Product Reviews by KVR Members

Absolutely ridiculously powerful free open source magic. Surge has become my go to for almost everything, even replacing my previous commercial plugins. Now I don't even need Wine for Linux and all the hassle that comes with that.

Surge's power starts with its six oscillators (3 per scene), which give you choices of your typical wavetable or classic analog sounds, but also a bunch of more experimental oscillators like strings that get you pretty close to physical modelling. It also comes with a wide range of filters and effects, everything from the normal (e.g., reverb) to the experiemental. But even for something like reverb, there are a wide range of presets to choose from, and it is quite easy to save your own presets as well.

Where surge really shines, though, is in modulation. Never have I found a synth so easy to modulate and with so many different accessible parameters to modulate as well. Another great feature is the wide range of presets that come with the synth by default., everything from almist perfectly modelled real instruments (seriously, the grand piano preset is amazing) to evolving atmospheres that never seem to end (in a good way).

Also, the synth is under heavy development, which means new features, all for free. And it's available for all major platforms and supports CLAP, which is arguably the future of plugins.

There are a few downsides, however, but they are relatively minor compared with the positives.

- Lack of a proper arppegiator - you can do modulation with the step sequencer but this cannot replace pressing a chord on a keyboard and having the notes played in sequence.

- Panning is a bit odd - sometimes it doesn't seem to work, perhaps because it comes much easier than effects in the processing chain, and so many effects just spread the sound out, cancelling the pan. To get around this, you can use your DAW's panning, but it would be so much easier to just have it all on a single screen.

- A sample oscillator would be a nice add, just for those few instances where you want something that's impossible to achieve with synthesis.

Overall though, this is far and away the best open source synth, the first synth to make me truly feel like almost anything I can do with £300+ Windows synths can be done on Linux.