Basic

Basic is a synth plug-in for Mac OS X and Windows in VST and AU plug-in formats.

One day not long ago, we were speaking with the music department head of a local college; he lamented the fact that there really wasn't a commercial-quality low-cost three oscillator subtractive mono-synth available for the educational market. This puzzled us, because there's no shortage of synth plug-ins out there, and this seems like a fairly glaring oversight.

So we did some market research, and discovered he was right. All the available options are either slavish recreations of classic synths, with all the foibles and strange UI decisions intact, or modern behemoths with every feature under the sun. We decided to tackle the challenge of an inexpensive, simple 3-osc mono-synth that followed the classic subtractive style, and Basic is the result.

While it is designed with ease-of-use, low cost, and simplicity in mind, the panel sits in front of a powerful modern synthesizer engine with an aggressive tone and self-resonating filters that scream when pushed. We're sure every electronic musician will find a place in the mix for Basic.

Features:

• Three alias-free wavetable oscillators with six waveforms each, and oscillator sync.
• A pair of cascaded filters featuring MS20-style lowpass and highpass, and a bandpass of our own design.
• A four-waveform tempo-syncable LFO with waveshaper.
• ADSR envelopes for amplitude and filter frequency.
• User-definable soft-saturation.
• A simple and easy-to-understand workflow, inspired by the classic topology of vintage analog synths like the Minimoog, SEM, and MS20, but with modern usability.
• Touchscreen-friendly and highly visible user interface.
• DRM-free, for easy installation and updating.