OA: Phosphor-1

A precise, capable analogue synth, with instability on a dial. Free.

At AGE zero, OA-Phosphor-1 is clean, exact and musical, a serious virtual analogue you can build any patch on. Turn AGE up and the same synth starts to drift, sag, jitter and wander, with pitch, filter, level and shape destabilising together as one living unit, exactly as far as you push it and no further.

That's the point. Not a broken synth, but a solid one you can take apart on purpose. It holds a clean, confident patch as happily as it falls into washed-out, tape-worn haze, so it's right at home in the vein of Boards of Canada or S U R V I V E, and just as capable of a straight, precise sound.

The instability is the character. The control is what makes it an instrument.

Feature list:

• Two oscillators plus a sub, with continuously variable waveshapes, plus cross-modulation, ring mod and oscillator sync.
• Wavefolding shaper (warp, curve, fold, bias) with routing and oversampling for harmonic grit and saturation.
• Morphing multimode filter: sweep continuously through low-pass, notch, band-pass and high-pass, with resonance, drive, colour, motion and key tracking, plus its own envelope.
• Curved amp and filter envelopes.
• Two LFOs with nine shapes (including random), tempo sync, and per-LFO drift.
• Instability engine: a single AGE macro over drift, jitter, wander and sag, correlated across pitch, filter, level and pulse width, plus a Lorenz-based chaos generator (rate, amount).
• Unison with spread and phase; poly, mono and legato voice modes with glide.
• Modulation routing with mod-wheel and pitch-bend, plus assignable routes.
• Generative arpeggiator: per-step control over degree, octave, probability, glitch, timing, ties and rests, eleven pattern modes, groove and swing, and a per-step glitch engine.
• 68 factory presets, clean starting points through to fully aged textures.
• Built-in help mode that explains each control as you play.