TAL-NoiseMaker

A nice all round subtractive synth.

A light workhorse with lots of sound potential.

An excellent synth for beginners with similarities to Juno.

You wont be dissapointed in TAL stuff.

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One of my favourite freeware VST synths, Noisemaker is a solid sounding little workhorse that I have come to love. The sound of the oscs, filters and envelopes, combined with a simple but well rounded feature set, are what makes this unique.

Noisemaker is pretty much a standard synth on paper. It has two oscillators and a sub-osc square. It has all the VA waveform shapes. You can do PWM on the pulse wave, oscillator sync on the sawtooth, pulse and triangle wave. You can ringmodulate between the oscillators, and do FM. Combining ringmod, FM, sync AND PWM can get some pretty wild results!

But this is nothing we haven't seen before. What keeps me coming back to it is the chunky sound. Yes, it is chunky. I've been working on submissions for the factory presets in the next update (look out for those!) and in doing so have created a whole slew of rasping, blocky, juicy, bulky synthsounds. This is what Noisemaker does best, at least in my hands.

Some of the more interesting features are a tempo synched, multi-stage envelope that you can design visually, the 6db resonant filter which is positively grimey, the strange sync behaviour of the triangle waveform, which creates a strange harmonic 'pinging' as it sweeps through zero-crossings, and the built in effects (I particularly think the reverb melds well with the overall sound). There are even two types of noise source, the 'noise' oscillator shape, and the 'vintage noise' you can dial in in the control panel, which is more subtle and quite lovely IMO.

The drawbacks, there are a few. Not too few to mention, either ;). Modulation is limited, though you get a decent amount of options. The chorus effects are all-or-nothing deals (two algorhythms) and subsequently a bit heavy handed for many applications. Likewise, the bit crusher lacks control, it is sweepable but the action is mostly at one end of the dial. Modwheel and pitchbend routings are very limited (pitch, filter, volume), and there's no way to make modwheel vibrato (a real shame given that I love this as a lead synth). At least we have midi learn, which can provide workarounds to the creative mind...

Overall, with it's bold, simple interface and chunky, addictive sound, Noisemaker is a must have for anyone who enjoys classic synth sounds. And it's free ;)Read Review