Absynth

Native Instruments’ Komplete 6 arrived on my doorstep last week and I have been diving into Absynth 5 every spare moment since. For those who consider buying this software I’d like to share a few thoughts on Absynth here.

First and foremost I’d like to say that Absynth is a really great source of fantastic sounds. Like Kore, Absynth 5 has a library-view where you browse your library by attributes like ‘piano’, ‘dark’, ‘electric’. This is a nice way to explore the 1.700+ sounds that come with Absynth. These sounds are mostly experimental in nature but Native Instruments succeeded in making them very playable and easy to use.

Basically Absynth’s routing is modular but simple. There are three oscillators that can be routed through modules like filters, waveshapers and effects, and there are (of course) envelopes and lfo’s to modulate various parameters. What makes Absynth depart from well known analog ground is the flexible nature of those modules.

The oscillators have a wide variety of waveforms to choose from, plus you can draw your own, use samples, or morph existing waveforms into new ones. The oscillators offer a dual mode with FM and ringmodulation capabilities.

The filters have low-pass and high-pass modes, but also comb, notch, band and allpass with different db/octave characteristics to choose from.

The waveshapers can use all waveforms that are available to the oscillators, but can also be set up as, amongst others, frequency shifters and grainbased effects. That is a lot of raw material to begin building your own sounds, before you even started applying modulation.

Modulation in Absynth is possible via lfo’s, macro control’s (means midi) and envelopes. The envelopes are Absynth’s strong point. You can set up a new envelope for every new parameter you want to modulate and create up to 68 breakpoints, apply different trigger and loop-modes and sync it all to tempo. So one key can trigger whole soundscapes, basslines or rythmic sequences.

The LFO’s are flexible as well, with tempo sync, phase, and again, all wave-forms available to the oscillators can be used by the LFO’s as well. LFO’s are not created especially for the parameter you want to modulate, like the envelopes are. Instead there is a fixed number of 3 LFO’s. If you want to modulate something by LFO, you have to route the LFO to the target in the LFO page. This is the other way round, compared to the envelopes, which is a bit confusing. That you have to look up the desired parameter from a long list makes matters worse. That the list does not contain every parameter I’d like to be able to modulate and sometimes appears under another name than in the rest of the application is downright irritating.

If you want to control parameters of a software synthesizer with performance controllers like modwheel, after-touch, or knobs and sliders you normally would assign a controller on your hardware directly to a parameter in the software via it’s button or slider. Due to Absynth’s enormous amount of parameters and lack of knob’s and buttons (most parameter values are edited directly in a value-field), Native Instruments decided on another approach. Instead they created a performance-view in which a fixed set of sliders called ‘macro controls’ can be assigned to one or more of Absynths’ parameters. This way you can create complex control-setups. By assigning the controls on your hardware to the sliders in the performance-view you could have real-time control over many of Absynth’s sound shaping capabillities. I am sorry to say the parameters of the build-in effects in Absynth can only be modulated by Macro Controls. Not by LFO's or envelopes. Bummer!

It is a pity that in the vast soundlibrary most sounds have no, or only a few parameters pre-assigned to the sliders. I also would have liked to be able to assign hardware controls to these sliders globally, so that with every new sound I load I’d be able to fiddle some knobs and explore the possibilities of that sound to evolve during a performance. Now every sound has to be set up manually fo midicontrol, and that my friends, is a LOT of work…

Pro’s:
- Vast and very usable, easy to navigate, soundlibrary with a unique character.
- Immense programming possibilities will keep any sound-designer up till the wee hour’s of the morning ( or is that a ‘con’ ? ).

Con’s:
- Assigning modulation sources and macro-controls has it’s anomalies.
- Editing the envelopes is to difficult.
- Library could have been prepared better for hardware control
- Awfull color-scheme, some tiny fonts here and there, and a bit too much eye-candy for me.
- Some of the more exotic features of Absynth are not completely self-explanatory, and the manual does not always describe them in the detail I would have liked.Read Review