Crystal

It's aprox 8 months since I did a review of Crystal, and it's evolved so far since then. It was previously a very Wavestation-like synth (at least it could make very Wavestation-like sounds). Now it has overtaken the Wavestation by leaps and bounds and has become a master-of-all-trades-jack-of-none.

Crystal can now use Soundfonts in .SF2 format, so it has become a sampler with hugely impressive facilities (when you consider that there are plenty of apps out there that you can use to make your own .SF2 files from .wav files)

The modulation matrix now has doubled, which gives you 12 destination/target options + double the number of envelopes. This was my one bugbear with Crystal in the past - it could make very distinctive and unique sounds, but was limited to being merely a very capable synth by the smallish number of mod options available. Now there is almost no sound that you can imagine, that Crystal cannot make. There are modulations galore, and the number of synthesis options is almost overwhelming - granular, FM, resonant subtractive etc. with a hugely improved set of filters that add some serious oomph under the bonnet.

It has reverb FX alongside the other delay lines (which can give phasing, flanging etc anyway) so you don't even need to use FX plugins with this beast.

Hard sync on oscillators, and no doubt other additions soon, continue to make this a breath-taking piece of work.

That is one of the stunning things with Crystal - Glenn continues to make note of all users suggestions/bugs and implements all of the best ideas with amazing speed. It just grows and grows, each version almost transforming the synth before you've had a chance to get to grips with the huge synthesis capabilities of the last version. There is no equal for user support, period.

Every time you sit down with Crystal, you get lost in the myriad possibilities and wonder why you don't use it for everything. Not easy to programme, but huge in scope and sound.Read Review