M42 Nebula

M42 Nebula is my favorite synth for complex pads. Do to its pulsar modulator, its arp LFO, and its tempo-synced independent left and right delay lines, it excels with rhythmic evolving patches.

It has a very thick tone for a 2 oscillator synth. Other synths require the layering of numerous oscillators in unison to acheive a fat sound. M42 on the other hand does just fine with a simple 2-voice chorus.

Each patch is created using two oscillators. One of these is a virtual analog oscillator and the other uses a SoundFont as its source. As far as I can tell, user-defined SoundFonts may only be used by replacing the factory ones. This is a limitation. However, it's not terribly restrictive when you consider these SoundFonts are only shortcuts to a more complex source waveform (think D50 pcm waves) and the M42 provides 20 of them. The real magic is all in the modulation matrix. There are two envelopes, a pulsar, and an LFO for each oscillator which may be combined in various ways.

In addition, M42 includes a unique distortion it calls the Warp effect. It has a very aggressive, unique sound which I'm quite fond of. However, use of this effect results in patches with low volumes.

The UI is well done. All controls are on one screen for ease of use. The documentation is a comprehensive set of HTML files (pdf available too I think). Presets are good (thanks to sound-designer Tim Conrady). They display nicely the instrument's capabilities.

Only quirks I've encountered with this synth relate to my own underpowered PC. My Athlon 850 does not always work well with the cpu demands of some VSTis. On a patch I was creating I heard distortion until I turned off the chorus effect. I saved the patch and rebooted the PC. The distortion was gone though the patch was identical and had the chorus enabled...

M42 was created using the SynthEdit compiler. If you've got preconceived notions about the quality of SynthEdit VSTis, you REALLY owe it to yourself to listen to this synth. Chances are, it'll make you a "believer".Read Review