Rob Papen has released Blade, a new software synthesizer for Mac & Windows.

At the heart of Blade lies the Harmolator. The Harmolator is an additive synthesis system, which, rather than using the system of changing additive partials, uses global controls to capture the essence of additive synthesis in an intuitive way. According to Papen, the nine Harmolator controls allow you to”get all the amazing sounds that additive synthesis can generate, with the added simplicity of traditional subtractive synthesis.”

The Harmolator allows oscillator spreading, fattening the sound and also square / sine wave sub-oscillator. What’s more, the sound can be modified further by the 21 per-voice distortions types and 14 filter types.

Blade offers total control of the sound over time using an array of different modulation controls.

The most significant of these is the central XY screen. Here you can either alter things directly by moving the cursor around, or you can record paths which can be replayed.
The recorded path can be looped, bi-directional looped and tempo based as well. Even the speed of the XY recording can be modulated for dynamic changes.

Blade has the full range of other modulation sources, including a dedicated envelope, LFO and velocity as modulation source for Harmolator controls.

Two FX units all the FX from other Rob Papen products, plus the Arp / Sequencer and an Easy page which allows you to easily control sounds, add up to a flexible and useful instrument.

Here’s the official intro video for Rob Papen Blade:

Blade is available now for Mac & Windows (VST/AU/RTAS) at an introductory price, 99 EUR (incl VAT) / US $119, through the end of May, 2012.