Sytrus

The times they are a changing. I'd say the past year has been a real turning point for soft-synths, i finally feel that they've grown up and shown what they're trully capable of. Deep fat meaty sounding soft-synths are here at last! and one of those at the very forefront is this beauty, the Sytrus.

Developed by a software company behind Fruityloops, this is without a doubt one of the finest soft-synths ever made.

I've noticed a lot of people have confused this with being an FM only soft-synth, in the vein of the FM7. Whilst this is a very capable and powerful FM synth, for me personally, it is the subtractive side that totally blew me away!.

The stats speak for themselves, specifically, the 6 oscillators, with waveshaping, 3 filters (which can run as lo-pass, band and hi simultaneaously each!) and a 9-voice Unison mode that puts most of the Unison modes on hardware synths to shame!.

Add to that up to 64x oversampling and this trully is one hell of a beast!.

Of course stats don't mean anything unless it sounds good. To my ears, this is one of the most versatile and solid sounding synth engines ever made. It can do everything, from soft smooth FM style sounds, to rich dense subtractive sounds and full on agressive monster saw leads.

The modulation possibilities is mindblowing!. Rather than going for a set number of lfos and envelops, which can be 'patched' to whatever other part of the synth engine with limited number of modulation slots, they've given each individual osc and filter their own set of env's and lfo's each for virtually every aspect!. The level of which you can tweak them is just astounding, with infinite point env's that have adjustable curve tension so you can fine tune a sound like never before!.

If you were looking for a synth that combined high oscillator count and waveshaping of the z3ta+, but with extra meaty filters, oversampling that can go way beyond 2x, an extremely high level of modulation flexibity and the kind of unison found on hardware synths, not to mention an excellent built in chorus and delay, THIS is the synth you've been waiting for!.

Yes, it really is that good!.

The price for the VSTi/DXi may seem a little pricey but when you realise just what it is you're getting for your money you'll understand the price is more than justified.

It all sounds too good to be true, so what's the catch?

Well the catch is, as with the other all new super soft-synths out there right now, the CPU hit can be rather huge. That is the price you pay for a supreme sound, but you can always set oversampling to zero in draft mode for realtime playing, then render at any level after, you just have to be aware of the difference in sound.

Also the manual could have been more in depth for beginners that struggle to learn synthesis. The gui does take a while to get used to, but once you do, you realise just how versatile and friendly it truly is.

All in all, an awesome synth!.Read Review