks website for Crystal there are a load of banks to download and so, download them I did. I followed the instructions on the site to install them but they appear to be uninstallable. I've googled this and it seems to be something to do with Windows 10 security features (I'm not a hundred percent sure though). Anyway, I thought "Hey, I'll contact the developers and tell them about this". The only contact is via Facebook. As an old man of 53 I seriously don't ever want a Facebook account. I've had friends promote it to me on so many occasions not realizing that all the points they're making about how good it is are all the points that make me NEVER to want to have it. So, as a last resort, I thought I'd post on here and see if anyone has any ideas about working around the problem of importing the preset banks as the drop in the application doesn't work at all.

Please log in to join the discussion