SineVibes has updated Torsion, a three-oscillator software synth for Mac, to version 2.
Here’s what’s new in Torsion 2.0:
- New user interface with more convenient layout, drastically increased ease of use, and better visibility in daylight.
- Separate fine pitch control per each oscillator.
- Oscillator pitch modulation range increased to three octaves (up from one).
- Oscillator level now affects the waveform display.
- New trapezoid LFO waveform.
- Added 1/48 note LFO rate option.
- New distortion effects module with sample rate and bit depth reduction, analog-style saturation, and Bode frequency shifter.
- New delay effects module with stereo modulation and dual filter.
- Disabling of idle oscillators and effect modules to reduce processor load.
- 20 new preset patches.
- User manual in PDF format.
Specifications:
- Three oscillators each with four additive waveforms and four wave transform models.
- -24 dB/octave resonant low-pass filter with FM oscillator.
- -12 dB/octave high-pass filter.
- Ring modulator, sample rate and bit depth reduction, saturation, frequency shifter, modulation delay.
- Four LFO generators with multiple waveforms and per-cycle randomisation.
- Two AHDSR envelope generators.
- Two-dimensional chaos modulation generator.
- Factory patch bank includes 150 presets.
Torsion is available now for US $49. A demo version is available.
If you’ve used SineVibes Torsion, let us know what you think of it!
I love the concepts and GUIs behind their plugins. Shame I’m a PC… Still, I can make myself feel better by gorging myself on the endless selection of VST stuff available for PC :p
Why the shame?
There are no plans for PC ports – we use a lot of OS X technologies natively, this gives many advantages (superb stability & compatibility) but doing a different OS would be too much work. However, we do have iOS software in development.
I think hardware synth manufacturers could take a lesson from these VST manufacturers. This is a very clean layout and quite intuitive.
Yeah I wish Sinevibes would port their products to the pc platform.
Here’s one problem with Sinevibes plugins: they eat a lot of CPU for no apparent reason. Multitude and Torsion can easily eat 25%-30% CPU on an Intelmac 3ghz (2011). Another problem for me, pretty much all their plugins sound like their first release Turbo; if you like the sound of “enriched with lots of new spectral content using a wave transformer”, then you’ll like Sinevibles plugins. Cheers!
Multitude does have a reason for eating your CPU – when all four delay units are turned on, you have 40 effect processors running at the same time. So that is an equivalent of 20 simple plugins or so. You can leave just one delay unit and the consumption will drop 4 times. Keep in mind that we do use Apple’s hardware-level optimisation framework, as well as block-based calculations… so this is as low as we could go for now. As about our other plugins – in the same way we did Multitude, they will also be reworked in the future to consume less CPU.
I understand, Artemiy. And i already new about this, but thanks for clarifying. However, i use Valhalladsp UberMod Delay, U-He’s Zebra2 and Zebrefy (multi fx, including delays and reverb): no matter what i do, the CPU never goes over 15%. Just saying.
*Knew
Well, on my 2012 MBA Multitude and Torsion never go beyond 15%. With a single delay unit on, Multitude is at 5-6%. Nevertheless… optimisations are an important topic to us and we’ll be doing much better in updates and future releases.