VirSyn has introduced AddStation, an iOS software synthesizer that they say offers ‘the next generation of additive synthesis’.
AddStation lets you create sounds using a massive number of sine waves, with up to 512 partials per voice, with independent envelopes. .
Features:
- Synthesis
- Fractal additive synthesis
- over 170 sound presets
- Four parts with 8 Additive Sequence Blocks
- Sound morphing
- up to 512 partials per voice with independent AD envelopes
- harmonic/inharmonic spectra
- Ring modulation
- arbitrary filter function and noise spectra
- four independent analog style Arpeggiators
- Effects
- Chorus
- Phaser
- Flanger
- Overdrive
- Parametric EQ
- Echo/Delay
- Reverb
- Global
- AUv3 for Host integration
- Audiobus 3 compatible (Input slot) with state saving
- Support for Ableton Link.
- Inter-app audio compatible (Instrument/Generator)
- CoreMIDI / Virtual MIDI
- Audio recorder
Pricing and Availability
AddStation is available now for $8.99 USD.
More sonic synth explorations for my iOS devices from one of my fav app developers.
I heard some fascinating examples. Like most additive synths, it looks like this just has a pretty simple screen to control/draw the levels of the partials– I don’t think you can zoom and control them in a more detailed way. There are buttons to control odds & evens, but those are the only two.
Still, it does seem like a powerful way to get the best of additive and wavetable synthesis.
The ASDR envelope is crude and doesn’t appear to have curves, so it doesn’t seem versatile or able to produce natural sounding envelopes.
Things get interesting (and geeky) in additive synthesis when you run a frequency analasys (FFT) over a sample, to get the spectrum data, then apply that to the partials, along with the amplitude variation of each over time.
– known as ‘re-synthesis’ or sometime PADsynthesis.
And things get even MORE interesting when, rather than resynthesizing existing sounds, some effort is made to make something that is both new, but also some combination of natural, musical, fascinating, other-worldly, etc.
Though I wish there were more tools for manipulating specific subsets of partials, things do get interesting with the detuning and panning options– you can get very wide sounds with quite metallic tuning oddities.
I’d have liked to see a special subharmonic mode, but I know that’s a pretty odd and not-so-useful sound.
+1 to resynthesis. IIRC, that’s what made up the waves in the Korg DW8000. By creating a reductive set that saved on pricey memory, they offered the core goods of several sound families. You see that in a lot of instruments now, but it was a big grail when Prince was the king.
Virsyn generally gets it right, so this one is worth your time if additive interests you. If you are willing to sit and add partials one at a time, though, then you clearly have no wife or sanity. I believe it was NI’s RAZOR (essentially created by Errorsmith) that first provided useful harmonic clusters as preset building blocks. Look for that with additives. You’ll have more fun and get more done.
Resynthesis requires envelopes for amplitude and frequency for each partial. People at IRCAM would probably also argue that phase needs to be preserved. If there is no envelope for each partial, this becomes similar to a Synclavier, but without FM.
This does have attack & release for amplitude, but yea, having attack & release for pitch would take it to another level. I suppose with blocks you can at least “morph” (xfade?) to another pitch profile.