Lush is a Windows VST pad synth designed for creating ambient or spacey atmospheres in any kind of music. It is designed for creating slow, evolving, interweaving soundscapes, but it’s capable of turning its hand to bass and lead sounds as well.

Features

Four oscillators, three with sine, saw, triangle pulse (pwm) white and pink noise waveforms each with an individual on/off switch and volume control. The 4th oscillator is a stereo sample player with 12 high quality built in stereo samples. The volume section contains a standard ASDR envelop and a main volume knob.

Filter

Dual two pole resonant filters with the ability to split a percentage of the output of each oscillator to each filter. Oscillator 1 and 4 can even have the split modulated in the modulation matrix. There is a link button which means filter 2 follows filter 1 separated by the value of the offset knob. Each filter can be separately panned.

Modulation

This section is the heart of Lush. In the modulation matrix in the centre of row 2 the sources are down the left hand side and the destinations along the top. Both negative and positive values are possible, double click sets to zero.Also on row 2 are a step input (midi gate) and a continuous graphical input which can both be synced with the clock of the sequencer in steps from 1 to 64. In row 3 there are two syncable lfos with multiple waveforms and a random switch and a second ASDR envelope which can be assigned in the matrix.

Effects

The final row is the effects section with a synced stereo delay, stereo chorus and reverb.

All controls can be automated from midi and there is a midi learn facility to let the user set their own controller numbers. There are 84 presets to use as starting points and 48 blank user presets. CPU usage is low. Comes with pdf manual.

Requirements

Any PC (not Macintosh) software that can use vst instruments like Cubase, Fruity Loops etc.

Lush costs $28

More information and a demo are available at the Analog to Digital site.