5 Simple and Unique Synths
I wanted to highlight five synthesizer plugins that I think provide very unique sounds with very simple interfaces. These synths aren’t nearly as deep and powerful as our modular favorites like VCV and Phaseplant, they aren’t even as deep as the various “Swiss army knife” hybrid synths like Pigments or Serum 2, but they cover their range of sounds very well and add some nice variety to your workflow. Each of these plugins appears very simple and small on the surface, but they all pack a surprising amount of depth once you dig in and explore them. They tend to cover a narrower range of sounds, but offer unique controls within that range that allow you to explore their particular sound set in new and innovative ways.
This article will cover how each of these tools is unique and what kinda of sounds they specialize in. I’ll touch on their limitations a bit as well, but I’ll link to the full reviews if you want more details.
SOLSTICE
Solstice is a spectral sampling synthesizer, this is the only one on this list that relies on external samples. You can load any sample into Solstice and it will create a spectral map of that sample. This spectral map can then be navigated with a path tool to create some very interesting soundscapes. The sound pallet of Solstice is very soft and ethereal, perfect for atmospheric textures and weird soundscapes.
This one is very minimal, there’s a basic filter and envelope, as well as reverb, and a couple other little goodies in the controls menu, but most of the work is done via the spectral map.
ABYSS
Abyss is similar to Solstice in many ways, but instead of exploring various spectral elements of a single sample, Abyss provides a map of hundreds of samples curated by the developer. Each of these samples is a single static spectral tone generator, but these can be sequenced and blended together via the “gradient” window.
Abyss has a a couple envelopes and LFOs that can be mapped to some of the tone shaping like filters and FM. This is all followed by four simple effects for added ambience. Again, you get the most out of this one via the spectral mapping. Abyss is amazing for ambient washes and breathy sound scapes, it covers a similar territory to Solstice, but with its own unique vibes, I’d actually suggest alternating between the two to increase sonic variety.
TELA
Tela is a modal “physical modeling” synthesizer, it uses an array of simple resonators that can be pitched and blended to form a variety of different tones. Tela has a simple exciter as well as a “granular” texture exciter (not granular synthesis, just a texture noise generator). The UI is very simple and playful with various shapes representing each control. There’s only a few controls per page, but each control has a surprising amount of impact on the resulting sound
Each page also gets a single modulator that can be routed to a single control from that page. Again, there’s some simple effects to add some ambience, but nothing too crazy. Tela excels at plugins and bells and other “small” cute sounds that you’d use to decorate your mix.
APARILLO
Aparillo is a fairly unique FM synth, you won’t need to engage with FM synthesis at all besides some basic “algorithms” and a few preset ratios. The fun part with this one is the per voice modulation, with each voice being represented on the modulation tabs for some wild patterns. These really shine when Aparillo is in unison mode and all voices play at once, giving it almost an additive-like quality when you adjust controls per voice.
The modulation is per control with a couple LFOs available, there’s some simple effects and a rather wild motion engine that is rather cumbersome to utilize. Aparillo is great at metallic impacts and weird sound effects.
SINE MACHINE
Sine Machine is a minimal additive synthesizer that keeps its additive controls to a minimum. While many additive synths give you control over each and every partial, Sine Machine groups all the partials together and lets you affect them all at once. The various vibrato and tremolo controls let you offset the modulation per partial in some fun and interesting ways.
There’s no modulation routing on this one, and the effects are basically just a reverb. There’s an amazing amount of glittery and shimmering textures you can achieve with Sine Machine
One thing I like about each of these synths is that they push me to explore their limits. This isn’t just because of the limitations and trying to squeeze the most out of them as I can, it’s also because the provided controls lead to different approaches that I might otherwise overlook when so many other options are available. On top of that, in many cases these controls would actually be much more tedious to incorporate into an otherwise “deeper” synth. For example the gradients in Abyss would require layering many modules in Phaseplant with loads of remaps to blend each layer, or the additive LFOs in Sine machine would need hundreds of routings to accomplish. So these aren’t just about being “simple” or restrictive, they also achieve new sounds via a specialized set of tools.