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.
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 ReviewReviewed 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 ReviewReviewed 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 ReviewEasy 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 ReviewTHIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED
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.
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